A prison of Memories Chapter 6.
Once again, I apologise for the lack of regular updates. Also, if you like season 2 of YJ, I recommend you read my other story New Beetle. Okay, shameless advertising is over.
On a (much) unrelated topic, does anyone out there watch Soul Eater? Because I've just realised Death the Kid is just like Nico di'Angelo from Percy Jackson…they're both sons of death and all.
For all of them, the first night in that horrible place was not easy. Kal tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable on the thin excuse for a mattress. Conner had shared a cell with a seventeen-year old who called himself Smart, who looked menacing and had a twisted scar on his gnarled face. The teen had attempted to punch the undercover agent, and a mutual ignorance was agreed on. Artemis spent the whole night just staring at the ceiling and thinking, whilst Wally was so hyped up that he paced his cell all night in the dark. He couldn't stop worrying about Robin – he knew it was rough for him the first time round, so what it must be like the second…
M'gann had been lucky enough to be given a cell with Artemis. Despite the differences in crimes committed, it seemed like there was no room in the lower security block for her, and so at about eleven o'clock, when the guard finally tired of marching her around looking for a bed, she was none-too-gently thrown into a cell with her friend.
"Megan!" Emily gasped as she looked down to the floor. "What are you doing here?"
"Mmmph…" She peeled herself off the floor and flopped onto one of the beds. "It seems as if there wasn't enough room in the other cells."
The rest of the night was passed in silence; both girls too stressed out and worried to talk.
Silva, however, had other ideas. Jay, the other boy in his cell, had slipped asleep after about ten. Sleep was out of the question for Silva. If he fell asleep, he'd probably wake up screaming and Zean had threatened to break his jaw for that once and-
He pulled himself back to reality. This was not going to be like last time. He was prepared and not going to go through that again. Still, he wouldn't sleep. He had to be alert for the first night, just in case…
He was almost, almost starting to relax when Jason threw himself out of bed and started raining punches on him, hissing. This kid must have some major issues, Robin thought humourlessly as he thrashed around like a fish out of water, to randomly attack someone in the middle of the night. He restrained the boy as much as he could without hurting him, before realising the brunette was actually still asleep.
No way. It seemed as if Jason had had some sort of night terror, and instead of screaming or whimpering, his reaction to it was to fight in his sleep. It seemed far-fetched, but on the streets of Gotham being able to fight in your sleep could very well be the difference between living and dying. He shook Jason none-too-gently awake.
"Gah!"
"What the hell? Do you usually go around attacking people in your sleep?" Silva demanded angrily.
Jason looked at him bashfully "So what if I do?"
"Get back to bed."
"Why weren't you asleep?" Jesus, this kid was annoying. But he had a knack for changing the subject from uncomfortable matters. "Are you gonna tell me or what?"
"Does it matter?!" All but snarling, Silva turned back over on his bed and shoved Jason off. The younger boy rolled with surprising grace across the floor before springing back up again. He hopped back onto his bench and pulled the flimsy, thin blanket back over himself. After a while, Robin thought Jason had gone back to sleep until his voice rang out softly.
"It doesn't matter, not really," The time was now approaching four in the morning and tiredness was thick in the boy's voice. "Just…" he paused, "I know it's not good to go without sleep. And I never stay up unless something's bothering me, so…"
"I'm in here for manslaughter, which means I killed someone. What makes you concerned about me of all people?"
"You seem like an okay guy to me." Jason offered. Silva was stunned. Even his own teammates were shocked, unnerved, scared by his new persona. And here this new person he'd known for a grand total of eight hours and had two conversations with could see through his mask? Nobody had ever called Silva an okay guy before.
Minutes passed and neither gave in to sleep. Finally, at about six thirty, the morning bell rang out harshly. Jason jumped, not expecting the sound. Robin, waiting for the noise, didn't even flinch.
"You've been here before!"
Wow. The kid was quick; he realised, to have picked up on little things like that. "What makes you think that?"
"Well," the younger convict counted on his fingers, "To start with, when I came in, you were looking around the cell like you knew the whole thing. You lay on your front instead of your back, probably to make the mattress comfier, and the fact you did that naturally means you've done it before. You were all but on the lookout before when I tried to punch you, which means you know that it's 'kill or be killed' in here, and you were expecting that bell."
Silva tried not to gape. He knew Jason hadn't been here before, but he was awfully alert and cautions for this to be his first stay at the Centre. He'd picked up on all the little tics Robin didn't even know he was showing and he knew he'd better be on his guard now and not let anything else slip. For someone as perceptive as Jason, it wouldn't be too hard to realise Silva wasn't real.
