There are voices - whisperings so quietly in my head that I can't hear a word they're saying, but I know they're talking.
There's pain, and it's a pain I so badly want to get rid of, but I don't know how. It makes breathing near impossible, and it's even harder to move without needing to vomit because it hurts too much. It's a torment that not even being tortured can dull.

Despite my wanting so badly to beg the man to stop breaking bones, words never form in my mouth, only screams. Screaming is the only way that I can convey any emotion, and even then it feels hollow.

The healer has been gentle as always. Telling me these grand stories that she sometimes makes me try and recite a summary to if my voice is stable enough for me to talk. Sometimes it isn't, and sometimes I wish it weren't if only so I didn't have to give the summaries. I just don't understand them.

I don't understand much aside from what the scratching sound of the door opening means. I don't understand much other than whose footsteps sound as they come closer, and I don't know who he is nor why he does what he does to me when no one else is close enough to hear, but...there's...something. Something more to him than any of the people the healer claims I know and love have.

He doesn't roll me over this time. Instead slides his back against the wall as he sits down, his legs outstretched by my head. For some reason, this seems a lot worse than when he unbuckles his belt. I want to see his face, but it hurts to move my head the most, so I don't. He never lets me face him when he's thrusting into me and part of me thanks him for it, but the other part - the part that now wants to curl into a ball and disappear into space, yells at me to take my last bit of strength to take two of the knives from his person and drive one into my own heart and the other into his.

Curiosity shoves aside the violent thoughts and has me studying his silhouette instead.

"Who are you?" I ask, utterly surprised at the fact that my mouth actually let me ask the question, though my voice is hoarse and scratches enough to make me go into a small and rather weak coughing fit. The healer wasn't able to heal them all the way, just enough to make the vaguest of sounds that just barely translate into words.

He waits until my throat settles to speak. "You don't remember." It's more of a statement than a question, so I don't answer. "How many times I've begged the Gods that they take your memories of me, and now that they have, I pray for them to return them. If only so you'd yell at me and tell me to get out."

"I could try to yell, but my voice seems to have left me with little of it to do so," I whisper, not wanting to land in more coughs that make my ribs feel like they're all broken and my stomach all twisted and torn. Even my toes hurt, though I'm more surprised that I can feel them than anything. Numbness usually creeps everywhere when I lay with no one but myself. The air's cold, sure, but my lack of feeling isn't due to that. I have enough sense to know that.

"I suppose I should be blaming no one else but myself for where we are now."

"Did you put us in here?" I ask, still curious as to who I am and why I'm here. Not even the healer's repetition of my name seems to have stayed with me.

"No," he answers. I try looking up at him at the tired roughness of his own voice, but my neck quietly asks me to stop, so I do. "I put us through hell."

"If this is not hell, then I do not wish to know nor remember what is."

"And I do not wish to make you relive that."

Neither of us continues, so I go back to listening to the voices in my head to see if I can hear what they're saying. Some seemed to have grown louder since he arrived, but I still can't seem to entirely make out what they say. Few seem angry, others are sorrowful or joyous. How can one hate the same person that makes them feel joyous? I suppose it has to do with this supposed hell he put us through, and if so, then no, I don't wish to know nor remember it.

"Why'd you do it? Put us through hell."

I feel his eyes fall on me. Unlike other times, his gaze doesn't feel like two hot spikes piercing my skin. It feels like...like a breeze. "I was a boy who had his heart broken and became greedy for it. All it took was for one man to offer me all I wanted, and I didn't blink when he turned my head."

"What did you lose?" I ask. He clearly must've lost something. Nothing of greed comes without an asking price, and seeing as it put us through hell, he had to have lost Elysium.

"You." This time I do shift my head to look at him, and I do my best to not let him see how much the small movement cost me.

I find his eyes no longer on me, but on my hand laying against the cold floor. The healer turned me onto my left side before leaving, though I have no clue why. My back would've been perfectly fine, if not easier to sustain. She gently put my left arm beneath my head, and I put my right palm on the ground in front of my stomach to keep me balanced. My arm has been shaking with the effort to keep me from falling forward, but I've become used to it, so I wasn't really conscious of it until right now.

"But I'm here," I point out, looking at his own hands laying limp in his lap. "With you. How is that considered losing me?" He still doesn't look me in the eyes, keeping his focus on my hand. "You may hurt me, but...I don't always feel the pain."

"You don't need to feel the pain for me to hear you scream, Clarrie."

I feel my forehead scrunch. "Is-is that my name? Clarrie?"

"No, I just call you that."

"Why?"

He hesitates, likely debating whether to tell me or not. "Because it used to make you blush and smile like an idiot." A shadow passes over his face, one that has the corners of his mouth twitching up and his eyes softening.

"And what did I call you that made you blush and smile like an idiot?" I ask, wanting to keep the younger look on his face for a little bit longer before they all go cold again.

