Anna winced as she looked at Lucie's back. The pair had just finished the burying bodies of Lucie's victims. They were a family of four whom Lucie claimed were guilty of torturing her to insanity when she was just a little child. Anna had found this claim to be outrageous and it was even harder to deal with now after seeing how far Lucie had been willing to go in order to rectify it, but as Anna continued to stare at Lucie's exposed back, Lucie changing out of her dirty and bloody clothes and into something cleaner, Anna finally began to understand just what Lucie might've been thinking when she broke into this house to slaughter every last person inside, child included.
All kinds of strange scars lined the young woman's back and even though they were about 10 years old now, some of them were still very visible. Time had not faded them in the slightest. And these scars were of all different shapes and sizes, crisscrossing to create a horrific mural of suffering that told a terrible story about a terrible time in which the unspeakable had been committed against a little girl.
The longer Anna looked at those scars, the more she began to understand Lucie. Suddenly, she even agreed with Lucie. A fury began to rise up in her heart at the thought of anyone laying a hand on her best friend and, just for a moment, Anna almost wished that this family was still alive just so she could punish them too...
Anna shook her head, then, not wanting to fall into the same pit Lucie was in. She walked over to the broken girl, hugging her from behind and kissing her shoulder. Lucie instinctively snuggled into Anna's warm hug and Anna felt a small flash of pride at this response. She was the only one who could make Lucie so affectionate. Lucie twisted around to kiss Anna's hair.
"Thank you," she whispered, voice speaking 10 years worth of gratitude, including Anna's help today with burying the bodies. Anna didn't reply verbally, choosing instead just to hold her wounded friend tighter still. She led them both over to a nearby bed and she curled up against Lucie's side. They fell asleep in each other's arms, just like they had done for so many nights before.
"Don't leave me. Please don't ever," Anna whispered to Lucie's sleeping form as she caressed Lucie's hair. It was moments like these that made Lucie seem so weak and vulnerable. It was moments like these that made Anna fall so in love with her. She almost couldn't believe that the same girl whose hair she was caressing now was the same girl who had just brutally murdered a family of four only hours ago.
Anna continued to watch Lucie sleep, holding her close and silently protecting her from all the horrors of the outside world. She continued to watch Lucie's chest rise and all and she continued to caress the girl's smooth brown locks. Anna scooted in even closer to Lucie, breathing in her familiar scent. It smelled like home, and like love, and warmth, and happiness... and hope.
"I love you, Lucie, so much," Anna whispered, then she kissed Lucie's head one last time before following the broken girl into a dreamworld.
The next night, things went downhill. After burying the last body, Anna was able to confirm that Lucie had been right about the house and the family being responsible for her childhood trauma. The proof came in the form of a little girl stuck in the same torture chamber Lucie, herself, had been imprisoned in 10 years earlier.
Anna's protective side flared up in full force the moment she found that little girl, screaming and crying alone in the darkness, and she wasted no time in releasing the girl from her chains. She quickly brought the little girl back up to the surface world where Lucie now lay sleeping upon the living room couch. Anna quickly look Lucie awake and Lucie's eyes shot open at once. The very second she laid eyes upon the little girl Anna was holding, she hopped off the couch at once. Not a single word needed to be said for her to understand. She cocked her head to the door and Anna nodded back. Without a single sound or hesitation, the trio of girls ran. Sadly, they didn't get very far before they were all caught and promptly returned to the house from which they had fled. All three of them were returned at once to their torture chambers.
For the next immeasurable amount of time, Anna was kept chained tight in a tiny cell. If the isolation, boredom and immobility didn't drive her mad, the sound coming from the next cell over did. That cell belonged to Lucie, and she was being tortured. All day, every day, Lucie was being tortured. In any manner conceivable by man, Lucie was forced to scream her life away. Around the clock, there was no rest for any of them as Lucie was continually beaten and tortured to the brink of death and back again.
Initially, none of it had made any sense to Anna. Who were these people? And how had they known where to find Lucie? And why was their first solution to the problem at hand to return all three of them to the dungeons below if they were only going to torture one of them? So far, Lucie was the only one being tortured. Anna, herself, had never been harmed and she never once heard the little girl, Sam, scream, so it was likely that she wasn't being actively tortured either. But why? Why Lucie? And why only Lucie?
