DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
Author's Note: Hi! I am the original writer of The Kekkei Genkai. For reasons of my own stupidity, I cannot access my old account "Acedia's Apathetic Simplicity" -.-' Bet ya' thought I completely forgot about this one! I never did, but I had priorities and all my fanfics got placed on the back burner unfortunately. Here's to hoping another 5-Year Hiatus does not happen again.
Updates: Sunday or Saturday.
Original Word Count: ~972 / New Word Count: 1,007
PROCEED ONLY AFTER READING WARNING:
Allusions of rape and molestation (non-graphic).
Torture: Pyschological, Emotional, and physical.
Unethical human experimentation.
Mentions of religion both in negative and positive aspects.
No romance. No Pairings. (Any allusions of pairings are unintentional.)
Point of view mostly done through Hermione.
FOURTEEN FORSAKEN PRISONERS
Children shivered together. Huddled and afraid. Afraid to close their eyes. Afraid of the strange men with the metal plated headbands. Afraid of the iron-masked man chained to the wall with only dry cracked bloodied lips and gaunt jaw left visible. Afraid of the soulless woman: protector and executioner. The children trusted and feared her, she gave them warmth and comfort, she hugged them and held them close to her heart silently humming a lullaby. They were afraid of her because when one of them could no longer stand on their own or have been taken by the men with metal plated headbands she would whisper something to their ears all the while having her hand pressed against the small chest of the child humming tunelessly. A second later the child would slump dead.
The man in the iron mask is not the only one that has the metal burden. There are others: a fifteen-year-old boy, a sixteen-year-old girl, and a ten-year-old girl. There used to be more but they were the first to wither away.
Right now, the children stared at the slump gaunt and almost skeletal-like woman beaten-bloody. Splotches scattered carelessly across her gown. All the children wore gowns. A light blue-greenish gown; it was the only thing that ever got replaced every fortnight.
Was the woman dead?
Her grey streaked shoulder length frizzy brown hair covered her face as she laid near the chained man. Both the children and adults were separated when they realized that she was the cause of the children dying, metal bars now split the room in half. There was little to no light from further down the hall like prison. There was one door where the flickering light was, the children were afraid to go there. Bad things happened there.
The younger children don't know what the sun looks like having been there their whole lives or were taken away that young. The older children remember the sun bit don't or cannot recall the warmth of the sun. They can't recall the feel of grass or scent of rain. The older children were taken when they were around the ages of: five, six, eight, eleven or twelve. Most of the older children are now around the ages of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty. They are dying. All of them are. There used to be hundred and fifty of them, all of them filling the hall…the cells are mostly empty…
The children have dwindled down to twelve. There haven't been any new prisoners lately…not in a very long time.
The woman didn't twitch a finger, had the oldest of them all finally died?
Was she going to go to hell now for killing all those other children?
She was only doing what she thought was best – the secrets had to be kept! She had told them once that the only reason they were there was because their abilities had been discovered. Any more information must be kept from them! Good thing there was a language barrier or many would have already spilled just on the off-chance of being granted freedom. Only one person spoke their captors' language, the man in the iron mask but he's not one for speaking much.
The woman has been lying there for a full hour.
She normally gets up as soon as she's thrown in her shared prison cell.
Is she burning now? Who will protect them?!
A chill went down the spine of one of the children. Trembling, a child around the age of thirteen turned to look behind him; one of masked ones was lying on the floor. It was the second eldest of the masked ones. She looked to be peacefully sleeping he moved a skinny hand to the girls' hand and felt her wrist. No pulse. Another dead.
They fed them every day! And yet, they still died of starvation, of sleep deprivation, of dehydration. It was like their bodied didn't want their secrets to be discovered either. It angered their captors but there was nothing they could do.
The helplessness…
All had long since lost the hope that maybe someday someone would come, that maybe one day their parents would find them, that maybe their savior would come. Some of them don't evenremember how to cry anymore.
The youngest of them, the ten-year-old in the iron mask shuddered, her shoulders quaked. Tears could be seen sliding down beneath the mask down to her boney chin. She shook the elder girl wondering if somehow that would wake her up. She did this every time one of them died. She eventually stopped and leaned against the sold black brick grey walls. She slid against the wall until she was not quite sitting on the cold tiles of the floor, knees bent in a way that eventually left an uncomfortable soreness on the thighs and calves later in the day, night (?).
No one talks much in the cells, too afraid to comfort each other. They didn't want to feel the pain of losing a friend, a sister, a brother…a lover. They don't want to spread false hope. There nothing to hope for.
They will all die for the sake of secrecy.
They will all rot here.
There is no hope here in this prison. No one will set them free, they know this now. They will never see the sun, the moon, and the sky.
What is grass? What is leaves? What is…?
…they will never know freedom ever again. Some of them don't even know what is freedom.
Finally, the silence was broken by a cry from the girl. Asking to no one: "What do we do now?"
No one answered, no one moved to comfort her as she started to cry. No one hoped for their protector to raise her head again. Maybe the iron-masked man is dead too.
"What do we do now?" Her voice cracking as she sobbed. Her unseeing mask pointed up to their concrete coffin. "What do we do now?" She yelled.
Only indifferent silence responded.