"You used to call me Sir Willdred." The corner of his mouth twitches upward, but not enough to yield to even the smallest of smiles. "You said it used to make me sound like I was some kind of knight in shining armor."

A memory flies in my mind, but there are too many faces and voices and bodies within it to concentrate on it before it's gone again. Not much to hold onto, it seems, but I swear all the sounds were lower - male. Odd.

I look back up at him and squint, trying to match his voice to one that might've passed in the memory. My trials are met with failure, so I give up and remember what it is he said last.

"I'm not so sure about shining, but the Sir does make you sound like someone who hands out pastries to children." He huffs a laugh and goes back to looking straight ahead. The avoidance tugs at my chest and sinks my stomach. "Why don't you look at me?"

"Because if I look at you, then I'm going to see someone who looks at me with kindness and curiosity, and I don't deserve your kindness. I don't deserve much more than to be the one suffering, and I can't look you in the eyes when I know exactly what things I do to you – even if they're the last things I want to do and fight against with every breath."

It's not very bright in here, but having nowhere else to go, my eyes have adjusted well enough to see how the fire from the torches looks shinier in his eyes as they gather water. He doesn't let them fall, but the notion is enough. Some people think they deserve worse than what they're getting, and some believe they deserve better. I may not remember him, I may not remember what hell I had to go through for him to tell me that I did – that I should hate him, but I do know that someone who is stuck fighting their demons for half of their life doesn't deserve hell.

Their own head is a hell, there's no need to make everything else a hell too.

I may hate him somewhere within me, I may want to cut out his throat or stab his heart, but he's not the man I thought him to be. Sure his eyes can harden and his voice roughened into something animalistic, but what choice does he have when there's someone else with the devil's eyes and the Gods' power hovering over him? What choice would I have if the roles were switched? The answer is none because when you're demons whisper in your ear the temptations that you're supposed to ignore, you don't ignore them. When your desires get the best of you and you grasp onto them for dear life, you don't think about the fact that you just surrendered to the worse part of yourself.

I may not remember anything aside from what has happened since I woke up, but sometimes you need to see things through a new pair of eyes to see the truth. Sometimes you need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to understand why they are the way they are. We can't criticize and decide to hate or love someone based on a few actions of their past when we don't understand the whole reason why they did it or what made them who they are.

He put us through hell after he got his heart broken. Who am I to say that a broken heart is no reason to do something irrational? Who am I to tell him that his actions were an injustice, when in his mind, and in his experience, his decision was made because of how he cracked his heart? I may not understand love or lust now, but I understand that people's evil is not the person. He may tear my skin and snap my bones, but I haven't been one to not notice how he never looks me in the eyes when he does it. He doesn't touch me longer than necessary, and despite the times he lays me on my stomach, my own tears aren't the only ones that are shed.

I know that this is going to hurt, but I can swallow the bile that rises in my throat, just this once. Repositioning my right hand, I use it to keep myself stable as I slide my left arm out from beneath my head, and roll onto my stomach. I have to stop for a moment to catch my breath and try to calm my shaking muscles, but then I force myself to keep moving. I manage to get my right knee beneath me, my arms barking as I lift the top half of my body. I try really hard to keep myself from crying out in agony when I bring my left leg up next to my right, but I fail. It forces me to take another minute to settle, and then slowly bring my knees up closer to my hands, closer to his side, biting my lip until it bleeds to try and distract myself from everything else.

Taking a deep breath, I focus on keeping myself from fainting as I sit on the ground, bring my legs forward and up, and then wrap my arms around them before I fall backward. For a minute I think that I will end up rolling back like an egg, but my muscles surprisingly keep me sitting upright. Now it's just a matter of blinking fast and clearing my vision.
When I open my eyes and can finally see again, I still find him not looking at me. Gods this boy is hard to work with.

"How much did that hurt?" He asks. His jaw shifts, the faint sound of his teeth grating against one another matching the movement.

"Not much more than it hurt laying down." That's a lie and I can tell that he knows it, but he still nods. "How much does it hurt for you to be here?" I question in return.

"Less than you, but more than last time." I can't remember the last time we talked, but I nod nonetheless, knowing all too well what the pain in his head feels like.

I look at him, watching the torchlight dance around the planes of his face. His cheeks are hallowed, his eyes dull yet speaking so many words at the same time. Even if they're not looking at me I can still see them. They remind me of the quiet voices in my head. The scar, however, makes my chest tighten. I can't tell if it's out of fear, nerves, or something else. It must've been from whatever hell he went through. Our hell.

But beside that tightening feeling is a cold and sharp feeling that gets worse the longer I look at him and he stares at the opposite wall. I don't know what part of me is speaking now. It's all mixed and tangled and mush, but that feeling gets worse as the silence drags on.

"Look at me." He doesn't, so I unlatch my fingers and attempt at scooting closer to him. I get all of three inches at best, but my body can't do much more without tilting over and gully giving up. "Look. At. Me."

