A/N: Sorry for the long wait! I'd had some difficulty getting this chapter to work. I hope you enjoy it, and sorry again for the delay.
---Teh SadoMasochist.
It was then that my resolve broke, and I let out the smallest of whimpers as I lay, bleeding, on the frozen concrete floor. It was cold, and the darkened room did nothing but make my skin contract painfully, tightening itself across my bone structure in the severe cold. I groaned slightly as I felt a small woosh of air, my cell mate dropping down beside me.
Deliriously, I laughed. I laughed at the happiness in my soul, for I was happy. I had found him... Truly, my own pain and discomfort was worth it? "Alfred... Alfred.... O-ohgod, Alfred, I've come.... I've come to get you out of here..."
Staring up at him, my joy faded. The boy was shivering, as it was indeed cold in the cramped cell (the poor boy had been here for hours, days even, and his lips were tinged blue from the cold.) He was naked, wrapped in a blanket and holding a bloodied shirt with a red-stained toothbrush. Bruises littered his skin, a garish cut along his cheek and his pained, blue eyes off-set by his broken glasses. "Ph, Alfred...."
I tried to move off of the floor and hold him, but the slightest of movements sent pain pulling through my body. I let out a small sound as the American picked me up, his limbs feeling like glass beneath me. "P-put me down, you shouldn't be lifting me, you're hurt!"
Alfred let out a hopeless laugh, setting me down on a stone bench (suspended from the wall with rusty chains) he had obviously been trying to sleep on before I had been thrown into the room. "And you aren't? Y-you can barely move..."
I looked down at my legs, ashamed. I was supposed to be strong and unbreakable, and even long after Alfred had left my care I felt the need to show him this. Even as we loved each other, the urge to out-do the other and to protect them from everything was strong in both of us, and I knew this to be true. It was hardly a good thing to be sitting here like ducks, both of our clothes bloodstained as he sat staring at me and I sat staring at everything else. I felt weak, desperate tugging at my clothes and I looked up at the American, watching him desperately trying to take my coat as a tear slipped down his face.
"Why, Arthur?"
The simple question bore into my brain, his broken voice tearing at me, like it was my fault we were here. I felt my heart sink to the floor and, as painful as it was, I leaned up to wrap my arms around him. Returning the hug, he whispered, "I..... I saw..... Your, um, thing.... On deviantArt and stuff... Th-there's a beat-up laptop.... U-under the bench.... Why did you surrender? I... You.... You're the strong one... You weren't supposed.... T-to give up....."
I winced and shook my head. "I... Alfred I couldn't leave you."
The lad sniffled, clinging to me as if I would disappear. I couldn't imagine the horrors he had gone through in the few days alone.... Sure, I had been tortured for hours, but Alfred had been here for nearly five days, no one to come back to and comfort him. I knew all too well what being alone in a torturous situation did to one's mental state. I held him close to me, fingers playing gently with the hairs on the back of his neck as I whispered small comforts to him, promising to whisk him away, back to his land of stars and stripes. We sat like that for what seemed like hours, but could have only been minutes at the most.
Suddenly, Alfred bolted back, causing a long, low whine of pain to escape my mouth at the sudden movement. His fingers once again began to desperately tug at my coat and I frowned, murmuring, "What are you doing, Alfred?"
The lad sounded breathless as he replied, my shirt finally coming unbuttoned. "L-l-let me clean it, Arthur, you're hurt worse than me, and Ivan will h-h-h-hurt you if you don't have your clothes clean, Arthur let me clean it, please, just go sleep, I d-don't want you hurt, it's almost dawn!"
His voice raised in pitch and urgency with each pause, verging on hysteria by the time he had finished talking. Looking at the American, I felt like sobbing. I'd never seen him so broken, nor so desperate. All the same, I shook my head. "You've your own clothes to clean, Alfred, let me clean mine... You've been here for longer, you're more hurt than I can possibly be..."
"N-no! P-please.... Let me be a good comrade and clean them.... P-please...."
Comrade. The word had shocked me into agreeing. Comrade.... He had called me comrade. My mind whirred as the coat was pulled from me, hardly registering that the other pulled his blanket off of his shoulders and wrapped it around mine (nor my cell phone rattling to the floor, safely powered off in case of 'plan B' needing to go into effect; laptop sitting in a corner of the Mirror Room), hiding a small sob as he looked at my side. Comrade. Just what was Ivan doing to the boy?
* * * *
I don't remember when I had fallen asleep. It must have been around three AM, sitting there and listening to the small whimpers falling from Alfred's mouth as I sat behind him, holding on to his waist tenderly and wrapping the blanket around both of us, our shivers from the cold and the pain in sync with each other. When I awoke, I was alone, my clothes folded neatly beside my head and all traces of Alfred suspiciously gone for the time being.
Remembering that my cell phone had clattered away, I gingerly stood, desperately looking around for the item to see if my lifeline had been found out. An off-kilter sigh of relief fell from my lips as I spotted the small, green and black thing half-kicked under the bench. The tiniest of laughs escaped me as I flopped to the floor, trailing off into a pained groan. I pushed the phone further from view, whispering, "I'll remember this when the time comes... What luck...."
I lay back across the floor, hair splaying in short, erratic bursts across the stone as I shuddered in the thin blanket. Too exhausted to even pull my clothes back onto my battered body, I closed my eyes, only to have them shoot open widely as screams began to echo down the hallway. "You Soviet BASTARD!"
I screamed this, covering my ears as more screams echoed down the hallway. The screams found some reserve strength in me and I stood up, quickly pulling clothes on and running (however pained) towards the door. "You sodding fucking sadistic WANKER!"
Desperate to get to Alfred, I began to shoulder the heavy wooden door, which was hardly plausible in my condition to break down. Bloody hell, I probably wouldn't even be able to break it down in full health, and yet I tried all the same. I tried until I was a useless lump on the floor. By then, the screams had faded, replaced with slow yet deliberate, heavy steps on the stone. I crawled away quickly, blanket making it difficult to do so.
The door opened and an unconscious Alfred was thrown at me, a shout leaving me as I caught him and fell back. "Be ready in ten minutes. I will be merciful because your clothes are clean, da?"
The door swung shut before I could even register anything, and I suppressed the urge to bum rush the Russian who had already disappeared from the doorway. Instead, I turned my attention to the beaten American, who lay limply in my arms. I didn't know whether to gag or to sob at the extent of his wounds, now able to see the damage perfectly in the light of day. I didn't care what happened to me, I'm old and have taken a lot of abuse through my years.... Alfred, on the other hand, was young and brash, a brat at its finest if I'd ever seen one... The way I raised him made sure of that.
I had raised him so that the pain of the world could not touch him and make him bitter like me... He couldn't handle the abuse, and my poor boy was going to break. And how my heart broke at this realization, for I loved the stupid, brash, obnoxious, irresponsible tender idiot he had become.
I kissed his forehead gently, struggling to pick him up and set him on to the stone bench. No stupid Russian was going to take my Alfred away from me. Not again. Once Alfred was securely wrapped in the blanket, I kissed him once more and stood, steeling my nerves for what I knew was to come. If I was going down, there was no way I wasn't going down hard.... and that bastard would take me down before he broke America, over my dead body.
