A/N: This is one of a few stories I've written where I've basically put some Hatchetfield characters into the plot of another story to see how they'd fare in that universe - this one is Room, although it is only loosely based and hopefully makes sense if you haven't read/seen the source material. Please do let me know if it is confusing (as I'm aware I've left gaps) and I can try and fix that!
Trigger warnings: kidnapping, assault, implied/referenced non-con and rape (but never explicit or graphic).
It gets worse before it gets better - please read with care, and look after yourselves :)
...
The first thing Emma Perkins does when she starts awake on a cold cement floor, nose bleeding and head pounding, is swing at the figure looming over her. Her left hook has never been her strongest, so she also screams, bolts upright and scrambles back; but then she falters because the figure is crying out too, leaning back.
"Don't touch me!" She yells, sure that they were going to, and the man - it's definitely a man, tall and lean with shaggy hair and wide eyes - freezes.
"Please... don't- please don't be scared. I'm... I'm Paul." His voice is halting, stop-start-stop-start. She flicks her gaze about the space - no carpet, barely 12 by 12 feet, a matching green bath and toilet and sofa and a kitchenette all vying for her attention. Its like someone tried to cram a whole house into one room.
"Where am I?" Emma pants, ignoring his absurd request. "What do you want?" She pushes herself to her feet but he remains on the floor, motionless.
"I don't know. Where we are. I didn't- it wasn't me. That took you." He tries to explain, but seems overwhelmed himself. He gives himself a small shake as Emma reels.
"What do you mean you don't know? H-how the f*ck did I get here?" She's furious, but she takes in his obvious fear and it starts to fade, replaced by a more jagged emotion in the pit of her stomach.
"I'm stuck here too." He forces out at last. "I was - kidnapped." His face twists. "I've never said that out loud." Then he glances at the heavy door set into the wall to her right, almost reflexively.
"What? Sh*t. What?!"
"I'm Paul." He says again. "What's your name?"
"No, nonono." Her heart, racing since she came to, skips several beats. "If you come anywhere near me, I swear!"
"Listen to me, I already told you-" He leans forward slightly as frustration slips into his voice, but retreats when she flings herself backwards and knocks against the wall behind her.
"Am I gonna die?" Her voice breaks.
"Nick - he wants to keep you here. With me. He shouldn't kill you. I'm - alive." He gestures at himself stupidly. Emma's eyes start to water, but she blinks it back.
"Nick?"
"The man who... he took me, and you, now." He glances to the door again, but he's still between it and her.
"This is insane. Oh my God. How long have you been here?" The panic is rising in her voice and she climbs to her feet.
"...I - I don't know." He can't even attempt an answer, still in shock.
"Oh my god, how f*cking long?!" She is about to call his bluff, accuse him of everything and more, but something whirrs in her brain and she stops short. "Not Paul Matthews?"
He startles. "How- yeah? Yeah, that's me."
"Dude, you were all over the news."
"I know." He says, and this time his eyes are sad. He gestures half heartedly at a tiny TV in the corner, in front of the threadbare sofa.
"Paul Matthews died..."
"No!" It's not a shout but its the loudest he's been so far and they both shrink back at the outburst.
"You're still alive, oh my God... 6 years ago, you went missing 6-" And suddenly she believes him. His gaze goes blank at her words and she takes the opportunity -she bolts to the door, (why hasn't she tried this already she needs to get out) pushing on it and running her hands around the frame when it doesn't budge. Her head is spinning. "HELP!" She screams. "Let me out, help! Let me out!" She hammers on the door, then the wall, and the noise echoes in the small space.
"Wait, stop it-" Paul is by her side again, a look of desperation on his face. His hands are clamped over his ears. "It's better if you don't, trust me-"
She screams over him, hitting harder, until her voice is hoarse, until there are six beeps, and the door swings inwards. Paul shrinks backwards and Emma runs forwards-
...
He was right. She doesn't get out, can't - and it only gets her hurt to try. That first day gets her thrown violently back into unconsciousness as she meets her captor headfirst, and wakes up hours later to a locked door and a trembling Paul. He tries in vain to explain things to her, about the room and the man he calls Nick, but there's nothing more really that needs explaining. Nothing she can't figure out from the empty look Paul gets in his eyes sometimes and the things she hears at night when Nick comes to visit and she hides, mercifully left alone, in the closet.
...
She spends what she guesses is a week trying to escape this nightmare, again and again, and then the next few days lying on the floor (Paul had insisted it was more dangerous on the bed, and he'd been right) refusing to move or talk. Paul makes her food that she refuses to eat and wipes her tears away, and sometimes talks to her, tries to convince her it's ok. She supposes bitterly that he's just happy to have company after six years alone. She says as much, one day, angry but not enough to shove him away.
"Yeah." He says after a moment's hesitation. "I am glad that you're here. I'm selfish. And I was going insane. And I know it's the worst thing that's ever happened to you, but you're saving me, Emma."
She notices him crying that night, sniffling and quiet but audible in the otherwise silent room. The next morning, Emma finds herself sitting up. She watches Paul, busying about in what she has been generously referring to in her mind as a kitchenette. And she asks him where the hell the food comes from.
He flinches and drops his spoon from where he sits at the little table eating cereal. Then, in a controlled tone: "Nick brings it. Every other Sunday. You didn't notice?"
