WHERE YOU GO

Chapter 2

Outside, Talia knew, was where the food came from. Her mother told her there were men above who gathered bread into boxes and dropped them into the pit. It was a twice-, sometimes thrice-daily occurrence for Talia: a rustling in the air, a gathering of men around the levels near the center, an expectancy in the air. Sooner or later, she would hear a crash as the box fell to the ground, its contents spilling out from the broken wooden slats.

Her mother was cautious. She did not go when the box first came down; to do so would be too dangerous. She went when the men had taken almost everything, then went scavenging, finding pieces, crumbs, they had left behind.

But once in a while, something changed. Once in a while, the boxes stopped coming down.

She knew something had changed when the box only came down once in a day. The men by then were ravenous; for the first time she heard screaming as they scrambled through the food. When her mother returned that night, she had less food than usual. Still, she gave Talia three quarters of the bread, and shook her head when Talia asked if she wanted some more.

Daily, the food grew less. Talia did not know this, did not see the box where it dropped, but her mother brought back less and less - half the portion they had before, a quarter of it, and one afternoon, only crumbs, which she placed carefully into Talia's palm and watched as she licked them off, one by one. That night, Talia's stomach was wracked with pain, so that she had to curl up before she could sleep. Her mother later held her in her lap and rubbed her abdomen, humming one of her songs. Another night, they were awoken by men raiding the doctor's supplies. She had heard snarls of conversation, demands for food the doctor could not give, spat out in a grating, growling voice.

A crash and a cry of pain sent Talia burying her head in her mother's arms. Her mother soothed her and rocked her back to sleep, but every time some fight occurred, Talia would always try and peer up and memorize that man's face – a bad man, not one of the good men who sometimes helped them.

Soon after, her mother acquired a knife. Talia did not know how she got it, but somehow she managed to bring that blade, little more than a glass fragment, and show it to Talia. She dug out a loose stone and hid it there, and Talia spent the next day watching the men who were also lucky enough to have knives, trying to see how they stabbed, how they slashed, how they struck. She watched them bleed, watched them fall, and saw how sometimes they got up again, moving more slowly, and sometimes stayed in the same spot. But her mother didn't like her watching, and whenever she caught her pressing her face to the bars, she would scoop Talia up and bury her head in the blanket. So only when her mother was gone did Talia practice the same jabbing motions with her own arms, holding her imaginary blade and dreaming of striking the men who hurt them.

The days dragged on. Sometimes there was more food, sometimes less, but what was changing the most was something Talia could not put into words. It was in the murmurings of the men, their movements, hunched down and eyes slitted, the way they cast furtive looks at their cell.

Rumors were spreading like the illnesses that occasionally swept over the prison. The men whispered of arguments, fighting above. Occasionally a new man was dropped down into the pit, men who spoke of mercenaries and warriors ravaging the city nearby. Once, they whispered of a warlord and rebellion among his men, casting odd looks that made Talia's mother stiffen and turn away.

It felt like suffocation, this change; a tenseness that made Talia draw herself up until her muscles hurt. And it was tiring. Talia dragged herself around the cell, feeling tired and listless, and finally her mother called the doctor over to check on her. He limped over from the adjoining cell, looking tired and worn, put his hand to Talia's forehead, checked her tongue and under her arms, squeezed the small bit of flesh on her wrist, and said she was fine and that everything would pass, in time. He patted her face, his callused palm rough against Talia's cheek and dragged himself back to his own cell.

He had forgotten to lock their cell door.

It was Talia who first noticed it, the way the door bounced slightly instead of closing. It was she who saw the cluster of men passing through adjacent cells, but she watched uncomprehendingly, expecting them to be stopped by the door. Her mother, following Talia's gaze, turned around to look as well.

It seemed that, one moment, her mother was sitting there and everything was as it should be. The next moment, the cell door was slammed open, men were pouring in, faster than Talia thought they could through such a small opening, and then her mother was torn from her. She had not even been able to catch one last glimpse of her face.