A prison warden approached their cell. "Let's go," Silva countered weakly. The warden unlocked the door and ushered Jason out. Robin tried to follow him but was blocked by a burly wall of flesh.
"Oh no ye don't, laddie!" The accent was Yorkshire, meaning this guy was from England. He put on a fake confused face before the Yorkshire guard slapped a loose pair of cuffs onto his hands and snarled when he touched his feet. The guard backed up and his hand went to his baton. Silva bent down slowly and reached for the leg chains, carefully fastening them round his ankles.
"Don't touch me." He hissed menacingly. Yorkie shrugged nervously before grabbing the chains on his hands and tugging him out of the door. A bored-looking Jason sat on the floor outside and looked up as they approached, tilting his head at Silva's extensive manacling.
"You're trussed up like a turkey there, Sil."
"Sil?"
"Silva takes too long to say."
Silva grunted. Jason snickered at his obvious discomfort as the guard led them down corridor after corridor. About five minutes of walking later, they arrived at the canteen/dinner hall. Conner, Emily and Megan were already seated at a table with plastic compartmentalized trays and what looked like lumps of porridge.
The manacles around his hands made it hard for Silva to pick up his tray. With the plastic balanced on his fingertips, he proceeded to the food station. A sympathetic-looking dinner lady (she must be new here then) dished out a few globules of beige mush onto his tray, before another gave him a plastic spoon. They had no knives after someone attempted to slit their wrists with a white plastic blade and nearly succeeded, and no forks after another was nearly blinded in an attack. Even the sporks they used to have were only used for evening meals.
As he walked over to his teammates, he kept one furtive eye on everyone else, picking out people who could potentially cause him trouble. No sooner had he sat down than a meaty hand with four fingers and half a thumb landed on his shoulder. He followed the hand up a well-muscled arm and shoulder and a short neck until his eyes landed on a strangely blank face. Two others stood with their arms crossed next to the owner of the hand – a short, stocky blond kid and a flat-chested girl with a hooked nose and hair resembling a rat's nest.
"Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in," the hand-owner's voice croaked out, sounding like he smoked sixty a day. "Nice shades. Be a shame if someone…nabbed 'em." Rat-hair suddenly lunged forwards to make a grab for the glasses. Unfazed, Silva leant to the side slightly and her hand grabbed empty air.
"Looks like we got ourselves a runner here, Marv." Short and Stocky commented absently. Marv, the hand-owner, smirked.
"Let's see if 'e can still run when 'is legs are smashed in!" Rat-hair challenged. So far, apart from dodging the attempt to grab the shades, Silva had not moved a muscle. The rest of the team who were at the table (everyone except Kaldur) watched with bated breath. Even though they had limited experience with Silva, they knew he wasn't to be messed with.
Marv made a fist and punched at Silva's left side. But Silva had moved, at blink-and-you-miss-it speed, against the wall and his punch didn't connect. Short and Stocky attempted a kick at his other side but was thrown over his shoulder into the wall. He didn't get up. Rat-hair jumped at him and managed to knock him off his feet before he sprung back up agilely and dodged Marv's second hit.
The doors swung open and Kal walked in, followed by Maureen.
Maureen stopped as soon as she entered the room and stared at the fight. The dinner ladies cowered behind their trolleys and everyone in the room was silent.
There was something very familiar about one of the fighters, Maureen thought. She didn't put the pieces together until both Rat-hair and Marv tried to punch Silva at once. Their fists sailed through the air in slow motion towards his face. Everything happened very quickly after that. Silva jumped straight up into the air, a good two and a half feet. As a result of their target moving, both assailants' fists connected with the stone wall and a bone-jarring crunch emanated from the impact. Still in the air, Silva kicked off the wall with both feet and flew across the room, landing crouched like a cat on the floor. He then jumped forwards and pelted towards his tormentors. When he was about two metres away, Silva jumped into a handspring to gather momentum and executed a textbook double-spin kick, knocking both people out cold.
As the alarm bell started ringing (much too lately to do anyone any good,) and a nervous warden grabbed Silva by the collar of his jumpsuit and tried to drag him off, it finally hit Maureen that she'd seen this before. Granted, the kicks and punches were new, but the sense of agility and handsprings? Were her eyes deceiving her, or was the person with the shades (that hadn't moved an inch, despite the fighting) and the gold tooth…
"D?"