Greys IV - Chains

Chapter 13 - Shudders

I couldn't remember the last time I wasn't cold, shivering so intensely my muscles cramped and stiffened, aching even when numb. Ambriel knew how much I hated the cold. How it weakened me. How it physically hurt in ways mere temperature shouldn't be able to. How it weighed on my mind and will worse than other pains ever could. She knew I would rather be tortured than left to freeze. So she did both. The cold had always scared me on some foundational level, maybe because of my Sign, my association of fire and warmth with strength and life.

I had fully lost track of time, and I knew Ambriel did that on purpose too. She never visited with any pattern, nor did the healers, and the food delivered also had no regularity. I hadn't seen my father since the first time I woke, but that only made my dread build, waiting for the time the metal door would scrape open and his frame would be silhouetted by the blinding light, not Ambriel's lithe one.

Regardless of however many weeks bled on, Ambriel never bored of visiting me, breaking me in body or mind or spirit. And she said she never would, that she loved our time together, that she loved me. And I think in her own sick way she did, having someone be hers, having complete control over someone and being able to do what she loved to them, to do anything to them. That was love to her.

Sometimes she commanded me to obey, other times she let me struggle against my binds, against her. Sometimes it was endless freezing water that felt like needles as it poured over me, so cold I could feel my body shutting down, though it couldn't kill me. Other times she made me not move, every muscle perfectly still as she drowned me, over and over again for hours. She said she liked seeing the panic build in my eyes as I was paralyzed, as the water filled my throat and lungs until I choked on it, my chest convulsing and spasming from the need for air, while the rest of my body remained still.

Sometimes she simply carved into me, but she soon learned that didn't get as strong of a reaction. It hurt, it was unpleasant, but it didn't scare me, and she fed off my fear, my desperation and terror, chipping away at my armor until she found a way inside to break me from within. Her favorite torture wasn't physical at all, it was always mental. And that meant making me see Jordan and my family, all those I cared about. She could get into my head eventually, from the collar or my weakened mind or some dark power, and she invaded my memories and thoughts, using them all against me, confusing my already tired and jumbled mind further.

The first time I saw Jordan and Kael and Nevaeh, I thought I was saved, that they had somehow come for me, found me. But then Jordan was killed, they all were. I screamed as I held her, my face buried in her bloody hair only to have her body disintegrate and blow away like ash in the wind. When I looked up through blurred eyes, only Ambriel remained, a smile stretching her thin, parchment skin. Sometimes she wore Jordan's face as she toyed with me, playing her twisted games, but I knew it wasn't her. And I reminded myself of that over and over again - it was never her, and it never would be. Because I was never getting out, and she would never come for me because she thought I was dead. Because I should be dead, I had been. God, I wanted to be. But knowing it wasn't really my Pair didn't stop the pain, the loss and horror at what I saw happen to her or what she did to me.

Those were the cruelest of Ambriel's amusements, the visions of my family being tortured and killed, or killing and torturing others, me, of them becoming monsters, tasting Jordan's lips even as I knew they were Ambriel's, watching the gray eyes I knew and loved turn cold and hollow as she laughed over my broken body.

On rare occasions, Ambriel was kind, gentle even as she healed me or gave me some form of warmth, whether it was from Jordan's skin or her own. But even that was only meant to create a starker contrast with what was coming, what was always coming. More pain, more cold, more phantoms and boundless, ceaseless, eternal darkness alone in my cell to feel myself slipping away, cracking and falling apart as all of the things that made me were stripped away into distant, foggy memories. Memories that began to fade and dissolve and distort until I didn't know what had been real or a waking nightmare, what had come from my own mind or Ambriel's or the world outside my cell.

I loathed Ambriel, but I also felt something else unnamed for her, her skill, her power. I began waiting for her visits with a strange expectancy despite myself, despite the pain and humiliation she brought, despite the terror the mere sight of her dragged through me. And even though I hated her, even though each time ended with my blood and screams, with me wordlessly begging for an end, for mercy, a growing part of me was relieved each time I had her company. Anything was better than being in that cold, bottomless black that stretched on and on and on forever, left alone with my fractured mind and all the horrors it housed.

She didn't need to conjure images of my family after long, my broken mind did it all on its own. My family, my past, all the people I had killed, left, and let down, they descended on me every second I was alone, and Ambriel made sure I had plenty of time with my demons. She continued to renew her commands for me to not sleep, and my Shift was still hidden from me, which meant every second, every minute, every hour, of every day and week I had to feel, to shiver and stare and suffer through - all fully Human.

I locked myself away far sooner than I had planned, I had to. I was afraid of the damage she was doing to me, the real me. I was afraid she would make me go mad from the pain, the dread, the lack of sleep, the absence of my nature, my strength. I feared I already had at times, even after bolting the door in my mind and sealing the good parts of me away. I told myself whatever she was breaking was only part of me. That there was still some other part, whole and waiting behind that thick, saving door. I told myself she didn't have all of me, but I didn't really believe in that, I didn't really believe in anything. I was weak and starved, helpless and hopeless, cold, and barely lucid from exhaustion, from being alone, from the constant pain and dread of what was coming next, the horrors I had been forced to watch, to feel and live. To act.

She brought in others sometimes, 'practice' she called them, and ordered me to hurt them, to kill them, to do things to them that had bile burning at the back of my throat. But my body would obey smoothly, no matter if I wanted to or not. Too soon I couldn't tell if it was my choice or hers, my will or hers, or if there was even any difference between the two. She spoke and I acted, that was my only reality. She and I were so intertwined, and my mind was so weak, her hold so deep, I couldn't tell if anything I did was from me or if it was all her. I couldn't even tell if there still was a me. What makes a person a person? If it's their will, then I hadn't been a person for a long time.

I just wanted to sleep, to Shift, to feel warmth. But really, when I was honest with myself, I knew I only wanted to die, for good this time. The door in my mind became a myth, the possibility of ever using it, getting myself back, seemed so impossible it was more a taunt than a hope. I begged for death whenever Ambriel allowed me to speak. But each time, she would just smooth back my dirty, bloody hair, either tenderly or fisted tightly in her delicate hands, her ice blue eyes staring down into mine with an emotion I was too exhausted to comprehend, and tell me she loved this too much to ever let me go. At some point it changed from this to you, but time was just as thin and murky as the idea of freedom. Nothing existed outside of her and me, and everything we did together.

I tried to deny it, to push the feelings back, but eventually, whether it was weeks or months, whether it was from some sick connection or her insidious control, I didn't just look forward to seeing my torturer, I missed her when she was away. Eventually, I anticipated what she was going to ask of me so I could do it before she ever parted her pale lips. Eventually, her hands on my skin didn't make me cringe. And eventually, when I couldn't even remember why I hated her, why she hurt me, the warmth of her body became welcome on mine, a reward, not a punishment.

Without knowing how or when or why, I began to crave her presence, her touch, her pain and punishment, her attention and approval like the deepest, darkest, most damning drug. Before I knew it, she and I began to truly feel like one. I didn't know where I ended and she began, or if there even was an end. Maybe we were one.

So when I looked up into her crystalline eyes and begged her to kill me with a rasped voice at the end of one of her visits, as was our tradition, and she didn't say she loved me, when instead she crouched down, lifting my face gently to hers and asked if I wanted to stay with her for the night, to be warm, to be allowed to sleep, I said yes without hesitation.