PROMISE
"NO–!"
Gunther comes suddenly, violently awake at the sound of Jane's cry; heart abruptly lodged in his throat, constricting his breathing – and pounding so hard, so hard.
It's an especially jarring, surreal moment because he has no recollection of falling asleep in the first place. When had that happened? How long has he –
And then Jane shouts again, and any semblance of rational thought flees his mind because someone's in there with her and he knows that this is what he's been dreading, it's happening, it's happening, and God no, please no.
He's on his feet then, his whole body instantly slick with cold sweat, plunged into fight-or-flight mode, and there's no question – fists clenched, teeth bared – which of those two options he wants to take… but he's utterly, utterly helpless.
He can do nothing at all.
"JANE!" He barely recognizes his own voice, it's so hoarse and frantic, twisted with his fear and fury.
She doesn't answer him, just screams, "Get – OFF!"
Her own voice is constricted now; it sounds like she can't quite get her breath, like something – someone – has thrown their weight onto her, pinning her, crushing her, and then he hears fabric ripping, and without any further thought at all he's hurling himself at his cell door, throwing the entire weight of his body against it, slamming it with his shoulder over and over again, and it doesn't so much as budge but he can't stop, he won't stop trying –
He has to reach her, he HAS TO REACH HER –
A dull, sick crack from Jane's cell brings him up short, panting; it's immediately followed by a harsh, decidedly male shout of pain, and a muffled string of curses.
Gunther, suddenly still, listening hard, hears the sound of Jane's body slamming against the wall; her pained exhalation as whatever bit of breath she had left is knocked soundly out of her.
"Oh you little bitch." The man's voice sounds fuzzy, indistinct; wet, somehow. And what was that awful crack a moment ago? What did Jane do to him?!
And more importantly – Gunther is awash in horror – what is he going to do her in retaliation?
That question is answered a second later as Jane's attacker snarls, "this could have stayed just between us – our little secret. You do me a favor, I do you a favor – we mighta been great friends, the two of us."
Gunther's stomach turns over; he feels like he's going to be sick.
Jane makes an awful, choked little sound; is she being held by the throat!? Gunther actually staggers a bit where he stands.
"But now," the brute continues, "well, now I get the feeling you may not like me very much –" his words are punctuated by another little gasp from Jane that nearly drives Gunther to his knees – "so you know what, little girl? I ain't feeling inclined to do you any favors when it comes to the other fellas after all." His voice drops low, becoming nauseatingly intimate as he says, "they are all gonna have a turn with you. And I will have two, when I come back."
This horrendous pronouncement is punctuated by the sharp, unmistakable sound of a hard slap and Jane cries out again – he hit her, Gunther thinks, almost dully now; he's dizzy with the force of his own powerlessness.
Then heavy footsteps are receding to the door of Jane's cell. It grates open, only to clang shut with a terrible, grim finality.
It takes Gunther a second to shake himself out of his horrified immobility – he's almost stupefied by the awfulness of what has just happened.
And the fact that it's not over yet. If Jane's attacker can be believed, it hasn't even really begun.
He hears a soft scraping noise followed by a thud; Jane sliding down the rough stone wall, collapsing to the floor.
That is what yanks him out of his torpor. Real quick.
"JANE!" He throws himself toward the sound and it's killing him, it's killing him, they are inches apart, inches, but he can't reach her, can't comfort her, can't check her for injury, can't protect her –
Can't do anything, anything.
He hits his knees, hands pressed flat against the stone that separates them. "Jane." He almost groans her name, so great is his despair.
For a span of seconds there's nothing from her side of the wall at all – then she takes a deep, gasping, shuddery breath. And another. And another. It sounds like she's pulling air in and in, and not releasing any of it – her breaths piling up all atop each other.
She's not breathing, not really. Not at all. She's hyperventilating. And the sound of it is tearing him to pieces, hurting him in an almost physical sense.
"Jane." He can clearly hear the panic in his own voice, the panic that he's fought so hard to keep at bay, that he's managed to fend off for days – that battle is over now, though. The panic has won, it's taken hold, it's swallowed him whole. "Jane, breathe! JANE! JANE, BREATHE!"
But she isn't. She can't. She sounds like she's still choking, and…
And he realizes that she is. She is choking, she's choking on her tears. She's crying, Jane Turnkey is crying and the sound, the very idea of Jane crying is so inherently foreign to Gunther it takes him a solid minute before he truly even grasps what exactly it is that he's hearing.
It's not just crying either, no, nothing even remotely so... decorous as that. Jane is sobbing; great heaving, convulsive sobs that seem in danger of shaking her apart. Broken, hitching, jagged – they sound like they're causing her actual pain; her whole body must be cramping with the force of them, she's crying so hard.
