Of Cages and Misery

[Byron]

Pain. Piercing through her leg as if somebody had decided to break her ankle multiple times in a row. Slowly, but surely it pulled her out of the bizarre dreams she had had only minutes ago. She couldn’t quite remember them, but what she could remember made her absolutely sure she was happy to not remember the other bits. It had been a rather violent dream, including shots fired, people collapsing on the ground, and still could she hear it in the distance: the eerie death song of a child, weeping somewhere in the distance and shrilling through Elena’s ears like the alarm bell next to her bed. Checking her hurting lips, she realized they were bleeding. Suddenly, the taste of iron was on the tip of her tongue.

Her head was throbbing heavily, and she could feel a warm, viscous fluid running down her forehead and cheeks. The pain was tenebrant, as if her head had been a drill’s testbed. At least it did some good, as it temporarily managed to deaden every single of her self-destructive thoughts. Her mind was clear, a most unusual circumstance. Only the pain she perceived swirled around there. Blinkingly she opened her eyes, trying to find out the lie of the land. The world around her was spinning like crazy, and everything she could see – which was not much either – was vaguely blurred.

Albeit her vain attempts to get her head straight, she couldn’t hear herself think – the pain was drowning out any of her cogitations, like a high-pitched siren. Her heart was pounding frantically against her chest and the shaky ground she was lying on.

She heard people talk. At first she couldn’t understand any meaning behind them, but with time passing she slowly began to grasp what it was all about. “You mo- … how do you plan to negotiate when she already looks dead to me?” she could hear a voice say in the distance. Still, she was only half back to reality, and so it would take its amount of time for her to understand what he meant? No matter how much she tried to remember what had happened beforehand, she could only bring back fragments of memories. Somebody had put a gun on her neck, that’s what she still knew. How she had ended up on the floor like this, and what that penetrating pain in her leg was – no idea.

For now, she kept quiet. Her deeper instincts told her a wrong move and she could be dead, as she didn’t know at whose mercy she was right at the moment. Best was to just act as if she hadn’t awoken yet, no matter how much she would have liked to gasp for air. Instead she held her breath, to not utter the slightest peep that could have given her away.

One of the persons talking had to be Mason, she realized. His voice was a bit farther away, or at least farther than the other male voice. Judging from the sound, he had to be right next to her, somewhere in the room. They were obviously discussing something. Elena didn’t get the content though. Unobtrusively she tried to move her right foot, the one that was hurting so badly, only to come to the realization that it hurted severely. Clenching her teeth, she had to suppress a hissing sound as she inhaled sharply, but hopefully silently enough for whoever-this-guy-was to not hear it.

She began to panick. There had to be some way out, but whatever this bastard had done to her, walking was absolutely out of question. Without moving her head, she opened her eyes and eyeballed at her legs. A puddle of blood, establishing itself beneath her ankle. For a second, she believed to see a small figure standing right in the puddle, but it dissipated quickly. Shit!, she thought to herself and squinshed her eyes shut. If she could need something the least, it was her imaginations going wild again. Not right now.

Still not allowing herself to gasp, she opened her eyes again and looked round without any unnecessary motion of her head. Right next to her was another pair of legs. Were they also just imagination? How much could she trust her own senses at this point? God dammit, she thought, feeling like she was running out of time. She didn’t know who this guy was, neither what limb he would shoot next. She affected not letting it come to that.

She pushed the pain back into a corner of her head for a moment, and decided to make a move. The guy’s voice sounded as if he was busy with discussing things with Mason, so she found it to be the right moment to dare something. It wasn’t well thought-out and quite harum-scarum, but she didn’t care. Either she succeeded with this, or she would be dead, probably. But if anything, she wanted to get out of this situation. While she kept a weather eye on the legs beside her, she carefully began to slide over the ground, as fluently as possible to not draw his attention. Inwardly, she prayed for him to not, under any circumstances, look down.

Then she was in a good position to strike, and from the guy’s reaction it seemed he had not yet noticed her to be awake. “Nah, that wasn’t what we agreed on. I’d rather keep my only gun,” he told in the meantime. Elena bit her lip. Eat shit and die, she mumbled to herself under her breath and laced into his legs. Grabbing hold of them with her hands, she made the gripe as strong as she could, and at one go sent the guy flying towards the ground.

It was a full-blown success. Not only did he hit the ground as harshly as one could imagine, but he also lost hold of the gun in his hand. It fell down on the floor thrummingly, bouncing off multiple times until it came to a dead stop apart from the conflagrating fighting ground. Still, after some moments during which he had to come to his senses, he tried to reach for the gun again. If he got it again, it would be game-over. Merely being driven by survival instinct by now, she tried to gain the upper hand over her opponent now. Seeing as how he tried to reach for the gun, she grabbed him by his shirt and tried to pull herself above him. Puffs and groans would slip her burst lips while she clenched her teeth together, in an attempt to ignore the pain, yet it was slowly coming up again and confounded her once more. Out in the hallway she could hear steps at a fast pace, almost running.

The picture of the man she was fighting against was only blurry to her, as the sudden moves had made her head spin again. All she saw was a rather fit, yet dishevelled man. No matter how much she tried to hold him back, he somehow managed to stretch for the gun lying on the floor, immediately rolling over to aim at Elena. Before he could aim at her though, she already reached out with her hand, giving him a punch in his face. It made his trigger finger itch, and so his gun let loose of another bullet that dashed against the wall milliseconds after. With a start, she couldn’t keep herself from recoiling slightly, which gave the man room to finally level the weapon at her.

That was when their eyes met for the first time. She, with blood that was dripping down her face and her brown hair chaotically falling into her face. He, with an expression that turned into the epitome of remorse and confusion, his eyebrows raised to the max. "Voigt?" he asked in disbelief, then a sigh slipped his lips and he mumbled something out of Elena’s earshot. Slowly he lowered his gun and rolled over onto his back and took a deep breath.

With clenched teeth and a pained mien on her face, she attempted to make another leap forward to punch the gun out of his hands again. Worked up into a frenzy, her mind viscerally considered this a death-feud. It was the wrong foot with which she tried to push herself up. A loud cry shrilled the same second, and she collapsed on the floor again, convulsing her body, holding her injured ankle. With a face contorted with pain, she looked up again, ready to glimpse into the barrel of a gun. Instead, she saw this face all of a sudden, and it dumbfounded her completely. Eyes and mouth wide opened, she would stare at him, dismay writ in her face. "What? Cross?!" she asked in a slurred manner, as her lips seemed inert. A sigh that had a tang of relief slipped her mouth. Afterwards she laid her bleeding front against the floor again, one hand at the ankle, the other at her banging head. Right now, she just felt like throwing up.