Author's note: Sorry for the super-short chapter, been really busy with finals and whatnot. Anyway, enjoy!
Truthfully, it was more complicated involving someone else. But given the situation, if I wanted to make it out in one piece I had not much choice in the matter.
They were coming to check in on me now about three times each day. I hadn't seen Aro since that first day – and that was now a week ago. Instead, people in long robes came in and gave me food, looked me over to see that I hadn't hurt myself in some way. Like I was some kind of mental patient. I don't know what they were planning for me, but each day that passed like this made me more and more restless. I wondered if this was what he wanted – to make me somehow desperate enough to agree to his demands. Not seeing daylight for days really messes with your head in ways you can't imagine.
Rebecca couldn't have handled it. But I'm not sure that I am her anymore.
One day, a young woman is the one to leave me food and water – and I notice something familiar about her hair – coiffed and perfect, her dark brown eyes cast down, not looking me in the eye. I recognize her in a split second –and somehow, my hand latches onto her wrist and I pull it through the bars. Helen lifts her head and looks at me with wide, fearful eyes. She gasps and calls for the guards, but I won't let go of her wrist, my eyes burning into hers. This is the woman that I thought was my friend.
"Is this what you wanted?" the question comes out of my mouth and I smile, but it is hard and without feeling. Her wrist is bruising now, only getting worse when she tries to pull away. I tighten my hands around it.
"Please! Rebecca I had no idea what they were going to do – I didn't have a choice!" she screams, her eyes pleading with me to let her go. I'm filthy and covered in patches of dirt from the floor, and it makes my hands near black. She doesn't look like a friend anymore.
"Is it?" I whisper, but I am no longer looking at her face, but her arm. The urge to hurt her overwhelms me.
Breaking an arm is nothing like you see in the movies. You have to bend it in the most unnatural angle you can think of, then further, and further until you hear that telltale snap. But the satisfaction when you get it right is absolute.
"You've changed so much, and you don't even know it." Nathaniel rasps through the wall. I don't know what he means. But since he already started talking, I decide that it's time to start planning our escape.
He knows the layout of the castle more than me, and just where in it these cells are located. And more importantly, how many people we have to get past on our way out.
"There will be...a dozen or more guards. We will have to be quick. But first, you must put me back together."
"What do you mean?" I ask, genuinely confused.
"You will see for yourself. There is a way to get our of that cell and into mine– if you get yourself slick enough, you can squeeze through the bars."
We decide to wait until right after the next time the guards come to check up on us. At first I try by dousing the bars with water from the canister. But it doesn't help much, if at all. All it manages to do is make me very frustrated.
But then I recall what they always say about blood – the only substance more slippery than oil.
Now that I am...different, older, I am much more reluctant to inflict harm upon myself. It's such a bother really – but now it will serve a purpose.
It is quite ironic then, that they have removed all sharp objects from my cell.