little dreams
She dreams, at night, in the day. It all is the same to her. He pauses in his exercises or his gathering of food or water or washing their clothes to watch her eyes cloud with thoughts as she leans against the bars of their cell and looks up at the small patch of blue sky allowed them. It has been a long time since he has dreamed, since he has permitted himself to feel something akin to hope, but it lights up her face like a smile and he drops everything to see it.
"Tell me about the sky," she says. He sees stars in her eyes, and clouds and grass and trees and the words of all the stories he has ever told her and every place he has ever described, running through her head. Her face is clean, pure, innocent. He feels raw, genuine fear when he thinks of the sin and filth and debauchery waiting for her in every corner of the Pit. He wants to protect her, to seek redemption in her, but she is so curious and inquisitive and small and fragile, and the world is so cruel and punishing, that he knows failing her isn't something he can avoid. It is inevitable. "Tell me about the clouds. Why does the rain fall? Why does it want to come down to this place? Why doesn't it stay up where it is free, Bane? Why, why, why?"
"Everything must come down sooner or later," he answers her. She asks deep questions but does not understand when he gives her deep answers. Her mouth purses, her eyes narrow. She thinks he is making fun of her.
"I don't understand," she says reluctantly.
"I'm afraid that you will, one day, child," he whispers. And he is afraid. Fear is not something he used to shy away from. He had embraced it long ago, when he was just as young as she was, and it built him, it helped him survive. But the fear was followed by a slow, haunting darkness that for the longest time possessed every inch of his mind and he wants light for her, he wants life for her. "One day, you will understand."
But her short attention span has forced her full focus back to the sky. He goes back to the washing or gathering or exercising as her eyes fill with the haze of rumination and the thoughts of far off waters and deserts and fields she will visit when she leaves here.
He rises from his sit-up, or puts down his basket, or the shirt he is soaking in water, and watches her. And maybe he dreams a little too.