Disclaimer:  I don't own any of this.  Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy do.

Author's note:  I've been dragging my heels on the last few chapters, largely because of this chapter and the chapters which are to follow it.  I have been looking forward to this chapter in particular with a sentiment best described as dread.  I have never, thank God, been subjected to any form of physical abuse as described in this chapter.  This is, however, a chapter which I felt had to be included.  I didn't feel that I could properly develop Maria's character without it.  It is also a chapter I had to approach sensitively, and from a point of near-ignorance on the subject matter.  You see my dilemma.  It is therefore with sincerest gratitude that I acknowledge a young woman of outstanding courage and strength of character.  She has lived through a level of physical and mental torment that I don't think I can imagine, or maybe don't want to, and offered to beta-read this chapter (over a number of re-writes) in spite of the fact that I'm sure it opened a number of very deep, very painful wounds for her.  She is a truly remarkable woman, and believe me when I say that I could not have done this without her.

Chapter 9

Everything hurt.

That was really the only way to describe it.  It felt as if every limb had been brutally abused and every square inch of her body had been beaten.  Which, in fairness, it probably had.

She lay on her left side, her eyes closed partly out of shame, partly because blinking hurt too much.   Her damp, salty pillow pressed uncomfortably into the side of her face.  Her right arm was bent behind her, her legs tangled.  To the outward observer, the tiny seven-year old looked like a discarded rag-doll.  It felt awkward as hell, but somehow she knew that trying to move into a more comfortable position would hurt more than it was worth.

She gave breathing a try and was immediately rewarded with a stabbing pain through her ribs, followed by an electric jolt of agony through her abdomen as she reflexively coughed in response.

Everything hurt.

You had to hand it to him.  He had abuse down to an art form.  No fists, nothing hard.  Just a pillow case stuffed with a few pairs of jeans to give it weight.  Hit someone with that, and no bruises form on the surface.  They're all deeper, in the muscle.  In the long run, they do more damage, but to the casual observer, there isn't so much as the faintest discoloration to the skin.  No bruising, no broken bones.  She'd never had to fabricate an "I fell down the stairs" excuse simply because nobody had ever asked.

And if she ever said anything to anyone, he would know.  She didn't know how he would know, but he would.  He always seemed to know when she was even thinking of speaking up; and, Lord, could he ever punish her for it.

God, everything hurt.

She gave her lungs another try, this time taking as shallow a breath as she could.  That worked a little better.  Her ribs still ached with the effort, but it wasn't as sharp a pain.

She'd long forgotten whether she'd ever had a life that wasn't clouded either with the pain of the beatings or with the terrified anticipation of them.  It seemed as if her whole life were a whirlwind of agony interspersed with bouts of absolute terror.

If I wanted to kill you and your mother, do you really think that there's anything you could do to stop me?

xxxxxx

Maria's eyes snapped opened, and she immediately found herself wondering which reality she preferred; the one that danced behind her eyelids in the twilight minutes just before she regained consciousness, or the one she now found herself in.

She hung a few inches off the ground, her arms stretched over her head, swinging gently back and forth.  She could feel warm blood trickling from the chains around her wrists, down the lengths of her arms, the sides of her body, it poured freely down to her bare toes where it finally dribbled and pooled thickly on the cold concrete underneath her feet.

Her clothes, what little was left of them, hung off of her in strips, and her body trembled, exposed to the biting air.

Her hair was plastered to the side of her face by sweat and caked blood.

She pointedly forced her thoughts away from three topics: what had attacked her, how long she'd been unconscious, and what they could possibly have done to her in that time.  Instead, she took a mental inventory of her body.  Nothing seemed to be missing.  That was actually pretty easy to figure out.  There wasn't a part of her body she couldn't feel.

Everything hurt.

It felt as though both of her shoulders had been dislocated, but she couldn't figure out whether that had happened before they'd hung her up here, or had been the result of one of what had to be dozens of blows she received while restrained.  Either way, her whole body weight was now suspended by her arms, and with every time she gently swung back and forth, it felt as though they were being torn out of their sockets.

She could feel dozens of slashes all over her body.  None particularly deep.  None were meant to kill.  They were all shallow cuts designed to keep her in agony, just barely clinging to life.

They were doing a good job.  Stretching her body out prevented the wounds from healing properly, and judging by the ever-increasing size of the dark puddle beneath her, she'd lost an awful lot of blood.  That explained the weakness, at least.  She wasn't sure exactly how much blood a human being could lose without falling over dead, but she took the fact that she was conscious as a good sign.

She was missing at least two teeth that she hadn't been missing when she lost consciousness; and vision out of her right eye was a little foggy.  She didn't know for sure whether she'd just bled into it, or one of the blows she'd received that night had scratched one of her corneas.  Either way, it would probably heal.  Probably.

All the skin between her right eyebrow and her curve of her lower jaw felt wrong; swollen.  She was pretty sure that it would be an ugly shade of purple, too.  Beyond a constant agony, she couldn't feel much of anything from the waist down. 

God, what kind of person beats up an unconscious woman?  Unconscious people were useless.  You couldn't beat information out of them, they didn't even scream in pain when you hurt them, if that was your thing.  It made no sense, even for a sadistic freak.  You couldn't threaten someone who didn't know they were being threatened.  What makes someone do something like this?

She knew the answer even as she asked herself the question.

Power.

More accurately, the need to feel like you had power.

They'd attacked her on the street, beaten her unconscious, chained her up and used her as a punching bag (she forced herself not to think about what else they could have used her for in that time); all of this had been targeted at her specifically.  All of this had been done because they needed to feel that they had some power over her.

And you know just how that feels, don't you?  A voice in the back of her mind spoke up.

Shut up.  I'm nothing like…them.

Really?  Beating a guy to death with a baseball bat, beating up defenseless women, threatening the less powerful, beating up some prison guards, and killing a rent-a-cop because you can?  Sounds like you're blurring that line a little, honey.

She knew the voice, but not the words.  It was the same voice that had tormented her, had infected her nightmares for fifteen years.

Even if you're right, that's your goddamned fault.  You made me who I am today.

You know, sooner or later, that excuse is gonna stop working.

It's not an excuse.

Really?  Then tell me one thing.

What?

Why are you still here?

The big, thick chains around my wrists might have something to do with it.

C'mon, Maria.  With your strength, you could bust out of here easily, and you know it.  Instead, you're hanging here, naked and bleeding, waiting for whoever it was who did this to come back for round two.  Care to explain why?

Maria didn't have an answer for that one.  She was weak, to be sure, she was hurt and bleeding.  But if she really tried to escape, she knew she could.

You're here, the voice almost seemed to take some joy in the revelation, because part of you thinks you deserve this.

That's not true.  Maria even shook her head in emphatic denial.  But her own voice, even in her mind, sounded hollow.  As if she didn't truly believe what she was saying.

You expected to wake up in Hell a while back, but you managed to cheat your way out of it.  If she could have seen his face, she knew he would be smiling.  Looks like Hell decided to come to you.

I don't deserve this.

Really?  You've got a lot of black marks on that soul of yours, babe.  If anyone deserves this, you do.

I don't.

Okay, fine.  Then break your chains and escape.

Maria looked up at the chains around her bleeding wrists, and beyond them, her hands were unnaturally blue as the chains cut off circulation.  Her head dropped to her chest, and tears began flowing freely down her cheeks.

Welcome to Hell, kid.