thinking in letters

     At first, she thinks it is a corpse. Blood covers him - covers him, dripping puddles at his feet and staining his ragged pants, sharply red against pallid skin. He hangs limply from the shackles that hold him to the wall, shackles that cut into his wrists and leave ugly purple bruises. He must be dead, she thinks, as no one could survive the torment his body has gone through - but then his face flinches as her light leaks through the bars. 

     She glances away, towards the open path ahead. She thinks of sunlight on her face, of breathing air untainted by the taste of blood. You don’t even have the strength to heal him - what will you do? Carry him out on your shoulders?

     For a shameful moment, she considers that empty hallway.

     No. 

     That is not the person she is, and she will not let this place change her. Because for all that Cyrelian thinks he’s broken her, she is not a flower that wilts in frost. She is more than his victim, more than what has been done to her. She was a whole person before she came here, and her scars will not dictate her persona. The things that have happened to her body have no power to change her heart. 

     She will not allow them that power. Unbroken, she has escaped her cage; unchangeable, she stands above her torment. Mara’s compassion still swells within her, locked deep in places Cyrelian cannot reach. Compassion does not depend on results. Even if she cannot save this man, she cannot fail to try.

     The lock on his cell is as old and rusted as what had been on hers. She clicks it open with the same method, then clips her hair pins to the neckline of the ragged shift they'd give her as prison garb. The door creaks as it opens and he flinches again, but does not have the strength to look up.

     She moves to the shackles - they are newer, more complicated than the door locks. Closer now, she can see that the man is very large, with rippling muscles that would make a Nord warlord blush. But his whole body sags weakly now, and whatever prowess he has drains into coagulating puddles below. Tangles of black hair obscure his face, but even there, she can see the outline of bruises and irregular lumps of swelling.

     “I’ll kill … I’ll kill you …”

     A low rumble in his throat; the light, she realizes, is pulling him out of unconsciousness. She tries to speak but the words crack on her ragged throat. At the sound of her failed murmur, he tilts his head and sees her for the first time. Between sweat-clumped locks of black hair, bright red eyes stare up at her.

     “Star… Starlight? This a trick? Won’t … won’t help you … When I … when I get out of here … I’ll kill you all myself.”

     “It’s not a trick,” she whispers. Her voice is so weak, she barely recognizes it as her own. “I’m here to help.”

     He tries to laugh, but all that comes up is a cough, wet with blood that flecks his lips. The look in his eyes is like a snared wolf - panicked, paranoid, pained.

     “And why’s that, Starlight?” He smiles, though it looks more like a sneer. “Soft touch’ll work where a lash don’t?”

     He doesn’t trust her. Why should he? If she hadn’t been able to heal herself through the torture, she’d be half delirious with pain, too. But there is no time to convince him and she hasn’t the energy for it anyways. She reaches for his shackles and slides a hair pin into the lock.

     Closer now, he can get a better look at her. He must see the ragged shift she’s wearing, threadbare with tearing and stiff from her own blood. He must see the dark circles under her eyes and the scabbed nail beds of her dominant hand. He must see how she is freezing and weak, so scared of being caught that she cannot stop her hands from shaking.

     He must see all this, because then he whispers: “Wait …”

     Her hands are half-numb; her finger slips, and her hair pin drops to the cold floor. She mutters a curse unbecoming of a priestess.

     “You’re not with the Thalmor, are you?”

     The locks on the shackles are too advanced, beyond whatever lessons she’d learned in her youth. She turns away, looking across the bleak cell.

     “Wait - get me free from here, before more come.”

     “I’m not leaving you here,” she whispers back, eyes searching frantically for something to help. “I’m - we’re - the same.” She frowns; she is usually better with words.

     Taking the risk with the light is made worth it when she sees a familiar shape on a box at the far side of the cell. Laid out next to an arrangement of bloody torture implements is, thank Mara, a key. She collects it, but when she turns back she finds his head hanging limp once again.

     “Hey, no, no,” she hisses, stumbling over numb toes to return to his side. “Stay with me. Let me just - if I can get you down I can heal you, but you have to hold on.”

     Silence. It makes her heart thud painfully in her chest. But then there’s a grumble in his throat and the wheezing sound of trying to breathe through a coming cough. Which means he’s breathing, at least, though she can’t know for how much longer.

     “Heal me,” he whispers, thick with disbelief. “That’s a special gift you have. An’ this … Isn’t a trick?”

     Relief floods her; she hasn't lost him yet. Maybe if he’s strong enough to be sarcastic then he’s strong enough to keep breathing. She brushes some of his hair back, inspecting his face. There is a distant look in his strange red eyes, a dilation of his pupils that suggests a head injury. He’s delirious, weak from blood loss, possibly in shock. If he passes out - he might not wake up again.

     “What’s your name?” She asks to keep him talking, keep him conscious. Her clumsy fingers work the key into the first shackle. “Why are you here?”

     His eyes rove her face with a sort of madness that can only come on the brink of death. She thinks of a snared wolf again - one who is cautiously electing not to bite her just yet.

     “Kaidan,” he whispers. “My name is Kaidan.” Through the blood and the bruises, she thinks she sees a smile. “The Thalmor invited me to high tea. And what about you, Starlight? You my dance partner for the-“ he chokes on the joke; his body jumps with wet coughs that sprinkle the prison floor with blood.

     The first shackle comes loose and he falls against her, only failing to knock her over due to the one arm still attached to the wall.

     “Hold steady,” she whispers, almost directly into his ear. “Almost there.”