She glares at him.
"Sorry, that was stupid." He remembers her near comatose state. "He, uh, lets me write a list if there's anything um, specific you want."
"He takes requests?" She scoffs. Paul looks away, and she catches sight of the bruises littering his face and neck from Nick's visit the night before. She'd buried her head in her blanket and pretended to be asleep but she'd heard it. Maybe it isn't a good idea to be so brash so soon after. "Sorry." She shrugs. "You got any pot in here?"
"I don't think he'd get us weed." Paul smiles a little.
"It's gonna be legal state-wide soon, betcha any money." She manages a smirk back.
"What would we do about the smoke?" He arches an eyebrow. Right. No windows. One skylight, doesn't open.
"It is f*cking claustrophobic in here." She moves slowly across the room and flops down on the sofa, already exhausted.
"Tell me about it." His voice is still quiet but he's less tense now.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"...Discovery Channel is channel 7." He says like its a secret, moves to the TV and fiddles with the button. "I close my eyes sometimes and just listen. Just... Don't put the news on, ok?"
"You can get the news on this thing? Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?!" She's immediately nudging him aside, flicking through the channels herself.
"Emma I don't think..."
"You think you can boss me around, huh? Control what I see, what I do?"
"I'm serious, don't put it on." His voice has gone hard in a way that she hasn't heard before.
"Don't you wanna see?" She falters. "Them looking for us?"
He shakes his head. "For you."
"Man, you're the biggest missing person case Hatchetfield ever saw."
"Was. They stopped looking for me a long time ago."
She stops abruptly. "So... You had to watch them give up?"
"I had to watch them forget. And I don't want you to see that, Emma."
Anger flares inside of her again. "They won't forget, asshole." She turns the TV on, full volume. "Because they're going to find me. I'm not dying in a goddamn shed where I could practically cook my dinner whilst sitting on the toilet."
Paul lets out a startled laugh.
"What?" She demands.
His smile drops. "Sorry. I guess I just forgot. What people are like. People not him."
She swallows. "Yeah, well - all of Hatchetfield to choose from, you really got the raw end of the deal, huh? Stuck with me, the class screw-up."
"I don't think of you like that at all, Emma." He says nervously. She pats the sofa beside her.
"Please?" She says when he hesitates. "I... Don't think I can do this on my own. But I need to see it."
He joins her on the couch just as an image of her own face pops onto the screen.
...
That night, when Old Nick comes, Emma is still sat on the sofa. The TV is off and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't overwhelmed by it all. They hadn't had to wait at all before Dan and Donna on channel 3 had started spouting nonsense about potential theories: a serial killer that only struck every 6 years, or maybe Paul had actually faked his disappearance and was now kidnapping others. Then there had been a commercial break, and Paul had muted it as they sat through it in silence, before the coverage returned. It had been a draining day. And when it gets late there are six beeps and it's the first time she's been up when Nick has visited at night; he clocks it straight away. Paul steps in between them as they lock eyes.
"I knew you'd come around." Old Nick says, grinning like she was being unreasonable. "Took Paul a little while too, didn't it?"
Paul keeps his head down and doesn't respond. Nick crosses the room in a flash and grabs his hair, yanking his head up so he can see his face. "Didn't it, Paul?"
"Yes." Paul murmurs.
"But it's not so bad here, I look after you, don't I?"
Paul nods as much as he can, still in Nick's grip.
"Say it."
"Yes, you- look after us." He manages.
"You're hurting him." Emma steps up to Paul's side, not getting any closer to Nick than she has to but standing in solidarity with her fellow prisoner. Nick lets go of Paul abruptly and backhands her hard. She gasps.
"You, will speak when spoken to b*tch." He snaps. She bites back a remark. She knows this man's strength well by now - her leg is still healing from her first escape attempt, and she walks what little distance she can in the room with a limp. "Now I've had a busy day and I don't have time for this. Take your clothes off."
She freezes, doesn't speak or move. "I have given you long enough to adjust here girl, and I know you understand the rules by now. Do not test me." Nick hisses. She turns to Paul desperately, but his head is down again, eyes shut tight. Shakily, she starts to unbutton her blouse.
"Please." She whispers. She has seen enough when the man has visited Paul to know what this means - would probably know even if she hadn't. Nick doesn't seem to have time for her panic and he grabs her, starts pulling clothes off her himself. She can't stop herself from fighting back; when he pushes her back onto the bed, she starts to scream.
Dimly, she hears a voice, registers the weight lift off of her for a moment and rolls onto the floor, crawls to the corner. Blurrily she watches as the old man kicks the sh*t out of Paul, realises he must have done something to elicit the response. She doesn't have time to feel warm at the realisation - it doesn't help her in the end.
She sobs through the night, well after Nick finally leaves; pain and horror and despair stop her from even pulling her clothes back on, although she does curl up under the blanket that Paul drapes over her. When light starts to filter in through the skylight, she catches a glimpse of him, sat on the floor beside the bed. His eyes are red-rimmed and vacant, until she calls to him. "Does it get easier?" She croaks, her voice almost gone.
Paul's face is littered with bruises that trail down his neck and surely continue beneath his shirt too. When he speaks, she notices his lip is split. "You start to care less." He says so quietly she can barely hear. "But it doesn't make it easier."
...