Thee

        Amid the fog of her disenchanted mind, the days blurred together in smudges of grey and white. Sleep became constant torture, and the days were left to nothing more but trying to escape the torment. The mornings were spent walking aimlessly around the ballroom, pretending to look at portraits, or sitting by any window to feel something that wasn't hollow and deeply carved. This sort of weakness was so much easier- of pretending the past was all a dream. Walking around the house, she imagined that everything before she came here was a horrible nightmare. Living like this was like being those ghosts she had seen in town, those people ebbing and flowing like they were small pebbles on a beach. She could be a disenchanted lady of a vacant house instead of the scarred monstrosity she was deep down. 

        As the month drawled by, she slowly came to sleeping on the bed, but somehow that made her feel worse. It made her feel tame and docile and too human. At that word she winced her eyes painfully, it had become a threadbare tag for Sir M and The Doctor, and all those other cruel people she once knew. Thinking of them made her nails dig into her palms and her face melt into the deepest form of agony she knew. 

        What kind of beast was she to be so weak? So many 'why's and 'how's drilled into her skull, the memories and feelings scratching to get out. 

        The scratching, scratching, scratching causing her head to throb, the white walls of the her room fading into dirtied green metal sidings and wet floors. She could feel the constant sway and hear the creak of the support beams, the ropes swinging above their heads. Her only friend held a small metal-caged lantern, the weak flame flickering across the water stained pages of the book, her hands holding onto it tightly. His young voice slowly walked through the words that didn't have any meaning then- not like they did now.

        "It is not now as it hath been of yore;- turn wheresoe'er I may, by night or day- the things which I have seen, I now can see no more."

        The tiny flame was barely enough for him to make out the tarred words, but it was just enough to make the freezing nights a little warmer and the sour tasting days a sliver sweeter. The air was musty and tainted, but it was a common occurrence now. 

        "The rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the rose. The moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare, waters on a starry night are beautiful and fair..."

        That weight coiled itself around her throat as the image of his pale face pressed against her eyes with the sting of a frigid wind. Despite how hardly she tried to chase the memories away, they haunted her like ghosts. Blood fell from her lip as she bit it harshly, her fingers clawed more viciously into her palms. Back then, there was still sunlight and sparkling waters that stretched on for what they naively believed was forever. The sun was ever so raging then; such a giant and boastful sentient thing that seemed to watch over them. She could remember the cool rail under her mangled hand, which what felt like just moments ago, he had bandaged. His red hair reminded her of the kindness and childlike wonder of the sun, his green eyes akin to exotic seas of the Mediterranean. 

        "I'm going to be a sailor one day," He boasted, puffing out his chest. "You wait and see Espe- We could be whalers, or fisherman, or pirates even. Daring pirates with swords and pistols-"

        When she opened her eyes, the room was drowned in tears and her body felt frail and starved. A deep breath was all it took for the first sob to falter through her teeth- each sound making up for thousands of years, the hot tears falling from her face and flooding the entire room. Her nails scratched against her throat as if she was drowning, the room a deep, endless pool that collected all the lost little sailors and turned them into foamed memories.

        Looking to her shaking hands, bright blood peeked from the crescent shaped indents. As her breathing stumbled to calm down, she watched as the marks faded away. She grimly looked at her flawless hand and brought it up to her smooth china-like cheek.

        This body wasn't hers anymore. It had been altered and re-stitched too many times, molded by any hands but her own. How violently she wanted to tear it apart, to purge it of any touch and craftsmanship of those she so wanted to smother in blood. Killing them wouldn't take away everything they'd done to her. 

        The brand beneath the scars of her back attested for that. All she needed to do to cast it away was cave in to what she was designed for, but the memory stung against her skin. Every bone, skin, sinew- it was like a new flower blooming only to be set on fire. 

        A thought flickered across her mind. Here, in this house with these people, would they burn her if they knew what she really was? Would they try to kill her over it? Swallowing the thought, she walked to the dining table to breakfast, Sir sitting in his chair and still masked and gloved. 

        They had made a habit of eating breakfast and supper together, the evenings passed in the study with him reciting poems. Those moments were the best of her days- the words enough to make the days a little less hollow. As the weeks went by, she slowly ventured closer to him to hear better- traversing the wide spanse of the room until she became settled on the other end of the couch. Conversation at the dining table slowly relaxed from hidden stratagems to simple, perhaps empty, words. 

        "If you don't mind me asking," He said that morning. "What is it you do to pass your day when I'm not around?" 

        She hummed lowly as she swallowed a bite of her steak, though the joy of eating it was waning away.

        "I sit by my window and soak in the sun, and then, after noon, I pull up a chair from the dinning table and do the same thing at these windows."

        "That's it?" He prodded. 

        "That's it." Her words and body felt heavy. Everything felt heavy, actually. Her eyes looked out the window but didn't see anything- looking at things felt heavy too.

        He shook his head and let out a slow breath, a mannerism of discontentment she had gathered.

        "Why is that?" 

        She took a sip of tea and paused as she looked out the window, realizing she didn't have a reason why. Would it matter if she did?

        "I am content. I don't have a need to do anything else when I have already so much more now than I would have known otherwise. Why would I seek beyond that?" Was she convincing herself, she wondered, or him?

