I was angry, filled with rage, adrenaline pumping and the sound of blood pounding in my ears, echoed by the rattling of the chains. Disorientation – I had your drugs to thank for that, but it didn't quite register. Neither did the glass wall – I walked straight into it and fell to the floor. That old feeling of desperation, present for as long as I can remember, was growing and gnawing at my insides. I had been reduced to a beast, a wild thing kept in a cage.
And then your voice came to me through the noise, your words soft but precise, and for a moment, just for a moment I thought you might be her. It didn't soften my rage; if anything my desperation grew fiercer, tinged now with sorrow because you were not my Sara, not even close. You were one of them; every word out of your mouth was bound to be a lie.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had trusted this first impression, and in the end, in what way my growing trust aided your hidden intentions.
You didn't lie to me, not once. With the palms of your hands pressed softly to the glass separating us, you told me to trust you.
"What… the hell is going on here?"
And you didn't lie. You walked away.
As you disappeared behind the closing door I knew you snacked on that ridiculous four-piece toothpick creation only to show me I was wrong; that it was safe, harmless; that you had not tried to deceive me. It didn't earn you my trust, it wasn't the answer I was looking for.
***
The adrenaline was still filling my head with noise when I slammed your thin frame down onto the table, when I grabbed you by the neck and pressed a shard of the shattered plate to your throat, when I dragged you through the corridor. Your sobbing and gasping for breath only angered me more; who were you to play innocent, you, who put a bag over my head, drugged me, locked me in a cage, and dared to fake kindness! I had no sympathy for you.
"Open the door!"
"I can't, Jack, I can't, I do that and we'll die-"
"She's telling the truth, Jack." Bens sudden appearance was like a bucket of cold water over my head. The way he spoke with such measured words, only do describe such nonchalance; how it made sense to me, the defeated slump of your shoulders earlier, the emptiness of your eyes.
"I swear to god… I will kill her."
"Okay." Spoken with the intonation of a question, he let me know just how little that would accomplish, how irrational the very idea. "Have her open the doors and she dies anyway. We all do."
He didn't care about you in the slightest, you, one of his very own; and here he was, willing to sacrifice your life just to keep me in my cage. It was an error on my part, misreading the urgency in his eyes for betrayal. I thought it was cold ignorance, a reply to the desperation depicted in yours. And you played your part well, Juliet, the way you flew towards the exit the moment I released you. You were very convincing.
You were never supposed to reach that door in time. I was to know that you were disposable, that you had no reason to be loyal to Ben because he was not loyal to you and you were so very insignificant.
I didn't even notice the blow coming until I felt myself sinking through the water. Then the black void took me again.
***
Again, you found a way to say what you needed to say without being caught in a lie. Pouring over the details of my life, collected on paper and stuck together in a file, you were free to bring up the hospital, my father, Sydney… Sara.
You were kind, but more than that, you were honest. Not so much the words you spoke, but the tiredness in your eyes, the sharp edge to your humour, the way you made it perfectly clear you didn't want to be here any more than I did. And I believed you, I believed you because you told me what I wanted to hear. Wearing Saras smile, you told me she was far away and happy with someone else. You gave me an ending I had been searching for for a long time; something not even Kate could give me.
That's how you earned my trust.