Time passed then, inside the white prison that threatened to swallow him whole. He could tell now, because his limbs were enlarging, his fingers growing limber, longer, and slimmer. His voice was breaking now, he could tell, and that meant he was slowly becoming a man.

He now could make out the voices of others in his circumstances, their cries of agony, of pleading, of despair, the way they banged their hands and their feet against the walls until they could do no more, the way they slowly, ever so slowly, lost themselves to the white, powerful nothing that surrounded them until they grew quiet and meek, until the sight of their food brought cheerful cries of gratitude from their sore throats and animalistic yips of pleasure when the guards came to clean them up.

He never saw it, of course, as he was also hidden in the vast white world of their captivity. But his angel told him so. Explained it to him every time he allowed his soft, whisper-song-ambrosia like voice to drift from one of the air vents and into his cell.

With a wince, Dick realized he would be one of those animals by now, he would be pissing himself in pure happiness like them, if not for his little angel, his protector.

That little voice that holds his sanity in its gentle grasp.

"… a girl killed herself yesterday," the voice whispered one day as Dick rests back against the wall, eyes closed. "Bit her tongue right off and died."

"Brave…" Dick whispered, his voice air soft and almost noiseless, lips barely moving.

"I…" the voice hesitated. "I had a nightmare, that you did the same. It was frightening."

Dick's brows came down with a frown, his chapped, broken lips pursing painfully as he heard his angel's voice break.

His chest contracted painfully, so painfully that he had to force both hands to press against his skin in order to sooth the ache and he felt immediately selfish and ashamed.

He had not stopped to consider that his angel, his song bird, would worry about his safety, his own well-being.

To him, one of the recruits dying was a good thing, she was now free of the void, of the white emptiness.

To his angel, she was dead.

He could be dead.

"I won't," he whispered then, his eyes tightening. "I won't leave."

A soft exhalation of relief filled the air.

"Thank you…" the voice whispered. "I don't think… I don't think I can live anymore if you are gone."

Dick nodded slowly, his chest tightening and expanding once more at the very thought of not hearing that wonderful voice anymore. Of being left alone to the merciless power of the white void without any song of sweet safety to anchor him into reality.

He couldn't let it happen.

"I'll live," he whispered, his conviction strong. "For you."

A soft giggle fell through the air vent.

"And I'll live for you then, Dick," the voice said with its usual sort of broken, bittersweet happiness. "I promise."

Dick nodded once more, his back arching lightly at the surge of reliefpleasurewarmth that spread through his body. The fluffy heat of security that, as usual, wrapped around him at the sole thought.

"Yes," he whispered, a small smile curling his lips. "Yes, for me."

Silence enveloped them then, not the oppressing white silence of old, but a gentle, comfortable kind that Dick had come to associate to his angel's presence.

"By the way," the whispered voice continued. "Catch."

Dick only had time to open his eyes for a second before a small, weightless something fell onto his outstretched hands with a muted noise.

He gasped.

It was a sugar cube.

"I snatched this," the voice said. "I thought you might want to try something different than the grub."

Dick nodded, feeling his throat close and his mouth water.

He couldn't even remember what sugar tasted like anymore.

Hesitantly, feeling as if he was breaking a sacred taboo, he raised his eyes, mindful of the cameras and surveillance that would most likely fill his little cell, just at the same time as he brought both hands to his mouth and allowed the small treat to touch the tip of his tongue.

Sweetness and heat exploded in his mouth in a way that, had he not been sitting already, would have forced him to his knees.

An almost irrepressible need to cry clogged the back of his mouth even as he salivates and swallows.

Not because it's been so long since something with an actual taste has entered his mouth.

No.

But because his eyes have grown used to the light in the cell by now.

And today.

For the first time.

He can distinguish a pair of pale blue eyes staring back at him from the shadows of the air vent above him.

His vision filled with that beautiful, unique color.

The color of his world from then on.