TW: This chapter contains mentions/actions of a person held captive, violence/physical abuse in the form of kicking and cutting (not by oneself), & blood which may be uncomfortable or triggering to certain people. Reader discretion is advised.
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It had been a couple of days since Tadase had actually found Amu. For whatever reason, he decided against telling the cops just yet because he didn't know the conditions Amu were in. Even though it was their job, he felt bad sending the police into something that could get them hurt. Sometimes, Tadase would just come to check on her throughout the day; whether she was in the room or not, how she looked, etc. Most of the time, Amu probably wasn't aware of him being there. Tadase just wished there was a good day to communicate with her without making too much noise, since he would have had to yell for Amu to even hear him through the wall.
On the third day, Tadase finally had an idea on how he could communicate with her. He approached the window and knocked gently. Amu looked to be in pretty bad condition but the moment she heard the knock, she jumped up, despite how much it probably hurt her. Tadase typed something on his phone and held it up to the window.
'I figured this was a good way to talk' the note said. He deleted his words, adding, 'You can just nod or shake your head if you need.'
Amu seemed to smile, though it looked more like a wince towards the end. She made an 'okay' sign with her fingers to say she understood. Tadase considered typing 'Are you okay?' but figured she would lie about it, even though he could, for the most part, blatantly see her condition and it definitely was not okay. Instead, he typed something more reassuring for her and turned the phone screen back towards the window.
'I'm going to tell the police where you are.' the screen read. A wider smile broke out on Amu's face as she read the words. Tadase turned his phone away, adding, 'They'll probably do some investigations and stake outs before they come busting in, though.'
Amu nodded in understanding. They 'talked' for a little while longer before Tadase had to leave, not wanting Amu to get in trouble if someone happened to walk in on her. Unfortunately for her, her captors did end up catching her staring out the window the next day. Luckily, though, since Tadase hadn't arrived, they had nothing to suspect; after all, she was just looking out the window. Unfortunately, though, she was still punished for it for some reason.
Her food rations for that day were revoked and she was kicked several times in the stomach. It hurt, but Amu knew if she cried or screamed, she would just get hurt even more. She had put up with a lot in the past, week was it that Tadase told her? But ever since she started seeing Tadase, she had tried to behave, having hope that she might be free soon.
Amu began to question her sanity as she took the punches and kicks with barely a yelp. How was she not begging and pleading to be let go? How was she not wanting to escape this situation in a completely different way than actually being saved? After several hours of thinking, since thinking was all she could do, she managed to realize she was only able to push through all the pain and suffering because she knew that people were looking for her, fighting tooth or nail to find her and bring her back safe.
With one final blow, the men threw Amu back onto the ground of her room and slammed and locked the door. Amu, unable to hold it down, coughed up some blood. The taste was just too disgusting to keep down. She wiped her mouth and groaned, staring at the puddle of blood she had just spat out. In too much pain to do much else, she lay herself on ground and stared up at the ceiling. She felt like death, but at least she knew help would be on the way soon.
It was silent for a while until Amu heard the faint noise of knocking from the window. She cursed. Was that Tadase? How long had he been there for? Had he been there the whole time? If he had, did that mean he had seen her get beat? Amu bit her lip, the taste of iron still plaguing her mouth. After a second, she managed to sit up, then pull herself to her feet using the wall as support and hobble up to the window.
Tadase had arrived at the spot earlier than usual. He wanted to watch Amu for a bit, as creepy as that sounded. It was hard to see through the grimy window, but occasionally, if Amu was far enough in the room, he could see her pacing, sitting, sleeping (hopefully), and sometimes even crying. That being said, the one thing he had always been afraid he would walk up on happened. It was morbid and disturbing. There Amu was, being held by one figure while another figure kicked her in the stomach several times.
