A/N: Just a story I've started while dealing with covid, the idea actually came to me from a fever dream one night and it's offered a distraction from writer's block with my other active story. Any romance will be a slow start, but eventually it will be a pairing. It will also become a vampire centric story theme with time.

Chapter One / Spatial Awareness

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It's always the waiting it seems.

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It's always the morose little moments left in silence wondering if this hit will be the last or if you have to grin and bear through another day.

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Breathing through swollen lungs and feeling the wet hot liquid dripping down the back of your throat.

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Choking on your own blood and almost growing accustomed to the iron taste since it's the only thing keeping your throat from burning in dry ache again.

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Counting seconds to keep yourself from insanity even if it feels a little mad to do so.

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Legs twitching in aftereffects and numb from barely grazing the ground.

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Arms shackled to the walls in harsh cold steel manacles.

Sometimes grazing your face against the chains when no one is around to feel the biting chill against your skin to bring some sort of sensation back to your face and ice the bruises.

Somewhere in the cell water was dripping in a constant stream, tap, tap, tap.

At first it drove her wild hearing nothing but the empty echo of it day in and day out.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Taunting her and keeping her from the oppressing silence as her head pounded from the thumping's she'd take when they'd come into the dungeons to play.

But then she grew so used to it that she didn't even notice unless she focused really intently on the sound. It just became background static as she acclimated to her surroundings and that almost made her truly lose it. Becoming adjusted to the torture, falling into a routine with the beatings, becoming so truly jaded that it was second hand nature to curl a certain way against their boots. It almost didn't hurt anymore as her wounds just layered and layered as they healed, creating a thickened skin in the most common spaces on her body. The beatings were the better days though when she really thought about it. At least the beatings were detached in a way. Something more distant than when Dolohov would come to visit her. The way his sweaty calloused hands traced lines up her body made her shake, rattling her chains like an avenging ghost.

The words he'd whisper in her ear while snaking his hands around her body without limit rung through her mind even when alone with nothing but the tapping.

Pretty little thing.

taptaptap

Darling little lover.

taptaptap

Lovely little doll.

He spoke them so soft and saccharin while ravaging her in ways she'd never been known to another. She knew it was just a mind game, a way for him to worm himself into her head and ruin the delicateness of love for her for the rest of her life. Some nights he'd stand above her cradling her face between both hands stroking her cheeks but pressing just hard enough to bruise until she begged for him to let go. It was getting harder to make her beg though and she could tell it was pleasing him, thinking he'd broken her completely, made her submit to being the little plaything that he wanted. Something that belonged completely to him. His possessiveness was unmatched and as the amount of others coming to play with her dwindled she had a sneaking suspicion they were facing his wrath for thinking they had any claim to her like he did.

If there was a god of small mercies then he was answering the wrong prayers and he was answering them in perversion.

Maybe mercy really was a cruelty she thought as she swallowed another acidic mouthful.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She wondered if they'd ever find her down here. If they'd ever find her at all. Would there be anything left to find by the time they do? It was a dismal way of thinking but it was growing harder and harder to conjure positive thoughts as the days passed. Idly, she thought she may never be able to produce a Patronus again. Could she really still focus on any happy memories anymore? All her memories seemed jagged at the edges now. Warped and withered like papers saved from a fire just a little too late. Mentally chastising herself she wished she'd spent more time learning wandless magic. There were a few things she could do, but nothing that she could do so run down and starved. Swinging her legs back and forth with what energy she could muster she felt her hip bones poke out sharper than she'd ever seen them.

There were feeding days when they'd bring her a tray of an unidentifiable slop and a musty glass of water. At first she protested, refusing to let them treat her like a dog. But in the end just like they said, the captives always give in. And then she hit another turning point, she stopped eating simply because she craved the release her body would afford her if she abstained. Dolohov didn't like that. She learned the hard way it was better to eat with her own hands instead of being fed by his hand. He'd gorged her on wine and bread, overflowing her mouth so she was sticky and covered in it. The rats loved the smell. Waking up covered in rats nibbling and licking at her skin once was enough to teach her the lesson, much to his dismay.

The doors to the cells above slammed and shook the cobblestones above her head shaking loose clouds of dust and grime onto her. Breathing a sigh of relief her body relaxed and her feet set closer to the floor as she let her arms go slack in their restraints. The sounds meant that it was already final feeding time for the prisoners above her, meaning she was alone for the rest of the night. Or day. She wasn't really sure anymore but she knew it meant he wasn't visiting this day.

Small mercies.

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Pretty little thing.

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As her eyes started to blink and give into the sleep beckoning her she heard a sound to her right behind the wall of her cell. A small skittering sound as if someone was trying desperately not to be heard.

"Who is there?"

Her voice felt foreign to her ears, rough and slightly distorted by the thickness of her throat.

The sound stopped but they knew they'd been caught by her. How long had there been someone else there? Listening and hearing her cries day after day. She blanched at the thought of someone else hearing her in her weakest moments. Perhaps this really wasn't the best time to try and hold on to the last of her pride.

When a voice finally answered back she wasn't sure how to reply to them.

"Do you think there's a Heaven?"