Disclaimer: Sucker Punch owns Sly Cooper and his wonderful video game franchise; everything here is pretty much not mine.

Artha; The Orphan

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." –William Butler Yeats

Neyla hid in the shadows, blending into the walls as well as any chameleon could. The gloomy castle was (thankfully) mostly lit by candles and torches; only the pesky Shadow Guard possessed any strong lights, and it was easy enough to see where and how one could remain undetected from their poor eyesight. Besides, the ones she had the pleasure of sharing a room with presently were dashing down the corridors to the ground level, squawking nervously and clutching their crossbows. What was the excitement for? Neyla didn't give much of a damn, honestly. She could hear the mortar of some of her biplanes zooming by outside; perhaps the cheeky bastards had blown up something important. Oh well. She could deal with that later. Interpol practically licked her toes with admiration and trust on these matters; they wouldn't mind if she was a bit lazy working around to it.

Besides. She had more important things to attend to. More so as in how in the world she was to lure the Contessa away from her glued position in the room with Old Ironsides. The eight-legged bitch never seem fazed enough by anything occurring outside to dare to even move an inch away from her post, constantly tearing away at Inspector Fox's psyche. Maybe in the past Neyla would've felt a bit of pity for the vixen. The Contessa was frighteningly exemplary at her hypnosis work. But Carmelita had seemed intent on being a cunt even when they worked together, and it was interesting to see if she would indeed crack under the pressure.

Inching every so closely, Neyla flattened herself against the wall. The door frame barely gave any cover, but she was rather adept at finding ways to obscure herself from view. It was a blessing in itself that Neyla wasn't cursed with a stocky frame, or had a protruding belly to unceremoniously reveal her to wanton eyes; no, she was sleek and trim… invisible to anyone and everyone she wished to avoid.

She had crept in the middle of some banter, it seemed. "…readjust your face!" Carmelita spat, trying furiously to push against the iron shackles that held her to the elevated table. Her eyes were an eerie white, glowing under the rays of power emanating from the Clockwerk eyes.

The eyes. There they were. Strapped onto some mad scientist's wet dream of a hypnosis machine. Cold yellow orbs that had once provided sight for the metallic bird of lore, one of the most evil villains ever to walk the earth, stared down both Inspector Fox and Neyla herself; she felt as if they were inspecting her, evaluating her, probing her.

But they had also belonged to one of the most powerful villains ever to walk the earth, and it was for this reason that she needed them. Or rather, her aerodynamically-challenged mentor did. Either way, she was the one who had to steal them from the enormous spider. It was going to be a hard job, and likely painful as a result, but she'd nursed cracked ribs before, and really, it would all be worth it in the end.

It was all supposed to be worth it in the end.

But apparently, it wouldn't have to be a hard job for her after all; lost in her thoughts, Neyla suddenly realized that somehow Old Ironsides had broken free from her restraints, and had carefully collected her trusty shock pistol whilst the Contessa typed away at a console, oblivious to the liberation. Neyla sunk back even further in the shadows. Would they do all the hard work for her? It seemed a very likely possibility.

"A-ha! I've isolated the brain pattern… you and I are about to become the best of friends," the widow sneered, never turning around to look at her captive audience.

"Okay, new best friend," the vixen grinned. "Hands up, and I mean all of 'em."

The Contessa spoke, but all Neyla heard was the beating of her heart echoing in her ears, and then all she felt was the whoosh of wind sifting through the fur on her face as the spider came running by, yelling like a scared child. Running away to her guards? More than likely. The Contessa was not one for physical combat. Inspector Fox came trailing in hot pursuit, wielding her pistol dangerously and yelling what either could have been "witch" or "bitch". Either way, Neyla smiled wide in her hiding place. Both threats had taken care of themselves; this would be too easy.

Except an iron gate that she had failed to notice before suddenly crashed down, slamming against the stone wall, and she retreated further back into the dark. Out of this new entrance came someone she'd been afraid to see for some time. The turtle, she could care less about; as she thought about it, Neyla realized she'd never even known they'd been carrying a reptile in the Cooper Gang operation. But he floated down into sight, clad in his usual blue, and her heart froze.