He wanted to look away after the first blow he witnessed, but he couldn't stop looking. It was like watching a train wreck or a car accident in slow motion. In a brief stroke of genius, he decided to take his phone out and record it as evidence. He felt bad watching and felt even worse just filming it but there wasn't much he could do in that moment. After all, he was just a defenseless teenager. His logic was, if he showed this video to the police, they would see how serious the case was and progress the investigation faster.
Tadase didn't want to think about it, but given the circumstances, he wanted to assume this was a lesser punishment. It also helped him understand why on some days, Amu looked worse than she others. He really didn't want anyone else to experience this kind of torture.
After a final blow, Amu disappeared from Tadase's view, seemingly thrown to the ground by the men attacking her. He was surprised he didn't once hear her scream and cry. Had she gotten that numb to it or had she just screamed so much she couldn't scream anymore? It was several minutes before he saw Amu reappear but by then, he was already getting ready to leave. However, he must have accidentally knocked into the glass with the zipper of his hoodie, since when he glanced back to the window, Amu was staring straight at him with blood around her mouth.
As Amu stumbled closer to the window, Tadase couldn't help but feel a surge of rage for her captors wash over him. She looked like she had been crying, and she had a few more cuts and bruises on her face than she did the last time he saw her. He crouched down a little further just in time to see Amu force a smile. Her teeth seemed to also have a bit of blood on them. Seeing how strong was Amu being despite looking broken made Tadase want to hug her tightly. She may not look pleasant but she was still the one Tadase loved no matter what. Unfortunately, until she was out of there, he couldn't even touch her.
'Are you okay?' he wrote on his phone, already knowing her answer. He also pointed to her mouth area to try to tell her about the blood on her face.
Amu just shook her head. Tadase assumed it was towards his question, but she made no intention to wipe her face. Maybe she thought it wouldn't do too much besides smearing it more? Tadase sighed softly, gently placing his hand on the window. For a second, Amu disappeared from Tadase's sight again, but quickly returned and seemed much taller than she had previously, placing her hand over Tadase's on the glass. She must have gotten something to stand on to be able to reach him.
From where she stood, on whatever she was standing on, she mouthed something that Tadase almost missed. Almost. It took him a second to process, but he quickly recognized it as 'Thank you'. He smiled sadly, moving his hand away to type something on his phone.
'You're going to be okay,' he wrote, before adding, 'The police will be coming soon, I guarantee it.'
Amu nodded, offering another smile, this time less forced. Tadase hummed as he suddenly thought of something that seemed like it would be important. He turned his phone back to himself to quickly type it out, taking a while to figure out how to word what he wanted to say without making it too long. When he turned his phone around, Amu's eyes seemed to widen.
'I haven't told our friends yet.' the message said. 'Can I tell them? Both current and old?'
Amu seemed hesitant as she weighed the consequences of telling all of her friends about her situation. By now, everyone should have known Amu was missing. However, up until now, the only person who knew exactly where she was, was Tadase. Ikuto probably also knew considering this place was the last place Tadase asked him to drive him to but he didn't seem to show that he knew. After a minute or so of deliberation, Amu nodded her head slowly and gave Tadase and 'okay' sign with her hand. Tadase smiled and gave Amu a thumbs up. At least with Amu's confirmation, he wouldn't feel bad telling them.
"What did you just say?!" Rima exclaimed, standing up immediately, nearly knocking the chair over. "You've known where Amu was this whole time and didn't tell us?!"
Tadase had expected to get yelled at by at least one of the Council members in the first place when he explained the story. Though, he wasn't quite expecting the quietest person of the group to be the first one to be to yell. It did kind of make sense, though. After all, she had just begun warming up to Amu and was also just as emotional when she found out Amu had gone missing.
"Not the whole time…" Tadase muttered. "It's only been…4 days…?"
"Can you explain why the hell you haven't told the cops yet then?" Kukai leaned forward, staring at Tadase intensely. "Hinamori wouldn't be there still if you had called the police the moment you found her!"