She chased after them, beating them. They would not hurt her mother, they would not, they could not, even as a thought pressed into her forehead that they were, they were. The knife was in her hands, she didn't know how, didn't remember retrieving it, or following the men, merely that she had switched from hitting ineffectually to stabbing. She saw a flash of her mother's skirt and heard a keening wail rising up. That was her mother, but it could not be her mother, her mother never screamed like that. One man, stumbling backwards, fell against her. The movement jolted her, and she buried the knife in, surprised at the softness of cloth and flesh, of the sudden difficulty in pulling back out. The man jerked, his back arching in pain, but it was not enough, her mother's screaming wasn't stopping –

And then she was scooped up and carried far, far away. She heard a thin shrieking from far away, felt her throat tearing and her fists aching. It was a moment before she realized she was the one making noise, a piercing wailing that did not seem to be coming from her mouth, that she was the one fighting vainly. Then there was a pressure against her back and she had her head shoved down, and she was watching feet and floor flash by, rocking against a hard body, being carried. It was not at all the way her mother carried her, her mother who was gentle and would run a hand over her head to comfort her. This was jolting and terrifying and painful as she crashed against the hard body, but all her struggling did was increase the pressure on her back. When she tried to put her head up, something smacked her back down so that she was staring down brown robes and watching legs that were not her own running over the ground.

And then it stopped, the jolting eased. The legs and the floor seemed to come up to her as the man sat down. She squirmed harder, her arms trapped between her body and his; her knife was gone. She wanted to go back to her mother, whose followed her no matter how hard she pressed her face against the rock-hard body clasping onto her. But it was worse, far worse when they abruptly stopped.

"No…" she gasped, pushing helplessly at the force holding her. "No, no, no…"

And then she heard a voice from somewhere above her head. "Shh…" And a hand pressed into her back.

It sank in then – her mother was gone. The pain, the sudden, terrible uncertainty of her life, that there was nobody to protect her and that even those who do were not immortal, that they could be hurt and disappear and die, was so overwhelming that it felt like her body might break from it, and she balled herself into the man's body in a hard little knot. She wept, long and choking and unrelenting, soaking his clothing. Only something on the ragged edge of her mind registered how he held her, rocking her briefly, and tried to soothe her with words that felt like a low rumble in his chest which she remained curled against.

She awoke in a cell, and though it was not much different from the one she shared with her mother, it was disorienting and unfamiliar. There were no cells next to theirs, no long row of bars and rooms to look at. There were only filthy stone walls, the only bars being in the front. The bed she lay on was on another side of the cell, the blanket was more ragged, the entire cell more cluttered with objects she could not identify in the gloom. The shape and structure of the walls was more worn, more used. Even the smell seemed different.

Terror filled her. Always her mother had pulled her away from men, and she had often seen their hungry eyes, dodged their grasping hands. There were good men, but where had they been when her mother was taken from her? None of them had helped; none of them had saved her mother, and now, she was in the cell of one of them.

She dashed off the bed and to the door, scrambling for the lock, an opening, some way to escape. There was no coherent thought in her head, only a paralyzing fright that removed any sort of logical thought. Somehow, she had to get out. If she got out, she could run back to her mother's cell, and everything would be all right then. It was a bad dream, and her mother was waiting, alive and safe, for her to return.

She did not hear him approach. All she knew was that she was tearing at the lock, then suddenly she looked up and the man was standing in front of the cell, staring down at her.

Panic exploded in her mind, and she almost tripped trying to run back. Any memories of the man saving her, of the wordless comfort he had provided and that she had desperately needed, fled her mind. As he opened the door, she dashed back to the bed and threw herself under it, shrinking into the darkest corner of the cell.

From where Talia sat, all she could see was the man's feet. Terror threatened to suffocate her when she saw the door open and the man enter the cell, stop, then turn and approach the bed. She squeezed herself back further, further, wanting to become invisible, to become part of the stone walls...