It was Sly. That goddamn raccoon was back in the picture again. The knife she thought she'd tossed away back in India at the tiger's jungle refuge stabbed into her chest once more, letting the pain seep out like blood from a wound. She was tempted to punch herself in the torso, or maybe smack her own face. She couldn't break down like this, not when the mission depended on it. But even so, she had already seen his smiling face, joking with the turtle (while it placed some sort of circular vacuum onto a device she'd heard the Contessa call "Mind-shuffler"), and the sound of his voice made it even worse.

Words crept across her mind, flashing in front of her eyes. Betrayal. Money. Evil. Fortune. Sunesh. Thief. Backstabber. India. Date. There were plenty of others as well, plaguing her conscience as a heated rash covers one's skin. To an observant bystander, Neyla seemed composed and strikingly alert; on the inside, her thoughts were whirling out of control in her head.

The only thing that knocked her out of it was the explosion.

Suddenly, the room filled with red gas, noxious and thick in her lungs as she breathed it in. The haze made a perfect cover, hiding her from being detected, and she ran in, having located what was surely a Clockwerk eye lying on the ground. The orb was staring into her once more, and although she shuddered, Neyla dared to pick it up anyway.

The minute she touched it, she felt as if she was falling down a bottomless well, the light of the room above her growing smaller and smaller as she catapulted down further. Eventually, all was dark.

But she had ended up somewhere else, actually. Somewhere very strange.

This was long ago. Long, long, long ago. The streets of New Delhi there were dust and dirt, not paved road. The houses were made of tin, wood, scrap metal; mere shacks, only viable for the most basic of household needs, and even then not that useful. The citizens were all of varying ages and in various stages of loitering, ranging from the hyper children running about to the stationary senior citizens who rested for their awaited deaths (and presumable reincarnation). Neyla knew this place all too well. These were her neighborhoods, those alleys and dirt fields were her lawns, those poverty-stricken people were her neighbors. That shanty, small and filthy and depressing, was her home.

These were the slums of New Delhi, and this was a Neyla who knew nothing other than being poor and others who were poor.

She was a passenger in her own young body, an observer of her own memory. How old was she currently? Neyla could feel her long dark hair bouncing behind her as she ran with some other slum children, anonymous faces in her past that she had once held bonds with; if she hadn't been wearing the headdress yet, then this predated her preteen years. She felt disproportionately short, as the adults near her seemed to be looming like ominous giants and the roofs of the shacks looked as if they were towering up near the sky like skyscrapers. Neyla figured that she was somewhere in the single digit age, as in seven or six years old.

It didn't matter much to her; the important part was that she was rather young, and she was running happily with the other children through the legs of indifferent grown-ups. Grown-ups. This was an age where she would call them grown-ups, and with the slight edge of distaste in her voice. They were taller and older and wiser, but the contempt for them being over twelve years of age was inherent in Neyla for as long as she could remember.

Grown-ups.

The memory remained more of the same, mindless sprinting and giggling whilst a slower child brought up in the rear. Neyla supposed they were playing tag. Or maybe cops and robbers. Either way, she ended up playing cops and robbers in real life in her adult years. Sometimes even on both sides at once. It got very, very tricky. But she managed it. She always managed it.

So far, the memory had been pointless, and Neyla was wondering angrily why she'd been brought back to this particular moment for no good reason when suddenly her younger self decided to cheat a little and run back home. Neyla knew this not because she could read her own mind, but because she had taken this same route for years to go back to the house; past Mahadik's butcher shop, through the alley with the dumpster and the stain that looked remarkably like Africa, under the rose garden Lakia Dubey kept, and straight ahead through the crowds of people to her own shack, where her mother would be found doing laundry and her father would be found sitting around, smoking and talking to his close friends.

It was all in the routine.

The younger Neyla performed it flawlessly, never missing a beat, and Neyla realized that even in childhood, she'd shown the proficiency at acrobatics that would make her such an athletic goddess in adulthood. The crawl under the rose garden almost always left some dirt in her hair, but it seemed that day that she gotten through as clean as humanly possible. All that was left was the large road and crowds of people to duck through. Young Neyla did that as well, gracefully to boot. But when she arrived at the shack, Neyla realized what memory this was.