Kukai's tone scared Tadase slightly as he'd never heard Kukai talk so angrily. Kukai and Amu hadn't been able to get that close since school started, but Tadase recalled Kukai likening Amu to a little sister. Kukai crossed his arms across his chest as he looked at Tadase expectantly.
Tadase looked down shamefully. He knew, and hated, that Kukai was right. Was he being selfish? He just didn't want the police to run in there and immediately get attacked. But…that was technically their job; to tackle dangerous situations. They hadn't done all that training for nothing. He vowed that when he did tell the police, which he planned on doing very soon, he wouldn't mention just how long he had known. The best thing to do would be to claim that he had only seen Amu that one day when he recorded the video and…hope Amu went along with it. Did he regret his decision to check on Amu every day without informing the police? No. Was it his smartest, or proudest, decision? Probably not.
"So, you are going to tell the police, right?" Nagihiko jumped in, much more calmly than Kukai.
Tadase nodded, playing with his hands nervously. "I…have some evidence I took last time I saw her. I plan on turning that into the police but I think Amu's other friends need to hear about this too since they might not even have a clue what's happening..." he paused, mentally debating if he should continue speaking. After a second, he added, "I…I'm worried she's going to get moved soon, though."
Kukai tilted his head, his stare burning a hole through Tadase. "Moved? Moved where?"
"I-I'm not sure…" Tadase admitted. "I think they might move her to another room…maybe because of me. I think she was caught looking out the window for me, though I have no idea why they'd punish her over that."
"Wait, wait, wait," Rima jumped in curiously, "How do you two communicate if there's a window and a wall between you?"
Tadase pursed his lips. "I use my phone. I type up a message and hold it up to the window. She uses gestures to answer."
"I think the more important question is," Kukai looked at Rima as if judging her for her question before turning back to Tadase, "Just what did you see, Tadase?"
Tadase rubbed his neck. Suddenly, he was regretting bringing that up. "I…uh, walked into her captors beating her…they were, um…kicking her…and then she was thrown to the ground…"
Tadase trailed off, trying not to choke on his own words. He held back tears as he avoided his friends' gazes. A silence fell over everyone as they all thought, or tried not to think, about what Tadase said. Thinking about or imagining Amu being beaten up was not something any of them wanted. Tadase regained his composure and decided that it was best to end the meeting at that. Despite their varying degrees of anger at Tadase keeping something so important a secret, each of them gave Tadase a comforting hug before leaving, even Kukai gave him a bro-hug that lingered for a bit. Tadase appreciated the comfort. Now…he had to figure out how to tell Amu's old friends about everything. They were the least likely ones to even realize what was going on or how serious it was.
After that day, the men were much stricter to Amu. Surprisingly, they didn't move her to a different room. Perhaps because they had nothing on her besides that she seemed to be looking out the window expectantly. They did, however, restrict her food and water, and the abuse was now more frequent and painful, even introducing new methods of 'torture'. One of the new methods was digging a knife into her skin just enough to draw blood but not enough to leave too big of a scar. Amu was worried if she continued to misbehave the cuts would be deeper.
Amu tried her best to behave despite the suffering she was going through and, eventually, she even managed to enough 'brownie points' of sorts to have the window open a crack. It only took a day or two of good behaviour on her part, too. Obviously, her captors still enjoyed abusing her, which never stopped entirely, but with good behaviour, it became a lot more manageable than it was immediately after she had gotten caught looking for Tadase.
Amu was beginning to get desperate to leave. Of course, she had faith that Tadase was getting her the help she needed, but she was also concerned and a bit annoyed at how long it was taking for the police to get involved. Especially since Tadase had explicitly said he would tell the cops. Sure, she enjoyed Tadase coming to see her every day, though she had no idea how he was able to willingly look at her bruised and slightly emaciated face and body. She wouldn't even have wanted to see herself at the moment and was incredibly glad that there were no mirrors in the building, and that the windows were so grimy that she could barely even see out sometimes let alone see her own reflection.