He ducked his head under the bed. Talia sprang back, smacking her shoulder blades against the wall; with both hands she grabbed at the bars of the bedstead just as his hand whipped out and got hold of her arm. A brief struggle ensued; he pulled her out from under the bed even as she twisted frantically in his hands, wordlessly, pounding her fists against his body and, when he pushed her away from him, clawing at the wrappings on his arms.

He held onto her just long enough for her to tire, to see him standing like a statue and simply watching her, then shoved her back on to the bed.

She rolled on the leather bedspread and scrambled up, and for one moment her puzzled glance met his expressionless, slightly narrowed eyes, the only part of his face not swathed by cloth.

Then she dived under the covers, balling herself under them.

For several more moments, there was not a sound, other than the usual noise of the prison. She stayed where she was, a creeping sensation crawling up her arms, and finally dared to lift up the cover an inch.

A glimpse of brown robes was all she needed to see. With a muffled gasp, she jerked the blanket back down, then tilted her face up against the cloth. It was thin enough in certain places that she could see his silhouette, now and then. But even that was too much. She did not dare to look at him even through that for fear of attracting his attention. Already she could imagine him, so gigantic and frightening that she didn't think she could see his face.

Finally, miraculously, he seemed to lose interest, for she saw the shadow of his body pass and heard his footsteps recede. For long moments she huddled there. Fear and anger clung to her, the latter more so as the cell remained quiet. The men had taken her mother, had hurt her, and she wanted to hurt them back. But even as she thought that, the fear returned. She was alone, without even her little blade. Nor could she forget how ineffectual that weapon had been, how the men had ignored her stabs… She could not even recall the faces of the men who had taken her mother.

Silence fell over the cell, save for the usual mutterings of the other prisoners echoing off the walls, the clanging as the doors opened and closed. It was the normal, soothing sounds she was used to, and as nothing happened, she felt more secure under the blanket. She closed her eyes and slept.

There was bread. Bread, held in his hand, ripped in half and offered to her.

She was startled, because that was what her mother used to do; yet it was also unfamiliar, for her mother had let her choose her piece, yet here she could see that he had his own piece, held in his other hand, and that it was smaller than hers. It is extraordinarily odd, too, for her to see the bread in such a large hand. She started to reach for it, then stopped. This piece of bread was more, far more, than she was used to; even before the boxes had stopped coming down, she had never had this much. She pulled back her hand, hiding it under the blanket she had somehow managed to wriggle her head out of. To have so much was a rare thing, too rare without there being a trap. She scooted back into her safe corner of the bed and stayed there, bunching the blanket around her like some sort of barrier. Then, she lifted her eyes just slightly to look at the man.

He was dressed just like the other men, she noted with a twist in her stomach. All the men who scared her, who had dragged away her mother – he was like them. All she could see of his face were his eyes, the rest being covered, and even they scared her. They were flat, like there was nothing behind them, yet they bored straight through her.

But then he glanced down and placed the bread on the pillow and sat down against the wall on the opposite side of the cell. He did not face her, but Talia had the feeling that he was watching her anyway. She scrunched herself behind the blankets and waited.

But she was hungry, her starved stomach demanding food, food that was sitting a mere foot away from her. She bit her lip and squeezed herself even tighter, pressing her hand into her stomach as her mother had. But it did not soothe the pain.

The man's head was turned away, but still she felt an odd buzzing, a tenseness that drew her body up. She pulled herself over the blanket carefully, hoping he would not catch slower movements. Cautiously, she reached for and took the bread, feeling its crumbling texture in her hand.

Her stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly, complaining of its emptiness. His head snapped around at the noise and she froze, eyes fixed on him for signs of danger. But nothing happened, save for his eyes narrowing slightly – but not in anger, she thought.