The spot her father usually sat in was empty, not just of her father but of his favorite chair as well. She'd attributed that, although puzzled, to him deciding to sit elsewhere with his group of friends that day. It seemed logical enough, although she could barely remember a time when he hadn't been parked in front of the house during the day. The line that usually held drying laundry was mostly empty, save for some of her clothing, but she didn't notice that until later. Or rather, until it was too late.

What truly raised the alarm in her innocent mind was the fact that her mother was not home. True, her father almost constantly lazed about in that chair, but now and then he left for one reason or another; it was most shocking to see that her mother, the homebody of the family, had left the shack alone. Neyla dared a search around the small room that they had, and although she saw her own blankets for sleeping, at the time the absence of her parents' evaded Neyla's attention completely. She'd been so stupid, so oblivious back then. A foolish child, a stupid, stupid baby that couldn't think for itself even if it tried.

When she stepped back out of the shack to look about and hope perhaps that maybe she could spot one of her parents, a pudgy piece of shit called Gopi Kadam came thumping along. He was an adult, perhaps in his forties or fifties; greasy, missing some teeth, unnaturally obese for being so poor, Gopi possessed a cold heart (or perhaps not even a heart at all). Neyla had heard in her youth that he liked to beat children whenever there was no one else around to see. He never came near her as such, but she'd seen the bruises on other children, and the gap-toothed smile of his whenever such a child crossed his path. In addition to all that, however, Gopi also enjoyed inserting himself into gossip and rumors. The man left a path of social destruction behind him, causing fights and spilling dirty secrets for all to hear.

He approached her, grinning cheekily, and leaned against a nearby barrel. They stared at each other for a few moments, neither one breaking eye contact or even blinking.

"Looking for your mama, eh? Your papa, eh?" he said, grinning widely. Slowly, she nodded her head. "Ah, I see, I see. Well, good luck with that, little girl. You see me? And my friends over there, you see them too? We watched your parents. They waited until you were gone, off running with your little shit-covered friends. They packed up their things, their clothes, even that nice chair. They ran away from this place. Guess they didn't like the New Delhi slums too much, eh? But you… you're thinking, 'This man is a liar. My parents would never leave me.' I get that, I get that. But they did, little girl. They flew out of that nest and left behind the baby bird to die. I guess they never really loved you, yeah? Or why else would they leave behind their only daughter?"

Neyla remained composed and spoke not a word throughout the bastard's diatribe. She was proud of herself, both then and now, for it. Gopi grinned some more, but when he got no response, he merely scowled and waddled off, presumably to bother someone else or beat a child. Whatever he did, Neyla didn't care. She was most preoccupied with trying to fight off the creeping suspicions that Gopi's words had created in the back of her mind. Try as she might, her excuses seemed powerless against the uncertainties bouncing through her thoughts.

The older Neyla, looking back through Time's memory lens, needed to go no further in the memory. She knew what came next well enough. She waited the rest of the day and the night for her parents to return. She kept vigil by the open door, anxious to see her purple-furred mother striding up the road with groceries or flowers or whatever had presumably kept her pre-occupied in hand. She had wanted to see her mother the most. But as the next day's sun rose on the horizon, young Neyla began to cry. Because the rest of that day, they didn't come back. And they never would. Even at such a young age, she realized that she had been abandoned.

She guessed they never really loved her. Or why else would they leave behind their only daughter? Purposely taken their possessions from the house? Left when she would not be around to see them leaving? There was no way she could protect her family from the truth of the act they had committed.

They'd left her behind.

On the third day, she rose from her shack, and found the usual gang of neighborhood children she played with.

She found the peacock boy, the biggest and toughest one of them, and beat him to a bloody pulp, the stains of tears still fresh on her cheeks.

It was from there that she formed her first posse.

It was from there that she stopped being a child.

During this flashback, adult Neyla had been running on auto-pilot. Bantered with Cooper, ordered an airstrike, ran with her eye, and eventually been caught on a spider web. It had been her, yes… but it had not been her, too. Someone, or rather something, had been using her in the meantime. When she woke up and tore the cobweb away, it appeared everything had happened too late, although she was able to machinate a lock-up of the Contessa to give her reputation a further burst within the police force.

But whatever had taken over when she was gone had not disappeared.

Not yet.

And she swore in her dreams that night (or rather, her nightmares) that those yellow eyes of hate were tearing through her soul.