A/N: As usual, I would recommend putting the video on loop.
Bones ached against sharp, painfully cold tiles. The color of the tiles wasn't fully distinguishable even if the single light fixture in the room was switched on. Its dull, laughable illumination only revealed that there were tiles on the floor of the room and that cement walls created the perimeter. Dirt caked itself on the tiles, and little chips scraped against flesh if too much movement occurred. But, the chips didn't give anymore than that; they couldn't be used as a lethal weapon, and infection was out of the way since so many cuts had been administered by them already. Nothing had happened from those wounds, and the receiver of them still had some will to live; the receiver had hope remaining, but it was getting harder and harder to hold onto it.
A groan echoed in the dark room since the light wasn't turned on presently. The occupant rolled onto her stomach and rested the side of her head on her left forearm. Her toes curled and picked up dirt in the process. Little cuts decorated her body from her rough, uncomfortable sleep. She didn't lift up her head, however, as she didn't have the energy or desire to. Besides, nothing pleasant would greet her if she did. Only darkness would welcome her eyes, and the darkness hid something dreadful.
Just the thought of him sent chills through her body, and her mind nearly shut itself off from their last sessions together. It didn't wish to recall them; it didn't want to submit itself to that agony again. Her body followed suit and twitched at the mere thought of those things occurring once more. What had happened in the past ... with Ether ... that was a ... luxury. Having such a thought caused her stomach to flip into awful knots, but it was the truth. The past had been like the most pleasant dream she could think of while she was, currently, in the body-crushing hold of torturous nightmares.
Even now during her break from him, she was on constant alert. Relaxation didn't exist since she never could tell when he would come back. Sometimes, it seemed like hours or days. At others, it felt like only a couple of minutes. He had started that method as soon as she woke up in the bone-chilling pit she was in. Back then, she had known immediately that she was in an abandoned subway somewhere, but that no longer mattered. To her, it simply had become her prison.
In the course of a week, he had broken her through sadistic teasing and constant, yet unpredicted abuse. One day, he only had administered a light treatment of physical pain: a shallow knife wound across each arm. Then, he had left her in the darkness with her wrists bound in old electrical cables. The slow drip of her blood, though, had been terrifying in the lack of light, especially when the smell of rot and more blood had entered her nose a little while later. Only when he had come back and switched on the light had she seen the decaying head in the far right corner of the room.
Memories of Laura had stormed through her mind as he had left her in the room with the light on. And, the light switch was in a sealed box that he had to unlock, so she couldn't go back into darkness to avoid viewing the head. After awhile, she had begun to picture Laura's head there, and the hallucinations that had followed had been ... sickening and lasting. Even as she recalled that day, her body curled up as more broken chips poked at her skin.
On other days, he had lashed out insults at her and told her of all of her wrongdoings with Ether. How Ether had been so kind to her, and she had taken advantage of him at every turn. Some days had been filled with physical torture that had left her bruised and bloodied. Scars and healing wounds still covered her at the present moment. Whenever she saw herself in a bathroom mirror, she found that she couldn't look after awhile. Shame, disgust and fear always would glare back.
Shame existed for being so vulnerable, weak and exposed, disgust for letting him dig into her mind and tear apart the pieces before putting them back haphazardly and to his benefit, and fear for him returning. And, one of the worse parts of the whole ordeal was that she never grew numb to his treatment. There was no consistency to his methods of torment, and her body and mind couldn't adjust to any of it. He knew how to morph her into a broken doll before he repaired her again and again. Each repair left her entire self victim to all of the agony once more.
Sometimes, she even caught herself calling out quietly for ... Ether. She would be in a daze, and pain ate her vocal cords until his name quietly left past her lips. That was what ... No, she couldn't speak his name; she wouldn't. Terror told her that it would summon him to her room, and the torture would begin all over again.
