Big Brother Is Watching You... closed rp with askcaptain-rogers
That was how long she’d been here, stuck in this room. Thirty two times of passing out or being put down, and waking back up. She didn’t count by days, because she couldn’t. She knew full well that sometimes she was out for only hours, and sometimes days. She didn’t know how long it had truly been.
She’d come here for... She had to focus a moment to remember. Well, what they had called it was high treason. She had called it fighting for what was right. Their government was impossibly strict. At birth you were sorted to a class, a job, a family, a life. Even thought was punished. Books and histories were edited to fit the government’s idea of truth- she knew because it had been her job to edit them. Even language was being destroyed, replaced with a mechanical set of words devoid of feeling or thought. And one day, Kara had had enough.
But the government knew everything. It had been a matter of weeks before she was caught. She should have guessed. Rebellion was hopeless, they told her. She was alone. But they would not kill her. No.
That was the day she dimly registered someone being tied down to the table across the room- the space that had been empty since her arrival had finally been occupied. She didn’t bother to turn her head. It didn’t matter who was there. She kept her eyes closed.
It wasn’t too different, having the other one there. She judged from the screaming he was a man. But that made no difference. Often, he was asleep when she was questioned, and vice versa. The torture wasn’t pain in any way Kara had known it. It was- mental. Intricate. It fucked with you by making your insides burn or your head want to explode, or it just placed you in another reality where nothing mattered, nothing at all. It was hard to keep grips on what was real anymore.
Kara was beginning to wonder if resisting was such a good idea after all. She had thought herself noble. But she didn’t feel noble. Or righteous. Or anything she’d termed herself. She felt exhausted. She had a hard time keeping count of her waking and sleeping anymore. She wondered if the other one in the room ever felt the same way. Would changing be easier?
No. Kara pushed that idea from her head. She couldn’t let go now. She would not let them transform her into one of their model citizens. She could not bear knowing that she had let herself be broken like that. She would stay strong.
Kara knew nothing. She had nothing, nothing but her count. She didn’t even know if that was still right. Could be longer. She remembered nothing of her past life except facts that seemed disconnected- what she had worked as. Where she had lived. But the connections- the smell of home, the smiles of friends- were all disappearing. There was only this room. Kara didn’t even know if that was real anymore. She needed something to ground her. She was slipping and knew she couldn’t last. The interrogators knew it, too. If only she could have anything-
The man. She turned her head to get a good look at him for the first time. His skin was almost a grayish color, probably from lack of washing. His cheeks were sunken and his face had a sharp, hollowed look to it. Kara supposed she looked worse. She had been here longer. But his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. “Hey.” Her voice always sounded strange these days, cracked and harsh. “You. Do you remember your name?” Sometimes they addressed her by hers, so she remembered. But she didn’t know what else to say. What was a conversation starter for someone you’d lived with and never spoken to? Regardless. She waited for an answer.
