🙖 SAGE 🙐

~'1'~

Song: Dancing with your ghost - Sasha Alex Sloane

🌿 Sage 🌿

I don't know when it started to happen. Maybe it's when I decided to shoulder other people's burdens to myself. Maybe it's when I found out the brown stuff on my ceiling is indeed poop. Maybe it's when I made a friend and she is nice to me. Nice to the point where it feels surreal.

When I hang out with her, I feel something akin to joy. Happiness is a rare thing these days, unless you fake it. Like me. And I do a pretty good damn job.

I went off topic for a second there. Oops. Anyway, maybe it's because of the pressure of having a precious thing like her in a dangerous place like this. She could slip out of my grasp at any moment and I might not even know.

I don't even know what it is. I just know that it seizes all the air inside my lungs, it makes me unable to think coherently. That is not an assassin's behavior. Which means I am not competent enough anymore. The thing feels like a monster, wrapping its shadows around my neck and keeping me still, paralyzed, unable to move. Sometimes, it would leave me like that for hours. Other times, it would crawl inside of me, digging its claws into my flesh, until I became one with it. I would want to lash out at anyone close to me, barely refraining.

"Sage?" Ellie asks, almost tentatively, breaking me out of my thoughts. "What are you thinking about?"

Her holding cell is directly across from mine, so it makes it easier to communicate. "Nothing," I smile, reaching a hand out through the bars, her repeating the action. Then she frowns.

"You're trying to distract me." She pulls her arm back, crossing them in front of her chest. "It wasn't nothing."

I sigh. I can never hide anything from her. "Nothing you should worry about," I amend.

She stares at me disapprovingly. "One day, I'm going to figure out every one of those secrets of yours."

"One day, I might let you." I say teasingly, my arms still outstretched in the space between us. Slowly, Ellie reaches her arm out again, and our fingers touch. Barely.

Footsteps head towards us, and we cast a quick glance to each other. We pull both our arms back at the same time, just as a guard walked up to our cells. His sword, at least 3 feet long, bangs against our cages. Once on mine, once on hers.

"What does it take for you to shut up here?" He asks rudely. Leaning down so his face is level to mine, he breathes, "Maybe if I shove your face up on my cock, you wouldn't have space to talk."

I scoff. "Yeah, if your dick is big enough." That earns laughter from the other cells.

The guard's face turns red with anger, and when he speaks again, his spittle flies all over my face. "Listen here you little bitch, you're just nothing but a teeny weenie little bug under my shoe. I could kill you, and nobody would care."

"Actually, I would," Ellie says from behind him. He spins around. I widen my eyes at her, shaking my head no.

Ellie raises her eyebrows at me, trying to communicate something I didn't understand. She mouths something, but before I can clearly tell what she is trying to say, the guard blocks my line of view.

He walks up to her, making himself as big as possible, as if he is trying to intimidate her. It wouldn't work anyway, she is way too brave and way too reckless.

"Are you talking back?" His lip curls up into something that resembles a snarl, showing his two missing front teeth.

Ellie grimaces. "That's how a conversation works, no?" (She definitely heard that comeback from one of the other prisoners.)