My hands had been bound tightly behind my back, irritating the bruises and rope burns that had already formed within the past few weeks. The skin had begun peeling away, leaving in its place raw welts that hurt to move.

I was the pawn they sacrificed within a game of their own creation. In the past few weeks I had gradually become absolutely terrified of them, finding places to hide while feeling my heart beat rapidly in my ear drums.

They had found me that day… They had decided that cigarettes and switchblades didn't do a good enough job anymore, I deserved the worst of the worst.

I was crying, screaming loudly with my face forced down onto the cold concrete floor. I didn't know what the names they called me meant, I didn't know why they always called me a girl.

"What should we do to him?" One of them giggled, restraining my ankles as the other two held down my head and my shoulders tightly, one was sitting on top of me, he was pulling my shirt up, exposing my bare back to the elements. My back was where they had taken to burning me lately, switching it up from their normal torture of my arms and stomach.

"You'd be in the dungeons if your grandfather didn't run this place." Another giggled. "Cock suckers don't make it around here. Do you wanna know what happens to them?" He lifted my head back up just enough to slam my skull onto the ground.

"Someone grab something to gag him with, he keeps screaming."

"Open his mouth."

"Hang on, I'm gonna get the iron. Keep holding him down."

"Put it on the fire first. If he's gonna be a little fag then we'll just have to make sure everyone knows."

The sound of someone loudly knocking on my door woke me from my nightmare, causing me to shoot upright in terror, hardly able to hold in the screams that wanted desperately to come out.

I was drenched in sweat and my heart was racing.

"Give me a fucking minute!" I yelled angrily as the knocking continued. I was shaking and the large scar taking up part of my back tingled, the sound of my skin sizzling ringing in my ears.

I didn't really remember the pain, not as much as I remembered the fear and anticipation… being unable to move as they approached me with an iron hot enough to be emitting smoke, frozen in pure horror knowing what they were planning on doing to me and knowing how badly it was going to hurt. It was the childhood anticipation of knowing you were going to get a shot at the doctor, only instead of a needle it was an iron they had smothered in the ashes of the fire. The skin it touched had peeled off when they removed it. Eventually I passed out, unable to take anymore.

That was the day I had met Yasha. He had scared them off when they had been beating me. He had nursed me back to health when the welt had become infected with pus and begun turning green in color, somehow able to smuggle me antibiotics.

I think their plan had been to kill me…

I don't think I would have been their first victim…

Attempting to brush off the nightmare, I rubbed my eyes rather aggressively before getting out of bed; throwing on a tee shirt and lounge pants before unlocking and opening my door.

I was taken aback slightly at Dmitri's presence, not accustomed to seeing him on the sophomore floor or seeing him appear as uncomfortable as he currently looked.

"What do you want?" I asked him in Russian, making no attempt to sound polite.

"I didn't intend to freak you out like that the other day." He sighed, hazel eyes not making contact with mine. His mess of dirty blond hair stood in all directions as though he had been neglecting to brush it and gray bags took over the underside of his eyes.

"I thought you were different from Haru." I grunted in annoyance.

"I'm different from a lot of people." He shrugged. "I figured that was the one thing you could relate to."

"You've been fucking with my memories… making me believe shit that isn't true."

"It would be a lot easier if that were the case, huh?"

I didn't understand what he suddenly wanted from me, we spoke on occasion but by no means were we friends. I wouldn't even call us acquaintances.

"You're acting like I'm supposed to know who you are." I rolled my eyes in an obvious fashion. "I don't know you, though. I've never met you before in my life."

He handed me a large envelope, looking at me with pity before turning to walk away. Obviously I wasn't worth continuing this conversation with, likely because I wasn't falling for his bullshit. I had been sexually abused as a child I no longer doubted that, but Yasha was not that abuser. Yasha loved and cared about me, about all of us.

I closed the door, setting the envelope on my bed and grabbing a clean uniform. I would be breaking dress code if I wore a scarf or pulled my collar up, meaning I would need to find a better way to cover up the hickey that had created a home for itself on the side of my neck. I did own concealer, but only ever used it to cover up the occasional pimple, meaning I had never attempted to cover something that took up such a large chunk of skin. Was it going to look like I was wearing make up?

