The Plan
Tw: implied non-con, captivity whump.
Might make more sense to read Good and Quiet first
The bell outside Eden's door rang softly. A small hiss announced the arrival of dinner.
The meals were her only connection to any sense of time. This was meal #2 of day #94.
It had been seven weeks.
She had been isolated for five of them.
She takes the tray that slides into her room, and settles into the back corner with it. A bowl of what she figured was oatmeal with protein powder sat in front of her. It wasn't appetizing, but then again, she hadn't had much of an appetite to begin with. Still, it was better than what she knew the boys were getting.
That was the price she'd been paying.
Every second, of every day, of the past seven weeks, she had been locked in a room, with nothing to distract her than two screens built into the wall. One showed her Emil, the other showed Dante.
She'd watched them both break.
The Man had told the boys that they were alone, and that the rest of the triad had left without them. He hadn't tried the same with Eden ...perhaps he knew it wouldn't work...perhaps he knew watching them would eviscerate her worse than isolation ever could.
She stirred the oatmeal.
Dante hadn't eaten in four days. Emil, six. She watched what happened to them, every single day. She'd watched the beatings, the loneliness, the tears.
Sometimes they would be interrogated. Eden had seen Emil give up his real name, she'd learned things about Dante she had no right to know. She'd heard him pray, the soft words she had no hope of translating, emanating from bloodstained lips.
The Man rarely visited her. Other than a minor outburst of emotion on the first day of her isolation, he opted to forget her existence altogether.
The bruises from that encounter had long since faded by now.
I don't normally resort to violence with women, you should know that. But for my brother's killer, I'll make an exception.
She heard a door open; the left screen. Emil.
"Hello John, how are we doing, beautiful". The Man looked straight into the camera. A little show to go with your meal.
The Man had taken to using Emil's birth name ever since he'd wrung it out of him. Boasting the memory back to his victim. It made Eden sick.
It wasn't her fault they were in this situation. She knew that, deep down. But watching the fresh lines of blood spatter across Emil's back, watching the Man force Emil's eyes to the camera, the knowledge of the fact felt like a fistful of sand in the wind.
"Smile, darling, I like to watch these back"
Eden set her food down. She turns her back to the screen, looking for a volume button for the nth time.
A sickening crack.
She starts to count. First in Russian, then in English, finally in Spanish - she got to the twenty three before she realized, with a lurch of her stomach, what it was she was counting.
"Goodness… you're incredible…" The Man takes a step back, admiring his handiwork.
She's pacing now, hands tugging at her hair, the repetitive thud, thud, thud.
"Now then, darling, let's make this session useful." Emil spits blood near the Man's shoe. He's met with a sharp kick to the jaw.
She smiles lightly, proud. Stepping closer to the screen than she had in weeks.
"I can still let the guards in, for….aftercare, John. I suggest you cooperate. … You had a friend when you got here, a girl. What was her name, John."
Silence.
She fumbles, trying to find something, anything, for leverage. The screen is a seamless continuation with the wall. She takes the oatmeal, starting to smear sections of the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
"Come now, sweetheart, you don't owe her anything. She left you behind without a second's thought."
Again, nothing from Emil.
Eden braces herself.
"Have it your way. Don't say I didn't try." He leaves, the door soon filling with the figures of the security guards.
Eden covers her ears. It doesn't help.