First I would like to start byt thanking you for the interest you've showen in my story.

Now ...This chapter is not an acttual chapter, hance the title .. it's more of a way of connecting the first 10 chapters with what's going to happen from now on and a way to offer more information ...It's a bit short but I did not think it needed adding ...Hope you like it!

Interlude

This is not a story about redemption … but it is a story about love …

She was a woman, but before that she had been a girl.

We are all ashamed of our childhoods one way or another. We have all done something then that makes us cringe now … For some, it might be lifting a friend's skirt and in doing so exposing her naked bottom and giving her shame … For others it might be killing small chicks or pulling the legs of a mosquito … These things haunt us, make us less proud of ourselves but rarely have a real impact later on …

But for her … what she had done, what she was ashamed of, had consequences … for what she had agreed to as a child determined what she had become as a woman.

As true for most of us, she too could not remember the first years of her life. They were drenched in darkness and shadows but she guessed not much different from the ones she could remember. For all of them were spent at the abbey.

Most orphanages are set in nunneries under the supervision of mercifully nuns, given their female character that is more likely to give comfort to young souls that have come into this world with nothing …

This was not the case for her …The monks were not kind. They did not give comfort. They did not even give names. For ten years of her life she had been a number …66… . They were children of the devil, they were told, so they did not deserve names.

This, of course, did not stop the monks from enjoying the flesh of the devil after which punishing it for leading them to sin.

Every year on their birthday they were made to sit in a cage naked. It was too small to stand straight in, not wide enough no lie in and there was no window. Just three small holes. It was placed in the middle of the yard, and on any given day she could see someone in there, because you knew when you went in but not when you were coming out … She remembered that cage well, especially since her birthday was placed somewhere in July and the cage would become hot under the unforgiving heat of the sun, and you could no longer touch the walls for support. The only possible position that she was left in was unimaginable.

The monks told her that the cage was going to save her immortal soul, because she had been created in sin and staying in there on that particular day was the only way she could make up for it.

Funny enough … she did not find salvation in the cage … but it was the place where she found her … Josephine …she was strong and she helped 66 become a person. Josephine did not need a soul nor did she want one. She did not need redemption nor salvation … so whatever it was that she had inside of her before going into the cage was left stuck to the boiling walls when she got out …

And that's when he met her …Robert ... He had named himself too.

He was fifteen. He also knew the cage well. He was born in December … Finding someone who shares the same conditions as yourself is surely a good way to start a new life, is it not? … So they ran away together …

He soon had become everything to her and she aspired to be the same for him …At first they lived of what he was able to steel in the street. Soon enough she learned the trade and started helping him.

She thought they were doing well, which is why she was surprised when he came home with another man. He was tall and had dark skin, no doubt from hundreds of hours spent in the sun working the fields. His cloths were dirty, his hands large and sweaty.

Robert invited the man in the back room, after which he returned to her. "This is a very special friend of mine … I want you to be very nice to him", he said pushing her towards the door.

She remained in front of the door for a while, her hand placed on the knob. She tried to bring herself to open it, but she could not. So finally she turned towards him … "I'm sorry, I can't do this", she said with tears pouring out and desperation in her eyes.

He seemed to understand. He nodded and then quickly got rid of the man.

She was so thankful as he approached her, but then she saw it. A small whip, light enough not to leave marks but swift enough to cause a lot of pain.

He ordered her to remove her cloths and for the next hour he taught her the value of obedience. Laying there semi-unconscious she could feel his breath near her ear as he talked to her: "And remember no one knows what you are except me. And no one would ever love you if they knew what you are … except me".

The next day he brought the man back. This time she did not say no. When it was all done Robert gave her a simple, leather collar. He told her to wear it.

She thought they were the same. She had been wrong. He was a different kind of animal.

Soon enough, she realized she was once again confined to a cage. A cage of lies and countless men that became more and more refined and perverted as they moved from town to town and up in the world. So she had to invent herself all over again.

By age fifteen, she had become an artist of deception. She practiced smiling while breaking each of her fingers. She read the Bile to find out what noble women were expected to be like, listened to gossip to find out what they were really like, talked to learned men to find out what to think … and then Josephine was, at last, born.

Her means were complex, but her end simple: to survive. She would kill, lie, cheat and steel to achieve her propose.

Josephine controlled everything, manipulated anyone and cared about nothing. There was one thing she was never able to do: untie herself from Robert. He remained in control of her. He would keep her focused and then unleash her on whatever he wanted.

The only means of escape she was capable of was to run away. But he would always find her.

And then she met him … He was a man tormented and unloved. She knew exactly what to do in order to make him blind, but she did not know that in doing so she was also falling.

She spent hours looking at him in the darkness of the night and she finally realized it … They were the same… and it was like finding a mirror, the most loyal mirror.

There next to him she found her soul. It had traveled behind her from that cage and now it was finally catching up. And then, for the first time she looked at it: it was dark, hurt and filled with violence. She was ashamed … but there was also love …for him. Her soul was his. She had never been one to give anything away, but there, next to him she understood what it was to love someone.

So she set out to give him what he needed. He wanted redemption, but what he really needed was acceptance. True, undiluted, complete understanding.

She saw him for what he was and gave him peace. Then she left him…

This is not a story about redemption … but it is a story about love …She was a woman without a soul and he was a man in need of one … They found each other … Perfect mirrors of themselves … and without knowing it … they fell.