She flung herself behind the safety of the blanket. She did not like it. She liked it better when his attention was not on her. She wanted to be invisible.

Talia ate the entire piece, but it was not the same. Her mother wasn't there, to gather up the crumbs in her hand and give them to her, to tell her stories. So when Talia hid under the covers once more, her stomach still seemed somehow empty.

Her bladder, however, was full, quite full. She had not noticed it during the night, but now she did, the tight pressing against her bottom, and there was no chamber pot to use. They always had one in the cell, and her mother had used it as well, and Talia knew it was because there was something different about how they urinated, something to do with being a girl. She curled on the bed, the blanket pulled over her head, her hand squeezing between her legs as if to try and hold in her urine, but she had to do it more and more as time passed. What if she wet the bed? Once she had, and her mother had been angry and forced her to wash out the stain. This was not their bed though – but the thought of the man being angry left her petrified. She squeezed her legs together even tighter.

The man left his cell several more times, and one of those times she dared to pull the blanket off her head and look. And there it was, her salvation – the pot had magically made its way into the cell.

Talia started to get up, then saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She flung the covers back over her head as the man re-entered the cell, though the pressure on her tummy was almost unbearable. He had to go, she thought to himself. Please go. She could not reveal herself as a girl to him, or else he would do terrible things to her, bad things like what they had done to her mother – and it seemed she could hear her mother screaming in her ears once more. Her bladder was completely full, and she thought if he did not leave, she might wet herself all over her pants and his bed…

It seemed like hours before he finally did go. As soon as his footsteps had melted into the clangs and shouts that made up the prison sounds, she tore off the covers and ran to the chamber pot, shoving it into a corner. Quickly she urinated, her back to the bars as her mother had shown her. Sheer nervousness kept her dry for several seconds. It was frightening without her mother, who had always stood over her, blocking her from being viewed by the others. She pressed herself into the wall and dropped her pants only a few inches, and hurried to pull them back up when she was through, though it meant wetting herself slightly on the front. She pushed the pot further away so the smell wouldn't reach her, then ran back to the comfort of the bed.

Night fell. The man returned to his spot against the wall, and when a long time passed and he didn't move, Talia knew that he meant to stay there. Fear made her bladder shrink, and again she felt an urgent need to use the pot. But he remained on the floor the rest of the night, and Talia did not dare to use it while he was there, so she squeezed her legs together and tried to ignore the cramping in her abdomen.

For endless hours, she feared he might get up and lie in the bed next to her. A mindless fear threatened to overcome her when she thought of him so close to her, but an equally paralyzing distress would start in her mind when she thought of the emptiness of the bed, of not having someone to sleep next to. She had never gone a night without her mother lying beside her, enveloping her in her clothes and her smell and her sweet songs. The bed she lay on felt too big, too cold. The unbearable loneliness and the tight tension of fear in her body made her draw up into a fetal position and twist the blanket around her, unable to sleep. She kept thinking that maybe, if she wished hard enough, if she could just squeeze her eyes shut and want her mother back, want her just the right amount, she would come, and so she pulled herself tight with yearning and need and waited.

That was how it went, the first night without her mother.

Talia dreamed.

She dreamed that she was outside the cell, and even though she had never been allowed out, she was not afraid. She moved along the levels with confidence, because there was a place she needed to go to. She knew where it was, though, and all she had to do was traverse the stairs up.

She opened the cell door in her dream and stopped. There was her mother, smiling at her. She was sewing something but put it aside and reached for Talia. She went to her, suddenly a lot smaller than before, and climbed into her lap, resting her head against her. She smelled sweet and clean, as she always had, and as she lay there her mother told her stories. The words were indistinguishable, but her tone was familiar, soothing…

A bang, and Talia sat up, the dream disappearing as quickly as it had come. The Pit lit by the pre-dawn blueness of the sky, the blanket was wrapped around her and another piece of bread sat by her pillow, and Talia was utterly alone.

