The position of the rivets, the color of the chipping paint, the scratches high and to the right of his vision. Old scratches. Scratches he’d made decades ago, struggling with an operative, so determined to not be again forced to the cage, to that terrible dominion.
Awareness struck like a blow, lungs still, blood rapid, eyes wide and aggrieved behind the fall of his bangs.
Volke did not even attempt to move his lungs, to do a thing but hold himself tight and still, to deny the fright swelling in his chest. Forever difficult, but not impossible. A task made easier when no one moved forward to strike him, to force him again to an unconscious haze.
He managed a breath, tight and shallow, his burning lungs finding so bare a relief.
His neck ached from hanging forward, shoulders stiff and sore from being forced against the wall by a metal band. Didn’t even try to overpower it yet, not when he felt so oddly drained, exhausted and almost aching. Evidence of some poison forced within him, chemical dominion. Neither did he lift his head, the whole of him so immediately chilled when he noted feet on the floor a meagre distance from his own.
Strange, how realizing that he shared this space with another was almost more unnerving than being bolted to the wall of a unknown vessel.