Chapter Three: Imprisonment

Luna was alone in all of her time within Impel Down, never once having a cellmate like many others did. Besides the old lady she only got visits from the tortures. She had mixed feelings about being alone, for while she was a person that loved the cheerful noises of people talking, they were not that. These beings were monsters given human forms. When they came she had to slip just a little but more into her mind, let the part that didn't care about anything take over. She couldn't afford to lose more of herself.

When she is alone though, her mind wanders into places better left forgotten. She's been lost for so long that she doesn't even know what is real anymore. Memories have been forgotten within this hell. Faces she once knew and loved and protected from everything faded, names meaning nothing for they were hallow in her ears. Primal instinct was starting to take control of her mindset, logical thinking meaning nothing to her now. There was a time where she fought against such a thing, tried to keep her sanity in check and tried to keep a hold on who she was.

It didn't matter though because one day her stability just snapped. Her reasons to keep holding on disappeared and the will she held on for so long vaporized into thin air. The ground underneath her feat was dug up, leaving her floundering for a way to pull herself up.

When she was younger she was called the devil, the insane of which Satan had brought forth.

They were wrong.

She was on the verge of craziness when she was younger, one who tried so desperately to pull herself back for the brothers that needed and loved her. For the father that never came home but was always watching out for her. She fought against the presence in her mind for them, her family. After so many years though, after such pain and memory loss and not knowing just who the fuck she was, she could no longer find the rope that held her up from the void. She couldn't fight who she was, who she had been. In the end, it didn't matter who she is.

She can't be Luna anymore.

Luna was a girl who loved life and loved to laugh. Who cried in her sleep for fear her father would forget about her. Luna was a girl who was innocent and tried to keep whatever madness she had at bay for the sake of her family and friends. She was willing to fight, willing to live. Luna was a girl with everything still intact, no matter how broken it appeared to be.

Cheshire, the person who Luna cared for and natured and protected since she birthed and met, was a woman who had no reason to keep holding back. She loved the tortured souls of the damned, loved the war that raged inside of her mind. For Cheshire there was nothing stopping her, nothing that could stop her and nothing that would. She was free for the first time in so long that she could cry of happiness.

She can't be Luna, the innocent girl who kept the madness at bay. She was lost in the oceans of insanity, still clinging to the hope that she could one day claw her way out drowning there. She was Cheshire now, a creature that thrived on the blood and despair of people.

Cheshire was the only one home.

oOOoOOo

He walks down the corridor, one that will reach end at the cage that will trap him forever in a trap that he can't escape. Crushing guilt eats away at his insides, some part of him begging for release so he won't be seen as a failure. It was what he was, after all. He failed in his mission, failed his brothers, his friends, his father and oldest comrades. He got himself sentenced to the one place a prisoner never returns from.

Impel Down.

The main guilt isn't just for the screw up though, it goes deeper and darker, a place where it is rarely touched and he hasn't allowed himself to think of such things for it will reinforce the fact he isn't supposed to be walking on this planet.

He failed her, the greatest regret he could ever have in his lifetime.

Not only is he coming to her with regrets, with a heart full of them, he can't help but think she will always be a regret in his mind. He will never regret meeting her, loving her, will never doubt the moments they shared and the fact they did become siblings even after she knew who he was birthed from. His regrets stems from the fact that even after all these years, they haven't found out what happened to her.

She could be dead for all they know, or she could be in torturous agony, begging them to come and help her.

It's a more horrifying than he wants to admit.

He wonders if she'll ever forgive him.

Chains rattle as he walks, his destination being a cell that will keep him locked up until his death call. It's a waiting room, this prison. Whether for their execution or for death, they both equal the same thing. He was no exception to this waiting line. Ace was going to die, this wasn't a dream and he wasn't going to pretend it was either. He would have been a disgrace otherwise.

The guard tugged at his chains, forcing him to move and jerking him around. He was shoved in and chained to the wall in no time. Ace didn't bother to fight, knowing there wasn't a way to get out. Before the guards left he turned to the opposite side of the cage, and said, "You've finally getting a cellmate. Enjoy it while you can because after he's gone the lights go out for you."

Ace strained his eyes, but it was so dark that it took more than a few minutes to adjust to the lighting. Once he was able to find a reasonable perspective level of sight, he could finally see who he shared cells with.

The body was chained to the opposite wall, arms spread out much like his were, and hooked with chains, no space to move. The guards took extra precautions, the metal wrapping around the person multiple times because meeting with the thick collar and melding into the stone wall. Their skin was covered with faint outlines of scars, burns everywhere. There were probably whip and knife slashes elsewhere. Blood drenched their person, having dried and left a crusted brown around them. The fresh blood dripped from their black hair and bloodied hands though, dripping into the cracks of the floor.

The prisoner was female, that much he could tell, and he wondered what someone so seemingly young was doing in such a place. What little he had gleamed of her appearance and aura wasn't much, not enough to put her on a high threat level. The older guards continued to treat her with caution, probably knowing the dangers of the woman better than the new recruits. There were a handful of reasons that the person across from him could be here at such a young age and not have been on the news recently. Either she had been there too long for anyone to remember here (he didn't think it was likely, she was seventeen at least, twenty-one at the most if he was pushing it) or she was put in this cell for a similar reason to his own imprisonment.

A creak in the neck made him focus his attention on her instead of her situation and state of being, the black curls slowly rising and a deep breathing heard from where he was sitting. A torturer must have come down very recently for there to be so much fresh blood around the place. He saw a smile first, one that might have been a little crazed but still very sincere in his eyes. Dimples came next, a little lower than the cheeks but higher than the mouth. High cheek bones followed, almost like an aristocrat. Slender, beautiful orbs that could have captured anyone's eyes if just a moment was taken to gaze into them. Those same beautiful orbs that held the world in a gaze, a lazy cat's look in them as if everything was just a game.

Eyes that had haunted him for the better part of ten years.

The bright, electrifying azures that once were, no, always will be, the center of his world stared at his from inches away. Those beautiful heliotrope colors that belong to only one person who was his sister. Eyes that were darker than they had been when he was ten.

Monkey D. Luna, his little sister, the person who he searched for ten years for, were right where every criminal would be. The only difference was that she never willingly committed a crime.

Those eyes are hazy now, almost not really focusing on him and he wonders, in the pits of his mind, if he has lost his sister before he could ever hope to get her back.

This place was going to burn for what they did to her.

Pages: 3

Words: 1556

Reviews:

Dark D. Phoenix: I am a Mam, and thank you for saying so.

BeaLuffy: I have a brother that is born one day after you. I'll see what I can't do :)

Katepatterson: ...well, I didn't do it intentionally, but it worked out anyways so why change it? Thanks for the review :)

Girlsofmanyhandshakes: You got you answer :)