Lauren pleaded as she heard Lachlan's footsteps receding. Panicked words tumbled from her mouth without any plan or forethought. There was no time to think and Lauren had only seconds to make her case before he left through the steel door that separated the dungeon from the stairway that led up to the back of his throne room. Her words made no difference. Lachlan gave no response, showed no mercy. She knew he wouldn't; the former Ash had never locked her in the dungeon like this, but he had taught her in no uncertain terms that disobedience had consequences. Still, she couldn't help but try.
The heavy metal door slammed at the end of the hall with crushing finality. Begging gave way to a wordless scream as Lauren beat her fists against the door of her cell. With nobody left to see or hear her, she gave full vent to the panic and despair that flooded through her. Her hands slammed into the aged, unyielding surface and bursts of pain vibrated through her arms. Rough, rusty edges caught at her skin, and soon her futile efforts left bloody smears where her bruised and tired hands met cold metal.
When she could scream and flail no longer, Lauren stumbled back. She wrapped her arms around herself and fought to quell the sobs that rose in her now-hoarse throat. Crying wouldn't help her any more than throwing herself at the door had. Her chest heaved as she gasped in ragged breaths.
Lauren stretched out her arms across the narrow width of the room. With her fingers on one wall, her other hand stopped mere centimeters away from touching the opposite wall. The length of her cell gave her enough space to walk a handful of paces. The stone walls towered around her, stretching up more than fifteen feet to the ceiling. The enormous height did nothing to make her cell feel larger. If anything, the narrow space seemed ready to collapse in on her. She briefly entertained the idea that it would collapse - that any minute the stone would crumble and Lachlan's throne room would swallow him up through a hole in the floor, crushing her under the rubble in the process. A small, secret part of her welcomed the thought, even as her conscious mind shoved the idea away. Still, she reached out both arms again to check that the narrow walls had not crept any closer. They hadn't.
In the far wall from the door, one tiny window set just below the ceiling let in a column of light through the dusty air. The light didn't reach the ground, but stopped halfway down the wall, just above the locked door. Even if Lauren could climb up to the window and somehow tear out the metal bars, it would still have been too small to escape through. Still she wished that she could reach it, if only to see out to the sky and the world beyond.
She settled onto the ground in the center of the room and curled her knees to her chest. The stone floor felt and looked indistinguishable from the walls and ceiling. The thin beam of light crept higher and higher on the wall as the sun sank in the world outside. The temperature dropped. Lauren shivered and clenched her arms more tightly around her knees. Lachlan's guards had provided her no cot, no blanket, not even a bucket. Right now the first two bothered her most, although she was sure that the third would become an issue eventually. For now she just tried to minimize the surface area exposed to cold air and even colder stone.
The splotch of light faded into darkness as the sun set. A soft glow crept in the window, illuminating the top of her cell, but no light reached her at the bottom. Lauren curled on her side and tucked her fingers into her armpits as the cold sank through her bones. She closed her eyes and tried to tell herself that Lachlan wouldn't leave her here forever.
The walls were closing in. Lauren couldn't say how she knew it, but the knowledge yanked her from her sleep. The walls should have been almost two meters apart. They had been before she fell asleep - Lauren was sure of it! But now they hovered next to her shoulders and the ceiling dipped down to pin her against the floor. She lashed out, her body exploding in a desperate attempt to hold the walls at bay. She braced her hands against the stone and pushed.
Warm, smooth, soft, stone walls gave way and Lauren twisted, ensnared by crumbling rock as the ceiling pressed against her. One of the walls fell away completely, thudding onto the ground with a yelp. The other wall twisted to turn on the light.
Tamsin picked herself up and rubbed her hip where it connected with the worn wooden floor of Bo's bedroom. She perched on the edge of the bed and rested one hand gently on Lauren's thigh. On her other side, Bo sat against the headboard, her face in shadow from the bedside lamp behind her, and reached out to Lauren.
Lauren stiffened. Her hands curled into fists and she dug her nails into her palms to try to stop the shaking. Bo's hand fell away.