Going through some of my things, I grabbed the container of pale yellow cream (why was it yellow? Was that racist or was there actually some sort of reasoning behind it?) and brought it into the showers with me, hiding it in my pile of clean clothing in the hopes that no one would notice before taking what I hoped would be a quick shower.

Life had other plans for me.

I was used to sharing a shower room by this point, meaning that I began getting undressed with little thought and had no discomfort in regards to being naked out in the open so long as I was behind a closed door. No one had ever given me a hard time about it or been inappropriate.

"Homo alert." One of the boys smirked, sending the small group into cruel laughter and causing me to freeze up.

"You aren't gonna watch me shower, are you?" A different one chuckled. "I know I have a nice cock, but I'm not into guys."

"You're lucky he didn't get you alone, if he did I bet he would offer to suck it. Did Smithwright really go down on you in here? Right out in the open? Someone told me that they could hear you moaning."

I tried to ignore them, hoping I could just get this over with quickly and go downstairs for breakfast.

"You're supposed to use the private showers. No one wants to see your boner."

"If you send him there he's gonna hide behind the curtain and jack off to us."

I had never been one to back down when given a hard time, instead just showering quickly without washing my hair and giving them no reaction that they could laugh at. A good plan until one of them pushed me, causing me to lose my footing on the wet and slippery floor and collide with the wall.

They continued laughing at me, turning off their own shower heads before getting dressed and leaving.

I was pathetic…

I picked at a mix of rice and vegetables, my forehead stinging from where my old wound had split back open. Thankfully I had been somewhat successful at covering any markings that had still resided on my face and neck, meaning that from a distance it was only my cut and split lip that were really noticeable.

"Kai," Avery cleared his throat, "I wanna start out by saying that I support any lifestyle that you choose, but I must ask… are you wearing make up?"

I ignored him.

"I'm gonna have a cigarette before first period." I said coldly, cleaning my spot off and walking outside, hands shoved into the pockets of my blazer. I wanted to be alone right now, something that wasn't possible as Wyatt was currently trailing behind me.

Taking out my lighter and pack of death sticks, I offered him one without words and sat on the grass.

"I have my own." He said, denying my offer and lighting himself up.

I didn't say anything, giving a slight grunt and blowing smoke out in front of me. I knew he had his own pack, it just felt rude not to offer.

"You okay?" He asked, touching a hand to my shoulder.

I flinched.

"I don't want to be touched right now." I shot back harshly, causing him to pull away in concern. "I'm sorry." I sighed. "I didn't mean that..."

"You never told me how it went with your shrink the other day."

"There isn't anything to tell. She made me answer some questions in order to see if I was suicidal or some shit like that and then she sent me on my way."

"You've been a bit restless for the past few days."

"I've been having nightmares." I admitted shamefully, hoping he wouldn't catch on that my dreams didn't even make up half of my problems.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

Even if I did want to talk about it, the bell would be ringing in the next few minutes, meaning we would be expected to get to class, the last place that I currently wanted to be.

"Wanna skip first period?"

I perked up, losing myself in the gentle smile that rested across his face.

"Yes." I sighed.

He stood up, offering me a hand which I took and helping pull me to my feet.

"We can just go back to your room." He said gently, touching a hand to my face. "You look like you could use a bit more rest."

I nodded, pocketing my hands and following behind him silently. He seemed to accept my disinterest in speaking at the moment, allowing silence to fill the air around us as we made our way back to my dorm room.

"Have you gotten in trouble for the stuff on your door?" He asked quietly as we walked in, causing me to raise and eyebrow in confusion.

"I didn't write it." I said. "Why would I get in trouble?"

His face tinted a shade of pink as he moved his gaze to the ground in front of him.

"It happens." He shrugged.

I had never really taken the time to notice the harassment that Wyatt was suffering on a daily basis until it got to the point where it was effecting me too, causing the realization to hit that I had once again been thinking only about myself and my own problems while leaving him to fend for himself.

"Everyone suddenly seems to feel more confident letting me know how they feel about me." I remarked. "Is this what they do to you?"

Sitting next to me on the mattress, he touched a hand to my leg gently.

"It's been awhile since anyone has gotten physical with me." He said. "I think they're still at least somewhat intimidated by you, especially since the last time someone tried that within earshot of you they ended up with a broken nose."