Amu prayed to whatever God would listen to her to get out of the depressing, abusive situation she was in as soon as possible, though that never felt soon enough. The first thing she wanted to do when she got out was to hug Tadase. And then see her family and friends and hug them too. If she stayed at that place any longer, she had no idea how much longer she would be able to keep on going. She didn't want to think about it that way but…if the police didn't come quick, there were only a few options for her: she starves to death, gets beaten and tortured so badly that she no longer wakes up, or…the worst option…ending it with her own hands.
"I'm sorry, Tadase-kun…" she muttered to the empty air.
To her complete and utter surprise, there was a response from outside.
Tadase had set out early that day, to make up for the one or two days he had skipped visiting her to ensure nothing too horrible would happen to her lest she gets caught again. For the umpteenth time, he told his father he was going to a study session with friends—a lie that he was sure was going to fail eventually if his father asked literally anyone of her friends and they made a slip-up—and set off for the abandoned building, picking up his pace to a jog, and then a sprint to get there faster.
When Tadase arrived near the window about 15 minutes later, he was surprised to hear a familiar voice. At first, Tadase thought he was just hearing things but…it definitely sounded like Amu's voice. It felt like it had been so long since he'd heard it. He gasped loudly and immediately approached the window, crouching in front of it and peeking inside.
He was not only surprised to see that Amu was still in the same room, which he had gone to on instinct but also surprised to see that the window was slightly ajar. He debated whether or not it was a good idea to speak up since he hadn't even properly heard what was spoken if she spoke at all. Then he noticed that Amu was curled up in a ball and could hear the faintest sound of sobbing. He through his caution to the wind after seeing Amu like that.
"Amu…chan?" It felt weird speaking to Amu directly after using his phone for the past couple of days.
Amu's head immediately shot up at the sound of her name. It had been so long she'd even heard her own name that it felt bizarre to hear. She looked around the room, towards the door and even tried to peer around the doorframe, for some reason thinking it came from inside the building. Her eyes widened, however, when she glanced up and spotted Tadase peering through the window at her. She wiped her teary eyes and struggled slightly as she attempted to get to her feet. As usual, it hurt to move like that but it was the only way she had been able to see Tadase properly. She hobbled closer to the window with a slight limp.
"T-Tadase-kun!" she exclaimed quietly. "W-what are you doing here…?"
"I came to check on you," Tadase responded with a dry smile. "The police might not be here for a little bit, so I thought I'd come to see you in the meantime."
Amu felt like crying again. Even if it was a dry laugh, the sound of Tadase's laugh and even just his voice alone made Amu miss him even more. She rubbed her eyes once more as she looked at Tadase. "Are the police still investigating?"
Tadase nodded, despite knowing he had yet to call the police. He didn't have the heart to tell her the truth and thought it would be more important to tell everyone first. "They're…preparing to get you out. You'll be okay, I promise."
Amu smiled slightly. "I've missed hearing your voice…"
Tadase returned the smile, albeit a little sadly. "Me too."
There was a more or less comfortable silence between them for a second. Tadase was staring at the window, wondering if it was able to be opened any wider. He considered it for a second before realizing that if it were as old of a building as it looked, it would more than likely make too loud of noise because of rust, dust or just age in general. He sighed and dismissed the thought, shifting his position slightly to see Amu better, laying on the grass with no care that it might dirty his clothing.
"Right, I actually came to tell you something," he said, leaning closer to the window. Amu looked up at him with her head tilted. "I told the others about the situation...Like you said I could do. All I need to do now is…figure out how to tell your other friends."
Amu nodded gravely, sighing slightly. "Did…did Rima take it okay?"
"She was mad. Rightfully so," Tadase said with a sigh of his own. "I really have no idea how to break the news to Yuiki-san, Sanjou-san and Fujisaki-san though…"
Amu hummed slightly. "I think…you should tell Kairi first…" she said after a second. "He's more level-headed than the others and…maybe he can help you figure out how to explain it to the others."
