Chapter 7.
"Why is she here!?"
"I don't know. I felt like helping her."
"Felt like helping her? Look around! Everyone here needs help!"
"Then why the fuck are you here? I helped you didn't I?"
"I'm just not sure about her though...if she's gotten herself into a bad crowd...if what you said happened is true, she could be pregnant and and what are we going to do about a baby!?"
"I highly doubt those bastards will come back after what I've done and she's still a child, it's impossible for her to get pregnant now."
Her tired dead eyes fluttered opened hearing the conversation the two boys were having half a metre away. She leaned on a wall, her legs pulled into her chest, with a ragged blanket thrown over the top of her; squished into the corner of the doorway. The two boys sat on the top of the stairway having a debate on what to do with her next now that they had her. The red-head felt she was a prisoner again; a possession.
Her back was turned towards them. Are they going to sell her to another man the age to be her grandfather? She wouldn't allow it!
The young girl got up and tried to run for it down the side of the stairs the guys were opposite too. As soon as she got up and bolted, the light haired-brunette yelled at her while the other with slicing sharp eyes just watched her. As soon as she reached the dirt ground At the bottom of the steps, that's when she felt it. A delayed reaction.
A pain sliced from down below all the way up to her spin. Every step she took, she could feel the agonising pain from down below. A liquid just as bright as her now cut hair could be seen down below too. She didn't understand. Nothing made sense. The little seven year old dropped onto the dirt ground with tears blinding her sight but a sob did not escape her lips.
A pair of arms carefully but strongly took hold of her from under the shoulders and lifted her up as if she was nothing more than paper. Once up on her two feet, the one with the hypnotising eyes put her arm around his shoulders and helped her climb to the top of the stairs where she had been sleeping.
When setting her down she let out little shrieks of pain.
"It hurts." she finally sobbed. "It really hurts!"
"I should say so." the tallest boy glared down at her.
"Why am I bleeding?" her hands were held up to her face as if to examine if it was really blood or not. "Why does it hurt? I don't understand!"
The two boys glared at each other before looking back at her. She wept tears falling and mixing with the blood in her hands. She looked back up at them. Her eyes grew bigger, begging and waiting for an answer to what has happened to her.
Levi looked over at Farlan and patted his back. Farlan stared blankly at the nearly bald little girl before looking back at Levi.
"Hey, wait a minute. You don't expect me to explain do you?"
"That's exactly what I expect now make yourself useful for once."
"For once? What you mean for once? Hey! Levi, no! I refuse! You do it! You saved her."
She caught a name.
"Exactly, I saved her. Now you help out. I did my part as a good fucking missionary, you help out now."
"Hey! No no no no!"
"HEY!" This caught the boys attention. They turned to the shrieking girl. "Please, I want to know what' happening to me. Will I be all right?"
"We don't know." Farlan admitted.
"Tch. We don't know if your going to be pregnant yet or not."
"You mean they...no!"
"Ah so you do know. That'so good enough." Farlan walked off.
"But that don't explain why it hurts, why I bleed..." The little girl wept. Being down in this city means you know a lot of things but some things you learn on the job.
"Cause it makes a girl hurt and bleed first time...sometimes," Levi sat down on the step putting a pipe he stole not so long ago in his mouth. "But those bastards didn't help so it's gonna be a lot worse than it really should be."
"...You mean...!"
"You got raped kid." Levi bluntly put it.
She tighened up into a ball and put her hands on her head wanting to pull out what was left of her hair. How could something this bad happen to her? Oh Sina, just as she thought things couldn't get any worse this happens.
Through her tears and misery, she looked up at the two boys. The one beside her with the pipe looked away with a foreign look plastered on his face while the one standing up and leaning up on the door stared dead panned at the ground.
"What's your name?" She asked the tall boy. He looked at her still with a serious face.
"I'm Farlan."
"Farlan..." She rolled the name out of her tongue. She gazed back at the smaller yet deadlier boy beside her. Despite the fear that lingered off him, she felt trust and comfort.
"And you're...Levi?"
He didn't say anything but his eyes flickered into hers and back again.
"You know our names. What's yours?"
She stared down at the ground. Bringing her hands up to her view, she stared at the blood in her hands and on the ground between her legs. It didn't seem right that blood should be coming from such an area. Nothing seemed right anymore.
Levi and Farlan watched her. Her face sickly pale and eyes that once burned with life seemed dead. Her lips quivered and she bit her lip.
"Isabel." She reluctantly said. "My name's Isabel." She looked back to meet the gazes of the two boys.
...
It took a while for Isabel to adapt to the life they were living. It use to be me, myself and I with her but now it was we, ourselves and us. Sort of a all for one and one for all kind of thing. She wasn't use to help or their kindness. It wasn't that long ago she'd be stealing from them. It hurt to walk so she took it easy for a while.
Farlan and her always butted heads, arguing over the most trivial of matters. Everything they argue about never mattered. At first Levi shouted at them but after a while he just simply didn't 'give a fuck.' If it was getting in the way of a mission he just had to say one word and the other two would shut-up.
Levi was a different matter. Isabel looked up to him and admired him. He reminded her in some ways as her older brother. Once Isabel called him 'big brother'. Levi got all flustered over it and Farlan made fun of her for calling him it and Levi for going red which didn't sit two well with either of the two, especially Levi. Let's just say Farlan never made a remark on it again. Isabel kept saying it by accident and Levi always told her off but after a while, the three just accepted Levi was who Isabel looked at as a big brother. However if there was one thing she couldn't stand about Levi, it was his OCD. What idiot with OCD lives in the underground city where filth makes its home? He always yelled at her for doing a 'half assed' job of cleaning the door way they sleep in and scrubbed Isabel head to toe since she didn't clean herself up to Levi's standards.
Her hair grew slowly but surely till she had a mop of messy red hair. She looked just like a boy which worked for them all. It meant there was a less chance she'd get raped again although some of the men out there liked little boys just as much as little girls.
Isabel was coping well but at night things unravelled. The night Levi save,her, all that horror she went through, haunted her dreams. They dragged her down, they tore her clothes revealing, to her embarrassment, her naked body. They did the same and fused them together. During the dreams they'd stab her while they were still going at her and in others, it wasn't them but the knife they put inside of her. She screamed and cried, kicked and punched in her terror. Levi never really slept any way so he smoked his pipe watching over her. Farlan snored softly. Living in the underground with screams and cries that happen everynight got him use to sleep through it. Isabel's sleep could have been another girl on the other side of the building for all he knew.
One night, she woke up with beads of sweat rolling down her forehead. Looking around at the silent cold night brought her back to reality. Her breathing was all over the place. Her messy mop of red hair was soaked through. Levi's going to kill her.
"Hey," Levi who watched her while sitting smoking his pipe at the steps. She gave a little smile. "H-how long have you been awake?"
Blowing out smoke he replied, "Don't really sleep at all."
Isabel let out a sigh and bit her lip before crawling over to sit beside Levi.
"How long have you known?"
"A while now."
Isabel couldn't help but let the tears spill. She buried her face into Levi's shoulder blubbering out what she had been holding in to her big brother. The fear she felt and what else they could have done was heard by Levi's ear.
He listened carefully, not caring about the snot or the sweat he got on him. He just listened to the tears of the vulnerable little red headed girl.
She cried herself to sleep. Isabel leaned on Levi peacefully for the first time since they accepted into what seems to be a family. He lifted her up with care as if she was fragile and set her beside Farlan and tucked her in the rags they found.
May she sleep well.