I have to calm her down.
The thought cuts through his own panic. He's got to reach her somehow; he's got to. She can't afford to expend all her energy this way. If she keeps going like this – at best she'll dehydrate; at worst, she'll make herself literally sick – end up expelling what small amount of food she's managed to force down over the past few days.
"Jane. Jane. Jane." Hands balling into fists against the stone. "Jane! Breathe. You have to breathe. Make yourself – Jane! Jane, please – JANE!"
Over and over. Her name, just her name. Willing her to hear him, to come back into herself, to stop, oh God please stop just stop, this is shredding him.
But she doesn't seem to even register him in her all-consuming despair.
It's probably the twentieth time he says her name, his voice breaking on its single syllable, that he realizes he's crying too.
Silence.
He'd thought nothing could be worse than those gut-wrenching sobs, but he'd been wrong.
So wrong.
The silence she descends into afterward is fifty times worse, a hundred. It rings in his ears; it's huge and terrible, separating them as effectively as the cold, pitted stone of their shared dungeon wall.
Worse still is the knowledge that she didn't come to this silence as a result of reasserting any sort of control over herself. She had sobbed herself out; this is the quiet of complete and total exhaustion, exhaustion in every sense – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.
She is drained dry.
"Jane." His voice is cracked around the edges. Just like his sanity, just like his heart. But he'll keep trying, throwing words into the silence like stones into fathomless depths of dark water.
With about the same results.
Jane, are you all right?
How did you fight him off?
Where did he hit you?
Are you bleeding?
He did not – actually – did he…?
Just tell me you are all right.
Jane, say something. JANE.
At least will you give me your hand.
God, Jane, please. Jane, please.
Except - actually - when he really examines it, he hasn't spoken after all. These are all the questions, the entreaties, that are clamoring in his brain, demanding answers, reassurances - but although he'd intended to voice them aloud, the silence has swallowed them all. Swallowed them, obliterated them, before they could even leave his lips.
He opens his mouth to remedy that now, but what comes out instead, what falls into the void, is, "Jane, I love you."
He waits for a response, but there is none.
Listening hard, he realizes that she's fallen asleep… or at least, he thinks she has. The quality of her silence is subtly different; her breathing has evened out, deepened, lost those heartbreaking catches and hiccups.
Gunther drops his face into his hands and says it again, muffled now.
"I love you, Jane. So much, you can...cannot know. So much."
"Gunther."
He'd fallen asleep stretched out beside the wall, with his hand in the empty space where that missing stone ought to be. He wakes up, blearily, to feel Jane's small hand wrap around his own.
It's pitch black; no light from his window at all. He thinks it is the dead of night. He raises his head an inch or so from where it had been cushioned on his arm; gives it a slight shake in an attempt to clear it.
"Juh...Jane?" he mumbles.
"I am sorry." Her voice is barely more than a whisper. It sounds scraped raw. She swallows hard. "You… earlier… you were... nuh...not supposed to hear that."
Christ. Every time he thinks he's reached his quota for agony, that he can't possibly hurt any worse than he is already, he's proved wrong.
She's apologizing to him? She's apologizing to him!?
He can barely form words.
"It is –" he twines his fingers through hers, trying to get a handle on himself. "It is not your fault what he did. You know that, right?! Tell me you know that."
She takes a little, double-hitching inhalation - then releases her breath in an awful, bitter, humorless chuff of laughter. "Oh no," she says, "not that. I meant when I… all of the c… crying."
"God, Jane."
"You will not tell anyone, will you?"
Gunther opens his mouth, manages to produce only an inarticulate, raspy croak; closes it again. His eyes are burning in the darkness; it feels like something large and jagged is lodged in his throat. Because she isn't talking about the crying, not really. No. She's seeking assurance that if – if – they ever leave this place alive, he will keep her inevitable rape to himself.
Can someone die of a broken heart?
"Promise, Gunther."
He swallows thickly. Tastes bile. Tries to galvanize himself into speech. Cannot. What is one supposed to say to a request like that?
I would give anything to prevent it, Jane, anything. I would pay with my life if I could. I would pay with my soul.
He buries his face in the crook of his arm, clenching his hand – the one that's not linked with Jane's – in his hair, hard. Hard. He's the one, now, that has gone silent to her inquiries.
Ironic, that.
"Gunther!?" Desperation is mounting in her tone. It sounds like she's starting to edge back toward hyperventilation. "Gunther, please!"
He squeezes her hand and chokes out the words she needs to hear.
"I promise."