"What do you need, honey?" Bo asked softly.
What do I need. Lauren's jaw clenched and she turned away from her girlfriend. But with Tamsin on her other side, there was no escaping her lovers' concern. "I just need a minute," she said after a moment's pause. "Bad dream."
Tamsin met her eyes with a knowing gaze and Lauren could hear Bo shift on the bed next to her. She leaned back, falling against Bo with a familiar desperation. Lauren rested her head against Bo's shoulder, and the comforting smell of Bo's skin enveloped her. Tamsin scooted up to sit beside them, propped against the headboard. She rested one hand palm-up on her leg and Lauren took the invitation, gripping Tamsin's hand with a ferocity that belied the calm demeanor she was trying to project.
"The Ash again?" Tamsin growled. Lauren nodded. She could try to deny it - and sometimes she managed to evade Bo's questions - but Tamsin had seen more suffering in her long lifetimes than Lauren could even imagine, and had even been on the receiving side of captivity and torture more than once herself. Tamsin always saw right through her.
Bo nuzzled her cheek against the top of Lauren's head. "You're safe, love," she murmured. "You're free now. We've got you."
Lauren felt Bo's hand warm against her arm and knew that Bo was resisting the urge to send a calming pulse of chi to her. They'd talked about it several times and Bo knew not to use her abilities to influence Lauren's emotions. Lauren prefered to process things in her own way, and she needed to know that her feelings were, in fact, her own. That didn't mean Bo didn't want to help sometimes - who wouldn't want to take away their partner's pain if they could? But Bo held back and her hand returned to normal body temperature.
"Want to talk about it?" Tamsin asked. The wry slant of her mouth said she knew what Lauren's answer would be before she even asked.
"No." Lauren felt steadier now, although her voice still held a tremor of the fear that had filled her body moments ago. "We should go back to sleep." Her girlfriends exchanged a look with each other and Lauren ignored them. At least by now they knew better than to protest or insist that they all stay awake to help her through.
Tamsin slid down the bed to lay on her side facing Lauren. She opened her arms. Lauren tucked in next to her and planted a soft kiss against Tamsin's lips before resting her head in the gap underneath her chin. Bo clicked the light off and curled behind Lauren, molding her body against her.
Lauren forced herself not to tense as the walls closed in on her, not to panic as darkness filled the small, stone room. She breathed steadily, counting through long inhales and longer exhales. She was not in the dungeon, she told herself. Not trapped between solid walls of rock. She was here in bed with her girlfriends, with Tamsin's strong arms around her and Bo's warm breath against her shoulder.
Lauren sucked in a deep breath and rolled onto her back. Her partners moved in sync with her, shifting in their bed so that they both curled toward her. Tamsin's hand rested on her chest. Bo mirrored her initially, then her hand drifted up to cup Lauren's breast with a gentle caress. Lauren sighed and kicked the blankets away. They made her feel trapped and, with two bodies stretched out alongside her, she didn't need the extra warmth. Tamsin didn't seem to mind the cold; she pressed closer against Lauren. Bo reached for the spare blanket she kept on her side just for this purpose and tugged it up over her.
Before long, the quiet room pulsed with the rhythm of sleeping breath, of rising and falling chests on either side of her. Lauren stared up through the darkness. Her skin crawled as she looked up at what she was half-convinced was a ceiling, of dark stone weighted with fear. She pushed the thought aside and tried to picture the ceiling she knew was overhead - a ceiling of old wood decorated with silk scarves that Bo collected like a magpie. Her hands brushed over the sheets and she rubbed her fingers against the soft surface, so very different from the hard, icy floor that still lurked in her mind. The tactile sensation of the sheets between her fingertips helped to center her and drive away the lingering nightmare.
Lauren eased back into the bed; barely moving, but finally releasing the tension that still clung to her. She reached out, fumbling in the dark until her hands came to rest on her partners' thighs. She swept her thumbs in slow, soft circles over their hips, breathed deeply, and - sandwiched between her lovers - fell asleep.