He smirked slightly at me as he recounted the day they had gone after him, an encounter that ended with both Haru and I being suspended and the latter ending up with a bandaged nose for almost two months.

"I don't like remembering it." I said shamefully.

"Why not? It was kinda hot seeing you stand up for me like that."

"Haru wasn't the only person I punched that day."

I remembered washing my knuckles off in the sink, unsure who's blood I was watching run down the drain. It was the lowest that I had ever felt as a person. I could have caused so much more harm than I did. I could have seriously hurt Wyatt.

He pulled me into a hug, kissing my mouth with some caution, a kiss that I returned with some hesitation.

"What's this by the way?" He asked as we pulled back from one another. He was gesturing to the envelope that rested on top of my unmade bed sheets, the one that Dmitri had handed me and that I had ignored.

"Something for class, I think. Dmitri handed it to me this morning, it might have something to do with our literacy assignments." I had loaned him a book that I had brought with me, one that was written in Cyrillic, under the condition that he bring it back afterward. I didn't have a lot of positions on me and he wasn't the only one who struggled with reading kanji.

Wyatt opened it without asking, taking out a small stack of what appeared to be old papers.

"Is this you?" He asked, eyes now drawn to the contents of the envelope I had not given him permission to open.

"Is what me?"

He held out the small pile of papers, which consisted mostly of black and white photographs. At first glance I wasn't sure what I was looking at, needing to squint slightly to take in the full extent of what appeared to be an old time school photograph you might see from a catholic school, depicting rows of seated school children between the ages of what I would maybe guess as eight to eighteen.

"Front row." He pointed, "On the right."

I was staring face to face with my own pair of childishly large eyes, eyes which were hollow and contained little to no life. Although I would have had to be somewhere between five and six based on what I knew about my time in The Abbey, I was small and frail, looking closer to what you might expect of a four year old child.

I took the photograph out of his hand somewhat aggressively, trying to focus on exactly what I was looking at. One of my eyes was near swollen shut, following the path of a large bruise that took up a portion of my face in what appeared to take the shape of a hand, as though I had been grabbed with extreme force. My wrist was enclosed in a thick cast that looked huge compared to my tiny body.

"What the fuck..." I whispered.

"And that's your teammate from Russia." He pointed once more, engaged in the front row still but now moved a few bodies down. "Ian, right? Did you guys grow up together? Do you still talk?"

"Ian's dead." I said without breaking my eyes from the picture. I knew he had died of his own hand but I had never looked into how he had done it, I didn't want to know. Had I succeeded in killing myself there would have been two of us…

I wasn't the only one who had been hoping not to wake up.

He had succeeded, though...

"Why would Dmitri give you this? Why would he even have this?" Wyatt asked, unsure how to respond to what I had just said.

"He's been trying to fuck with me." I closed my eyes tightly. Please don't remember… not now…

"You can read this, right?"

A list of our names skimmed the bottom of the photograph in Cyrillic, names I hadn't thought about in years.

Aleksandr Petrov… he was dead… Daiki Hayashi… he had helped me to become fluent in Japanese…

"Lev Semenov," I read off quietly, pointing to where the photograph matched to the name. "Artyom Nikitin, Hiroshi Tanaka, Ian Papov, Nikolai Lenkov, Dmitri Pavlishchev, Misha Angeloff, Pavel Balakin, Fyodor Galkin, Genji Saito..." I paused. "Kai Hiwitari."

Wyatt pulled the photograph from my hands, now cold and clammy.

"Hang on… what?" He asked.

"I don't remember all of them." I said with a shrug, trying not to become lost within my own head. "I'm just reading what it says."

"Do it again, slow down when you point them out this time."

I obeyed without much thought, reading through the names and pointing to the soulless face that matched it. Not a single one of us appeared to have any life left in us.

"Nikolai Lenkov, Dmitri Pavlishchev..."

He stopped me, placing his own finger to the face I had called by name. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

"Tell you what?"

"Kai, that's Dmitri!"

I didn't understand what he was getting at, assuming he had become confused by the list of names he wasn't accustomed to. Dmitri was an extremely common name for our age group, on par with my father and grandfathers generation of Vlad's and Boris'.

Inspecting the photograph closely, I was met with the same pair of hazel eyes that I had found staring at me with pity this morning, appearing just as soulless as they did in the photograph.

He hadn't been lying…