Darkness. I feel as if I'm submerged in it as I slowly open my eyes, expecting the torturous face of Missy to fill my vision. An instinctive reaction makes me wiggle my toes and move my fingers, checking that I'm at least functional, even pulling myself into a sitting position is easy, as if nothing has happened since Missy knocked me out. Feeling around the ground with my hands, my fingers knock into a soft, skin-like texture.
"Sasha?", I ask weakly, my voice not attuned to speaking properly, resulting in a harsh, ragged noise.
Whatever part of her body I'm holding stirs slightly under my touch, before returning to its previous, unmoving state.
"Sasha?", I question louder, a little less croaky then before.
This time she pulls whatever I'm holding from my grasp, quickly coming into consciousness and scrambling in silent desperation.
"Sasha it's Aaron", I say a little more assertively, wondering why she's acting strangely.
She sounds as if she's trying to speak and coughs violently, so I drag myself over to her and put my hand on her shoulder, grateful I didn't miss in the near-pitch black light.
"Where are we?", she asks me, sounding terrified and completely disorientated.
"I don't know, I only woke up a few minutes ago"
A small light ignites in the corner, illuminating the small gloomy room around the two of us. Two prisoners.
"Well are you okay?", she questions again, looking a little worried in the low light.
"Yeah, are you?"
"I think so, yeah", Sasha tells me, rubbing her eyes to adjust quicker to the light levels, "Missy did this"
A few memories come flooding back into my brain and show me Missy hitting me from a third person perspective, before spraying Sasha in the face to knock her out as well. Missy did this.
"Where are we?", I shout out, starting to feel a little claustrophobic, the walls crushing down to haunt me.
"Aaron, calm down", Sasha tells me, pulling me into the warm comfort of her arms.
"How warming", a familiar female voice states from a barred window in what looks like a door from across the room, "Mother and son"
Whose voice is that? Alarm bells are ringing loudly in my ears, blaring a million different names into my brain until they settle for the most frequent. Laurel Vincent.
"Laurel?", I hear a voice call out, before realizing it's Sasha.
"Yes mummy?", Laurel mocks, using what I said a few weeks back as an insult, to little effect.
"Mummy? I'm not his mother", Sasha replies, knowing exactly what Laurel's saying.
"Yes, quite, who would want to be the mother of such an obnoxious child?"
"Aaron is as good as my son, and I'm extremely proud of him", Sasha defends me, making me blush a little, something I never normally do.
"Disillusioned piece of sh-", Laurel says, before being cut off as she slams a metal sheet over the bars.
"You know what Sasha?", I start to say, thinking about her defence of me, "I wish you were my mum, you're perfect"
In the low light I see her eyes well up in fresh tears, tears speaking hundreds of words in each falling droplet.
"Thank you Aaron", she replies through her tears of joy, pulling me into a tight hug which I return.
Having broken the embrace we both lay back, laying next to each other as time passes us by, slowly, too slowly for words. All we can do is wait until our captives decide to pay us some attention, but whether or not we'll want their attention, I'm not sure, though I highly doubt we will appreciate the slightest attentive notion.
"I'm sorry Sasha", I tell her, barely audible as more than a whisper.
"Why?", she asks, clearly a little confused at my random apology, nearly two hours since we last passed words.
"All this"
"Why are you sorry?"
"Sasha, I made an enemy out of Missy, and Laurel, you were dragged into this as you were a witness, I'm sure of it"
"I'm glad I'm with you, I wouldn't want you to go through this on your own", she smiles at me, clearly being completely honest with me,
"But Carly and Spencer must be devastated, at least you would be there for Carly"
"Aaron, we've always been closer than I have with Carly", Sasha starts to tell me kindly, "And she's got Spencer"
"I promise you Sash, I will get us back to them, whatever it takes", I promise her, holding out my little finger to signal a 'pinkie promise'.
Sasha grabs my little finger with hers weakly, grappling it as we shake as best we can in our slight weakness.
After what feels like hours I turn to Sasha, still laying on my back just turning my head so I can speak to her easily.
"I wonder how long we were unconscious"
Seemingly instantaneously after I spoke, large red lettering just like on an alarm clock suddenly appears on the wall, showing the time as well as time since our capture, but that can't be right. No. It can't be.
"Forty three hours?", Sasha mutters out-loud, verbally expressing what I was thinking.
"We've been gone nearly two days", I start to say, barely audible, but apparently loud enough as Sasha turns to listen, "Carly and Spencer are going to be worried out of their minds"
"They'll pull through", Sasha smiles comfortingly again, soothing my thoughts a little as a loud bang outside puts me on edge.
Light spills carelessly into the room as the locked door opens and a fairly short figure walks in, silhouetted due to the bright light behind them. As my eyes adjust to the new light intensity I enter a rage, the figure being a red haired teenager who got us here.
"Missy Robinson", I state in an angry way, making her smile coldly as she raises a gun and takes aim at my face.
"NO", Sasha screams as she throws herself in front of me, protecting from what she sees as an imminent gun shot.
Instead of pulling the trigger Missy laughs in a daemonic way, mocking our vulnerability as she stands tall above us holding all the strings.
"You will pay for planting that peach Renelle", she says venomously, trying to inject her poison into me.
"What peach?", I ask, trying to keep my slight crime from Sasha.
"The Madagascan peach, Renelle, the reason I was arrested", she glares at me, once again trying to break through my defence with her words.
"And you think that was me?", I nearly shout back, desperately trying to defend what I did, though I technically didn't plant it in her bag.
"I know it was you"
"What's she talking about Aaron?", Sasha asks me, looking confused and scared at having a gun pointed at her, but who wouldn't be scared?
"Oh allow me", Missy smiles calmly, "This piece of scum planted a Madagascan peach in my bag, and subsequently tipped off the police"
"Well did you?", Sasha asks me, making me smile mockingly at Missy.
"No", I reply honestly, as I didn't technically do it, "I tipped off the police, yes, but I didn't plant it, I gave it to her"
"Gave it to me?", Missy questions, looking as confused as I would expect.
"I told you I had the CD with our song from music, and you told me to put it in your bag, so I did, but I'd left the peach in the same bag the CD was in, so I didn't really plant it"
To this Missy pushes Sasha away from me and hits the side of my skull with the pistol, throwing a random assortment of stars and shapes in front of my eyes as I collapse to the floor, entering the dream world of unconsciousness.