"Oh, God, no!" Anna choked out as tears burned her eyes. She could hear the whirr of a buzz saw and she knew at once what was going to happen next. She tried hard to drown out the noise, but she couldn't. She plugged her ears, squeezed her eyes shut and even resorted to slamming her own head against her cell wall, but nothing would drown out Lucie's torturous screaming.
"Stop! Stop! Please stop! No more!" Anna screamed herself hoarse right alongside Lucie. Hearing Lucie in so much pain and knowing that it was her fault for not believing Lucie from the start was unbearable.
Anna continued to slam her head into the cell wall, screaming for the tormentors to leave Lucie be, but the only things she received in return for her troubles were an aching head and Lucie's seemingly endless cries for mercy. She kept on begging and begging for them to stop, but they wouldn't. No matter what she said, or how hard she screamed and cried, they kept on hurting it. The sounds Lucie was making were noises no one should've ever had to make. Anna was sure she would go insane if she kept on having to listen to the love of her life suffer so terribly while she could do nothing but be a horrified spectator to it all.
"Please, not her! Not my Lucie! Please stop! STOP!"
Finally, though, during one of the downtimes, Anna was able to speak with Lucie.
"Lucie?" she whimpered through the wall keeping them apart.
"Anna," Lucie managed to whisper out Anna's name. The weakness and despair in her voice made Anna begin to cry all over again.
"Hang on, ok?" she pleaded. "Hang on for me, please?" she broke off as the tears constricted her throat. Lucie sounded so scared and alone!
"Please," Anna whispered again. "Please, don't go. Please stay with me. I need you to be there... please..." and she knew it was horribly selfish and cruel to ask Lucie to continue to endure this torture all so that Anna wouldn't be left alone here, but she couldn't help but ask anyway. The thought of Lucie dying frightened Anna like nothing else ever would. It made her blood run cold and her heart tighten up painfully in her chest. She continued to beg Lucie to stay with her, and stay strong, but she received no more replies.
"My Lucie," Anna sobbed on, wishing she could tear the wall away and take her poor, abused friend into her arms and never let go again.
Then, one day, Anna finally got to experience all that Lucie had. Apparently, the tormentors were getting worried that Lucie wasn't as strong as she used to be and that she might not be a suitable victim after all. This only meant, for them, that they would choose a new test subject. Anna. Suddenly, Anna was naked and tied to an operating table. Nobody was in sight, but she was already screaming and sobbing with more force than she ever had before in her whole life. She thrashed against her restraints, but it did nothing other than rub her wrists raw.
By an hour's turn, though, Anna was out of screams. The torture was endless, new doctors replacing the old when they got tired. Anna, however, had the pleasure of taking it all at once. Every blade, every fire-poker, every club, ever twist of her arms until they cracked, ever fist and foot, every scalpel that cut or poked her skin until it was covered in red, was something Anna got to feel. All the while, she was drowning in screams that nobody heard. She continued to thrash and beg, but the torment was as endless as her shouting was.
But the torment did not really last forever and there finally came a time when Anna was returned to her cell. A few hours later, she was dragged back out, but it was not for another round of pain. Insetad, it was to meet the woman in charge of the whole operation. Eleanor. She was a crazy old lady with a vision, certain that if she could torture someone to the brink of death and back, that someone would be able to get a peek into the afterlife and report back to her and tell her what it was like.
"We call them Martyrs," Eleanor spoke calmly. She reclined in her chair as though she and Anna were only sharing a friendly chat about the weather. It took all of Anna's self-control not to lunge out of her own seat and kill this crazy old lady right here and now with her bare hands! It infuriated her beyond words that this old bat could sit here so serenely while she had an entire systematic operation of god-knows-how-many-other innocent young women being tortured to death right outside the door. Anna even grit her teeth in vain attempt to remain calm. But Eleanor's smug expression wasn't going anyone any favors.
"We train them to see beyond the veil," she continued, looking quite proud of her "ingenious" experiment.
"You are fucking crazy," Anna spat out every word with disgust. The contempt upon her face was indescribable, but Eleanor didn't even look offended. Instead, she only continued to give Anna that infuriating little half-smile.
"Martyrs are very special, because they carry the sin of the world on their shoulders, and they refuse to die. Lucie is perhaps our finest martyr of all," she continued. Then she gave Anna a sly look and finally voiced the one thought that had been plaguing Anna ever since she and Lucie and Sam were first imprisoned down here.
