Months passed and no one came to explain anything to him.
Every day Diego woke up hoping that, at opening his eyes, he'd find himself back in his room at the university, and all he had been through since that day when the French soldiers had arrested him would prove a bad dream. But, every morning, he'd open his eyes to glance at the same stone walls and the barred upper window through which he could see a glimpse of the blue sky. And every morning he felt something inside of him break a little.
In the beginning, after that first whipping to which the commander had subjected him, he spent his time trying to understand the reason for his imprisonment and for the behavior of the soldiers. But, no matter how much he thought about it, he still ended up reaching the same conclusion: he was surely the victim of a huge mistake. True, Risendo's words cast some doubts over that theory, yet not enough to make him dismiss it. He had never given anyone a reason to imprison him, and neither had his father, so his mind still ended up returning to the idea of the mistaken incarceration. After all, even Gilberto's words and the fact that the French soldiers knew his name could be justified if it had all been a mistake. Perhaps someone else had impersonated him. Someone had committed a crime using his name. But who, and what crime? That, he could not figure out.
"Why am I here? Why are you keeping me here?" he would shout in French whenever he'd hear the guards come by, either on their patrols or to leave the disgusting food they'd serve the prisoners.
Sometimes they laughed at him. Other times, they'd answer that he must very well know why.
Yet Diego did not know, and was beginning to fear that he might never find out.
Victoria's words and the promises they had made to each other were what gave him the strength to go on; the strength to keep himself from going mad because of all the unanswered questions in his head. Through hunger, darkness, the freezing winter cold and solitude, pain and agony, the thought of the young woman he adored was what helped him survive; that and the faith that his loved ones were doing all in their power to get him out of there.
While his grandfather, though a still-rich Spanish nobleman, was rather old and surrounded by similarly-old servants, thus unlikely to be of much help to him, the old man could still inform Don Alejandro that Diego had gone missing, and his father would move mountains to find him and get him home.
A year later, on the same day he had arrived at Chateau D'If, the Commander had him taken to the courtyard again, and applied a similar thrashing as he had done when Diego had first been brought there.
The caballero, who, by then, looked nothing like the young man he had once been, endured it all as he watched the sky, glad to see it again, all the time wondering if the people he loved were also watching the sky right then.
The following days he mostly spent resting, prey to fever, imagining all sorts of horrors coming for the people dearest to him.
Still, his body was strong, so he recovered and went on living in that man-made hell, his mind only at ease when, in his dreams, he held Victoria in his arms.
After more than one year in Chateau D'If, he knew exactly how many stones there were in his cell, and had named all the rats who sometimes visited him, hoping for some food. He had also started counting the spiders by the tall, barred window. One day, as he found himself prey to despair, the idea came to him to occupy his mind by trying to remember everything he still could about California, his parents and grandparents, Victoria, Felipe, his friends, and everything good that had ever happened to him. That idea helped him endure better the cold winter months that followed, yet it also progressively contributed to pushing him further into desolation because of the immense gap between his cruel present and the blessings of the past.
Reduced to eating one meal a day, or none when the food was uneatable, by the time Diego was, for the third time, dragged to the courtyard and tied to a pole there, he was but skin and bone.
Again he spent several days recovering, hardly eating and wondering why God had allowed for him to be taken to that place, where he was, perhaps forever, separated by all those he loved in his life. Soon, those questions turned to reproaches and reproaches turned into rage. One day, Diego trashed his entire cell, breaking his small stool and almost doing the same with his cot, shouting for God to answer him and tell him what harm he had done in his life to deserve such punishment.
Yet God did not answer him. At least, not at the time.
On the 1,605th day after he had said goodbye to Victoria, seeing how nobody was coming to help him, not even the Divinity he had prayed to since he was a child, convinced there was no way out of that cell, that he was to live the rest of his days and die in that retched place, Diego decided that such a life was not worth living at all. Dying was the best thing he could do for himself, for Victoria, and for everyone he loved: at least, give them closure.
So, after asking God to forgive him – mostly out of custom, for he wasn't sure he believed in God anymore by that point – Diego took off his shirt and tore it to pieces. Tying them together, he made an improvised noose, then used his cot to stand up and tie it to the bars on his cell's high window. When that was done, he put the noose around his neck, pushed the cot with one of his legs, and let himself fall into darkness.
His neck did not break, however, and he was, thus, forced to endure the agony of strangulation – until the noose broke, and he fell with a thud on the floor.
He had failed. Not because he hadn't had the courage or the strength to take his own life, but because the rotten material he had used didn't have the strength to hold him.
When that happened, he cried. For two whole hours, as he untied the noose and crawled into his cot, Diego cried. He cried for himself, for those he loved, and he cried for everyone else condemned to a life of misery and sufferance, a life spent away from everyone and everything they loved, away from the sun, the sea, the green fields, and the starry night sky.
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AN: I have not been publishing as often as I had initially decided because the Fanfiction site is not working properly these days from what I can tell. Based on the numbers provided, nobody is reading this. But I do have reviews, so I imagine that there is an error preventing the site from showing me the readership. Consequently, I would appreciate the readers reviewing even if only to let me know they are reading the story. Best, Cris