She squeezed into herself, but did not cry. She had dreamed her mother was there, so close and real that she had to be alive. Talia was sure of it. If she could just return back to their old cell, her mother would be there, smiling just like in the dream, and everything would be the same again. She clung to that dream, that hope. She just had to go back. Her mother was waiting for her, probably worried because she wasn't there with her, but she couldn't leave the cell because it was dangerous, which was why she wasn't searching for her. And she probably didn't know where she was anyway. Talia had to be the one to go back to her.

But first, she had to leave the cell.

She sat up, afraid to leave the bed yet wanting to look around her. Every movement was a terror to her, a fear that she might draw the attention of the other prisoners upon her. She kept the blanket around her all the way, ducking her head underneath it when someone turned towards her, but still she inched closer and closer to the edge of the cot.

The most terrifying part, though, was climbing down. Then she had to abandon the protective blanket, to slowly draw out her leg until her foot touched the floor. When it did, she held her breath without thinking, almost expecting some kind of explosion, the banging open of the door and the yelling of the prisoners.

There was nothing. Talia let out her breath, then let herself drop off the bed. Only then did she suddenly notice her need to urinate again. She ran to the chamber pot and relieved herself (noticing that it was empty). Finished, she scrambled quickly to the bars, hiding in the corner where it met the wall. From here she could look out into the prison.

It disoriented her. The levels were unfamiliar, the walls higher, the shadows darker. She squeezed her head into the bars, searching about. Slowly, old landmarks popped out at her – the lowest levels, where waste and bodies were thrown; the rope and ledge, at a new angle and so high up compared to the cell that she almost couldn't see it; the stairs to the highest levels –

She clutched the bars when she saw the doctor's cell. She had lived in the cell right next to it, and so had her mother, if only she could reach it. For many moments, she did not dare to tear her eyes from it, and when she did, she glanced back up constantly, as if the cell might move if she weren't looking.

She pulled herself to the door and ran a finger down the lock. It was the doctor who had always locked the cell, but she had never watched him. She could not recall if he had a key or a bar or anything else about how he opened and closed the door. She pushed at it; it didn't give. She bit her lip, wanting to cry – how could she have dared so much and failed now – and reached over to make another try, but then saw a hulking figure moving out of the shadows.

Fear of another kind pushed her into action. She scurried back into the bed, tugging the sheet over her – but in the midst of her panic, something else inside her was thinking, planning. He would have to get in, and to get in, he would have to open the door. She turned around quickly under the blanket, curling her legs up against her body and sliding as close as she could to the edge of the bed. As she heard him draw nearer, she pulled up a corner of the sheet to watch, waiting.

The door opened, and Talia started as she heard the scraping of the bars against the ground. Her leg twitched, but she held back the instinct to run. The man was too close to the door and blocking the way outside. She waited, hearing her small breaths against the blanket. Her heartbeat was thudding in her ear, and she didn't dare to take her focus off the door or even blink, afraid she might miss the opportunity.

The man paused at the doorway, glancing in her direction. He stepped inside his cell and turned around to close the door.

Talia tumbled out of bed, but it was clumsily done. The blankets tangled in her legs and she crashed to the ground, kicking them away, but she dared not tear her gaze from the door, at the opening to outside. The sound from her fall had sent the man spinning around to look at her, and in his distraction, he had forgotten to close the door –

Talia pulled herself free of the blankets and scrambled to her feet, her right shoulder aching. Without looking, without thinking, she pushed past the man's leg and burst out the cell.

A/N: Getting a bit more exciting, I hope. You have to feel for Bane here. I suppose in my story, he's been watching Talia for some time, you know, attracted by the novelty and her innocence and so on and so forth, but now he has to take care of her (the horror), so he's basically learning that children can be scared and strange little things too. And that they need to eat. And sleep. And pee. And have jabby little bones that hurt when they smack you. So fun times for the both of them!