Captive || Desertgourd & Spikes-and-shadows
The ceiling leaked. Its constant, steady dripping for hours on end curdled Gaara's stomach like rotted milk and set him in a sour mood to start, but with nothing to distract himself save for three walls of steel bars and one of concrete, the boy settled for dragging his bare foot along the ground and inventing patterns in the ceiling. For hours he could sit like this, dry-mouthed and dead-eyed, and for hours he would have done so if the creaking of the prison door did not catch his attention.
Deviating from the schedule was near unheard of, but his internal clock informed him that two hours remained until meal time, and another hour after that until evening rounds. A new prisoner - or so Gaara assumed from the shackles scraping the ground like nails on a board - fit neither status quo, and with nothing else to deliver him from boredom, he shifted forward and to the left on his rear; this allowed him vantage of the corridor (while inching away from the dreaded plip-plop sound in the corner).
The boy shoved along by two bull-headed suits appeared his age, perhaps a year or two his elder, but stood no more a chance against their government captors than he. Like a rodent in a pet store, he watched the newcomer be led past his own cell and shoved in the one beside it.
Gaara crawled forward on long-dirtied hands and knees, then sat back on his haunches. What a strange specimen. Was he .. like him? With powers? Or just another soul stashed away in the underground depths of no-man's-land for an unknown reason, never to see light again?
Perhaps staring hard enough would reveal a clue.