        He leaned back and propped his elbow on the arm of his chair, his gloved fingers making a smooth sound as he moved them absentmindedly.

        "I don't think you are content," He declared. She set down her tea and gazed at him.

        "I think you are content with the new features of your life here, but you yourself are not content. I mean you no offense, but I see you in the study- those moments when you stare deep into the fire and you move from present to past. In fact, I would say you are very much discontented. I would even go on to say that your past causes you deep pain, and rather than feel that pain, you'd rather feel nothing at all."

        "Stop." Her voice was low, her eyes dark and posture tensed. He held back, but couldn't help but feel he was completely and utterly correct. Being dissected reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget. Avoiding the pain wasn't weak, it was survival. Or so she told herself, her eyes gazing deeply into her tea like she would read her future from the bronze liquid.

        The rest of their breakfast passed in a laconic manner, her eyes refusing to even look in his direction. As soon as Hans retrieved her plate she couldn't decide what she wanted to do- leave him, retreat from the unsavory truth, or place her trust in him, her delicate feathered pain with him. Chewing on that thought for awhile, she looked at him for the first time with new eyes. Though she couldn't see his face or hands, a part of her tenderly hushed that he reminded her of her lost friend. Perhaps it was his liking of poetry and literature- or the gentle way he spoke. The comparison caused her lungs to ache dully, a dull ringing reminding her of all the things she wish she had done.

        Why was it that for all the agony she had ever known from her flesh, that this tightness in her chest paled in comparison? She looked at her palms as yet another violent thought crossed her mind- a constant reminder that she was anything but who she was, who she wanted to be.

        "Do you think I'm..." She bit her tongue at the word and looked at his mask. She wanted to be angry, she wanted to be upset, she wanted to be a multitude of things, but a little string held her back. 

        Feelings were so much easier to bruise than skin, they were so much harder to heal than shattered bones and shredded cartilage. Silence flooded into the room and assaulted her skin as she let out a deep breath and stared at him, trying to look for something that she already knew was there.

        "I don't really know what to say to you- how I can phrase my words to ask of you something that can't truthfully be guaranteed by words. But I want you to promise me something."

        He watched as her hands began to tremor in her lap, a pained expression bending her mouth and shaking her lips.

        "And I know I could make a multitude of baseless threats just to make myself feel better, and they would never ever mean anything, but..." It was a weak attempt at stalling, but they both knew that.

        He didn't know how to feel when small tears fell from her winced eyes, her hands clasped so tightly her nails were biting into her white knuckles, scarlet blood peeking from her skin.

        At that sight, he slid from his chair and knelt on his knees before her. He separated her hands like they were fragile intertwined vines. Her eyes were pink with tears when she opened them, her fingers bending against his as a part of her became deathly afraid that he would let go. What a weak state she was, but she didn't have to choose what happened anymore. Maybe that was why the prospect of talking suddenly felt like it was a double-sided blade. Maybe being this was easier than being nothing- less fighting, less conflict, less fear. A shaky inhale spun through her lungs as she bowed to everything she had been avoiding for the past month; all the whites and grays clashing together like foam against the crests of arctic waves.

        "Do you promise you would never hurt me?" The sound of her broken voice made his stomach drop as one of her hands moved to dry her tears, the other deathly holding his. As he watched her take deep breaths and pull in her labored breathing, he passed her glass of water to her and waited until she had calmed herself, her eyes looking at him expectantly- her irises full of wounded fear.

        "I would never hurt you. I brought you here so no one would hurt you ever again." Each word was articulated with firm notes, a type of percussion that echoed through ever bit of the room.

        A deep inhale broke from her lips as if she had been drowning, and the shaky sigh that followed reminded him of the final release of a cacophonous storm. Pitiful gulps shook her throat as she closed her eyes tiredly, as if soaking in his words. 

        "Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" At the sound of his gentle voice she opened her eyes, their silver tint magnetic and electrifying. Trust- it was a silent gift that she passed to him, but not without uncertainty.

        "Do you ever feel like everything you do isn't in your control?" She sniffed, her mouth bent sideways.

        "That every action, every trait, every thought belongs to someone else- that no matter the distance, it will always belong to someone else?"

        Oh, very well, he wanted to say. So very well, that he had blood on his hands from it.

        "Once," He answered instead, "but I realized that those people you feel have every aspect of you; I found out that they actually gave everything of themselves to you."

        Her eyes focused on his mask intently, her once shaking body completely still.

        "Why do you think those men had you in an iron cage?" He rubbed his thumb over hers in an attempt to soften the discomfort of the sensitive topic.  

        "For your protection?" She blinked rapidly, her brow furled deeply.

        "Why do you think he wanted to get rid of you? Because he needed the money? He was afraid of you- and I know for sure that he still is." The mask felt like a window she would never get to see inside of, but he hoped that in absence of his intense eyes, she could hear it in his voice.

        "For the rest of his life, he will always be afraid of you. Everyday, he'll wake up and wonder if you will have found him and taken everything from him. Do you know why that is?"

        She felt that familiar flame rekindle in her throat, that once hideous voice resounding with his words. It streaked across her mind painting blood-inked masterpieces. It nuzzled itself in her veins and clouded her mind in ebony cased drunkenness. The once lost longing pooled in her mouth and throat, singing its deadly tunes like nightingale songs. 

        "It's because he expects you to come back for revenge."