"And it's all because of you!" she declared. "Without you and your little phone call to the "police", we would have never gotten our dear Lucie back!" Eleanor's smile broadened, but Anna knew full well it was not out of gratitude. It was because she knew that what she was saying was getting under Anna's skin, and she liked being able to inflict such psychological torment upon the poor girl.
"I didn't give her to you," Anna hissed back, voice barely above a whisper because she was literally choked up with rage. She knew she shouldn't have taken the bait and argued, but she couldn't help it. The thing Eleanor was accusing her of was so ghastly and horrific that she just couldn't stay quiet! She couldn't just sit there and take it while this crazy old hag accused her of being responsible for all of Lucie's suffering. Although Anna couldn't deny some guilt, because Eleanor wasn't wrong about her little police call bringing the whole cult down on their heads, it certainly wasn't Anna's intention and she would've gladly given up the entire world to go back and undo that phone call.
But what made Anna even angrier than these outrageous accusations was the implication of Eleanor's, "We would have never gotten our dear Lucie back". Anna had not given Lucie away to anybody, and she never would. Lucie was hers! And Eleanor had a lot of nerve to suggest that Anna's mistake was somehow equivalent to her surrendering Lucie back over to the cult. No matter where they were and no matter what they went through, Lucie was still Anna's, and Anna was still Lucie's. Nothing could ever, ever change that. No, Anna had not given Lucie to anyone, especially not someone as sick and twisted as this woman sitting before her was!
But following this "friendly chat" with Eleanor, one of Eleanor's guards tried to kill Anna. He dragged her away and back outside where he attempted to bury her alive along with the corpses of the family that used to live in that house. Anna managed to survive the attempt and dig her way back out to safety, but not even for a single second did Anna consider running away. Instead, the moment her hand shot out from under the ground, she was already making plans to go back inside and rescue Lucie. The very moment she felt the sun upon her skin again, she sprinted back inside the house at once and towards the secret basement. She was still seething with rage, not just because of what had been done to her or Eleanor, but because Eleanor's cruel taunts refused to stop turning over and over in her head.
"Without you, we would have never gotten our dear Lucie back!" the memory sing-songed in Anna's head.
"I didn't give her to you!" Anna spat back, even though she knew she was only talking to a memory now. She clenched her fists and teeth as she leapt back down the ladder and into the dungeons. She wasn't scared anymore. All that mattered now was getting to Lucie, and setting her free, and reuniting with her. That would show Eleanor! That would show them all that Anna was not so easily deterred, and that nothing could separate her from Lucie. Not even all the torture in the world would stop Anna now. Not when Lucie's life was hanging in the balance.
"My Lucie!" Anna growled again, then she made her final assault upon the cult.
In the end, Anna managed to set Sam free and while Sam ran away to find help, Anna stayed back to finish off Eleanor and the rest of her mindless cult. She succeeded in finally ending the life of that woman who had ended the lives of so many others, but the action did not come without its cost. By the time Anna had returned, Lucie was already being forced through the final ritual of the Martyrs process. Hung up on a cross before Eleanor's congregation, she gasped for breath as she stared up into a blinding white light meant to simulate that same light people saw in near death experiences. Anna took one look at Lucie's body and knew it was over, but that didn't stop her from trying. Despite some of the injuries which she, herself, had suffered in a previous battle against some of Eleanor's mooks, Anna limped over to Lucie's side and carefully, tenderly pulled her down from the cross, curling up at her side and holding her close, just like she had done for so many nights before.
"I'm so sorry," she wept, looking at Lucie's emaciated and bloody body. It was unrecognizable from the girl Anna once knew, but at the same time, she knew that this Lucie was her Lucie. Even though Lucie's eyes were already glazed over in death, Anna could still feel love coming from the body and that was how Anna knew, without a doubt, this was really her Lucie. Even after all this time, this was still her Lucie.
"I didn't give her to you," Anna whispered, flicking her eyes over to Eleanor's corpse one last time. "She's mine. She's my Lucie. She always was and always will be and neither you nor anyone else will ever take her away from me again," Anna's eyelids were growing heavy. She couldn't breathe anymore. Her heartbeat felt too loud and too soft at the same time. Anna curled up into Lucie's side.
"Death won't take her away from me either… My Lucie…"
AN: This was based on the less-horrific 2015 remake. As much as I know that people hated it, I personally really liked it. Sure, it was pathetic in comparison to the original, but I still really liked it. And it did have more Lucie/Anna, so that's always nice. LOL.