It had been a week since he had found himself in this stone cold room that, at least that was what he thought in the moments when his mind was calm enough to think.
He had received food, small amounts of it, just a few pieces of bread, a larger glass of stale water and some lollipops, seven times. And the excruciatingly long time between each meal made him think that he was being fed once a day.
One teeny tiny meal a day. It was not enough. Not nearly enough to sustain his Innocence and not even close enough to give him the strength to walk around his prison. He had starved before, but never like this.
The fear, that he was not ashamed to admit he felt anymore, was taking away the will power to even try and fight. And really, what could he fight, even if he had the power to? The darkness? No. He was too scared to face it, to look at it. To see the shadows move, even when there were none.
At some point, his captor had found their mistake and closed off whatever little hole had provided the tiniest amount of light in the room. Everything was pitch black now. Darker than black, darker than the darkest colour he could imagine.
It made him hyperventilate whenever he thought too much about it, because it made him FEEL the darkness. Feel it gathering around him. Feel it getting inside of him with every breath he took. Through his wide open eyes, through his ears that were covered tightly by his palms. And Allen could swear that he tasted the darkness in the food. In the water. Taste in on the warm glass of the cup.
"ENOUGH!" He kicked out and could hear the cup fall down, could feel the water wetting the bottom of his pants. And he screamed. He screamed to cast out the darkness that he had breathed in, that he had eaten, that he had welcomed every time he felt himself give up. He screamed until his lungs burned, his vocal cords ached and he was left coughing violently, convulsing on the stone cold floor.
He was still covering his ears to not let any sound the darkness could make slip inside, but his yell was so loud that he couldn't hide from it, and it left him shaking, sobbing and praying to the God he hated and doubted that the sound would go away. That the short moment of fighting against the overpowering darkness would be forgotten and that he could calm down enough to not hear his thundering heartbeat in his ears as a rhythm for the echoing screams.
He didn't have enough fluid in himself to cry for more than just a few minutes though and by that time the echoes of the scream before had died down to whispers that he wasn't sure he was actually hearing or if they were just in his mind. He tried to breathe slowly. In and out. In. And out. It was helping, if only to get the feeling of being choked by the invisible, darker than the night arms of the all-consuming blackness.
He curled back into the ball he had been staying in for the most of the time he had spent in this place, because he was certain that the darkness would grab him if he couldn't hold all his limbs close to his body.
It was something like a kid hiding under a blanket so the boogie man couldn't find him, only now he had nothing to hide under. So he wrapped his arms tightly around his knees, bowed his head, to not have to face the darkness of the room, and to try and even hide his ears by hunching over as much as he could.
After all, no matter how terrified he felt, no matter that he hadn't slept in days and had only wetted his mouth with bits of food for a week. He had to keep his sanity. Keep it until someone found him. Because he knew that he might be lost and scared and almost hopeless, but he was not forgotten.