Tadase agreed. Kairi had already helped him once, he definitely deserved to know first. Still, part of him kind of wanted to find a way to tell all of them at the same time. He looked at his phone and realized, despite already lying about it earlier, he probably should tell her something that he really didn't want to. It would probably be better for him to be honest though…
"Amu-chan…I have something else I need to say…" he started to say slowly. "While I have been informing the police about what I've learned about this situation… I…I wanted to wait until everyone was aware but at the same time...I guess…I guess part of me wanted to feel like I was the hero of the story. I'm so sorry Amu-chan… Instead of waiting to tell the others, I'll tell them tomorrow, I promise! I even have…um, more evidence to help the case."
Amu blinked in surprise at Tadase as he spoke about his white lie. She could hear the sadness and regret in his voice as he spoke. She wanted to comfort him, though, for obvious reasons, she couldn't. Instead, she moved closer to the window, using a large piece of debris to stand on so she was closer to the window like she'd done previously. Of course, it did kind of hurt that Tadase had talked so much about the cops coming and Amu being saved soon, meanwhile, it had been almost 2 weeks and there was nothing but…she couldn't be that mad at Tadase because at least, in his own way, he was helping her either way.
"Tadase-kun…" she said as gently as possible. "It's okay. I understand. You are my hero. You kept me sane in a place where I should have lost my sanity after two days."
Tadase just stared at her, his eyebrows furrowed. She kissed her hands and blew them towards Tadase in an attempt to blow him a kiss. It was the best she could do in their current circumstances. The action made Tadase's eyebrows un-furrow and he smiled and blew a kiss back at her.
"I love you, Tadase-kun," Amu said after a moment of silence. "Never forget that."
"I love you too, Amu-chan," he whispered.
Amu smiled slightly, stepping down from the piece of debris and moving it back to its place as quietly as possible. She returned to the window, looking at Tadase, whom she still couldn't believe was in front of her, talking to her. She looked around, hearing a noise in the distance before turning back to Tadase.
"You should go, Tadase-kun," she said, trying not to sound too panicked. "I think I heard something. I don't want to get caught, and I especially don't want you to get caught." Tadase nodded his head, slowly starting to get up. "Oh, and Tadase-kun? Can you not come again, tomorrow? I've been 'good' the last few days so they've been a bit more lenient, if you can call it that, but I think they're suspicious of something."
Tadase nodded his head in understanding. "Of course. I have a lot to do tomorrow anyway."
Amu waved her hand slightly. Tadase returned the wave before fully standing up, only his legs in Amu's view now. She faintly heard him saying goodbye before his legs walked out of the frame of the window. She sighed softly, clutching her chest as she sank back to the ground. She really missed hearing Tadase's voice. So much so that she actually did cry again.
A/N: and so it begins. I hope I didn't forget anything that was triggerworthy and I apologize if I did. I had to quickly skim my chapter for anything else that may have been triggering for anyone besides the vague 'violence' umbrella.
Also sorry if this chapter felt kinda fast-paced, I did like 2 time-jumps (technically) in the matter of 3-4 paragraphs. I'm sure in my original there was less time but I wanted kinda more time to pass between moments just so Amu wasn't just kidnapped and immediately saved (though Tadase doomed that from the start by not telling the police immediately)...though if she were immediately saved or I had a more solid time jump instead of every couple of days, this fic would be a lot shorter but...I feel like the more chapters (i say more but its like maybe 4-5 chapters tops lol) involving this event (considering it's kinda like the lead-up and climax of the whole story and would be lame if it were like 2 chapters) makes it more dramatic
Anywho I'm rambling again as usual. I should stop. Thanks to whoever is reading this! (yes I see u in my analytics, I appreciate you even if you don't comment/review) Bye-byee!