"I can't-"

"You won't," I snap back. The anger in my voice threatens to send me coughing again, but I hold my breath and shove it down.

"No. I won't." Anger slicks his own voice, but it doesn't scare me this time. "I don't want to, and I told you why."

"And it's a fucking dumb reason." His head turns to look at me, but he catches himself and closes his eyes before they can meet mine. My chest stings again and this time I know what it is. The feeling of betrayal. It burns my eyes. "Why are you afraid of me?"

"Because I'm afraid of what I'll do if I do look at you."

I shake my head. "You're afraid that you'll look at my lips rather than my eyes, and that that will change you into the monster you believe yourself to be."

"I am a monster!" he yells. The volume of it has me flinching. He sees it and throws his head back against the stone wall with a thick thud. This time I wince, but not for me, for him and what kind of pain the sharp motion could've caused him. I suddenly find myself wanting to reach up and touch his scalp to make sure there's no blood, but I keep my hands around my legs and shake my head at his closed eyes. My anger returns like a lion, only it's not at him, but for him.

"And what does a monster look like? When you hear the word monster, what's the first image that pops into your head? Sharp teeth? Long claws? Red and black eyes with two slits for a nose? Why is that those must be the characteristics of a monster and not the characteristics of a forgotten definition of beauty?"

"If you had your memory, you wouldn't be saying such things."

"If I had my memory, I wouldn't have been able to see how much pain you yourself have felt. I would've dismissed it for roleplay, and I would've likely played along."

"I'd prefer it that way."

"I wouldn't."

Finally, his eyes find mine. I can see how he struggles to hold my stare, and though it's a struggle we share, I don't look away either. It's not hard to look at him because I don't want to look at his lips, - which I don't – but because a dozen images just went through my head rather than just one. They're small and of no way beneficial to recovering my memory, but it still hurts to know that of all the things the healer has told me, he's the only one who's brought up more things than all of them combined.

"Was that so hard?" I ask, trying to fill in the awkward silence that filled the room.

The fear in his eyes shutters away, leaving them soft and vulnerable. "I'm sorry," he whispers.

"Me too." I don't know what we're apologizing for, but it just seemed right to do so. His eyes drift down to my hands again, and I finally piece together what it is he wants. I don't hesitate to allow it and bring my hand towards his own. He flinches away. I find his eyes and understand the words not spoken.

I don't want to hurt you.

"You won't."

This time he doesn't flinch when I touch his hand. My softer skin slides against his rough and scratchy palms. My curiosity kicks in again and I feel around the calluses, facing his palm up so I can look at them and search for more answers. I do want more answers, but right now, more than anything, I just want something more than pain, but less than what was undoubtedly planned for us.
It's my turn to ask him a silent question. I watch as his jaw works out the debate for him. Fear returns to his gaze, but he seems to shove it away and nods before the other side can push back harder.

I let my other arm fall from around my knees when he carefully grabs the back of my ankles and pulls them across his lap. I don't bite my lip or close my eyes against the ache as he pulls me closer, tucking me into his side. I just rest my head against his shoulder, let his embrace keep me from falling, and close my eyes praying to the Gods and their Saints that we'll both be out of this hell soon.

"How long?" I ask after a long while.
I can feel my body already getting heavier as sleep starts to cover me like a blanket. It's why I ask. I don't want to fall asleep if time is short. His heartbeat against my ear hasn't sped up or faltered once since I started listening to it like a lullaby. I think it's the calmest it's ever been, but I can't say for sure. It has slowed though, just as my own has. He'll fall asleep too eventually.

"Not today," he states quietly.

I set a hand on his chest and push against it to sit up and search his eyes for the darkness that overtakes him. "But-"

He shakes his head, stopping me. "He's had his fun and I'm tired of it."

"You can't-"

"Stop worrying, Clarrie - please," he begs when I go to argue once more. Tired as I am myself, I could easily force sleep away to continue to argue against his clearly set mind. I want to argue about it, but I know what it's costing him to be here and I know where it'll likely land him.

He gives me a pleading look. It's a disheartening look, but I have desperations of my own, including wanting to have at least one good memory when all the other ones have disappeared and left me with nothing but the bad. My own selfish desires win in the end just as my stomach muscles start to give out from holding me upright. I situate back into his side and chew on the inside of my lip while listening to his heart once more and watching his chest rise and fall. I wonder what it feels like - to always be fighting even when your body is asleep. I begin to come up with different answers that keep my eyes open and curious. A thing that doesn't go unnoticed by him.

His arms wrap tighter around me, pulling me closer to his warmth that feels good against the briskness of the room that always clings to my thinly and barely clothed body.

"Go to sleep, Clarrie. No monsters will haunt you tonight."

Hoping that the Gods will take pity on both of us, I close my eyes and fall asleep to the sound of his heart doing the same.