Weakly, her fingers twitched and grabbed at the floor around them. Dirt rubbed against the tips. The little granules of it reminded her of the harsher chips of tiles, but they didn't wound her. Part of her ached for her just to give up and surrender, but another part couldn't release itself from the desire to live. All of her past struggles had consumed so much of her in such a short time that she couldn't just relinquish them, and her parents still were ... waiting for her.
Then again, she had attempted to kill Ether, and she had failed. He could kill her parents at any time, but she wouldn't know until she actually saw their bodies. That gave her some hope, and she clung to it like it was a string over a vast canyon. Until then, she couldn't abandon them, especially after everything they had done for her. How she was going to escape her present predicament was another story, and the solution was one she was ashamed to admit, but it constantly stared at her from out of the shadows. In her condition, she simply couldn't leave on her own; her tormentor would find her first and submit her to worse conditions even if that seemed impossible with how many malevolent treatments he had distributed to her.
All of her attention, though, broke from her thoughts when her ears picked up a familiar, fear-inducing sound. One. Then another, and then another. They were getting closer, and she could hear every one even though they were light and near soundless. A single word played on repeat in her head as though it were a broken record. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Gradually, she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees since they weren't bound together. The door to her room was locked, and she couldn't break it open in her weakened state. Pain tickled her body at her movement, but the threat on the other side of the door was worse. When she managed to stand, her legs wobbled a bit, but she maintained her balance and headed towards the wall farthest from the door.
Soon enough, too soon, the awful sound stopped right outside her door. Her head shook lightly, and her fingers tried to grip at the annoyingly smooth wall. A key turned in the lock, and metal creaked open. Trembling now, she attempted to back into the wall more despite that being a fruitless effort. There was no escape. The light switched on, and she shut her eyes at the brightness, which really wasn't that much. To her eyes, though, after the long periods of darkness, it felt like the sun in the morning.
"I'm surprised." She winced at his deceivingly calm and collected voice. "I expected you to be curled up somewhere in here." A horrible chuckle parted from him. "I can see you better like that." Her arms moved over her chest defensively, and her legs pressed together. The sound of tissue paper crinkling greeted her ears. "I picked you up new clothes."
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes as they adjusted to the light. He had on a plum purple button-up and black pants with his black snow boots. As usual, his hair was swept back with his bangs swept to the right so that his very pale blue optics wouldn't be covered. His eyes didn't even squint at the faint light. "What? Do you like the color?" The male tugged at his shirt a bit and shrugged. "I thought that I'd pick up a new weapon."
That was what he called all of his clothes. It was the only reason he wore them, to blend into human crowds and capture some for food. Or, he would pick her up things, but there was no kindness in the act. New clothes only meant that they would get ruined soon through some means of torture, and it meant that her old ones would be replaced. Such an action had its own meaning, and fear bubbled up inside of her like a volcano.
"Oh, don't look at me like that." He untied his shoes and kicked them out of the room, giving a sigh of relief in the process. "You get new clothes." She shook her head and stayed against the wall. "Really?" Instinctively, she winced at his frustrated tone. "Are you going to make me drag you out?" No answer came to him, and he tossed the bag aside; she didn't want to know where he got those clothes from even if they were most likely clean. The male never had brought her dirty clothes in the past.
"I ..."
"I don't care what you want." His tone grew bored. "You know that. Now, get over here, or I'll drag you over there naked." Instantly, but slowly, she pushed herself off of the wall and stepped towards him. He leaned over and picked up the bag again. As he faced away from her, he mentioned, "Just follow me like usual. Try anything, and I'll carry through with my threat." She gave a slight nod, and she knew that he saw it before he turned the other way fully.
As she stepped over the threshold of her room and into the hall, she used the pale light from her room to guide her along with his footsteps. He was a little ways ahead of her, which permitted him to switch on another light. Her tormentor stopped by the doorframe of the new room and signaled her to walk inside. With each step forward, she felt her heart rate increase. Up ahead was one of her least favorite rooms in the subway, and it was one of the most humiliating too. Before she walked inside, she glanced up to him, and his gaze was cold and unyielding. "Now." The simple command sent her the rest of the way into the room, and he went in after her.