I wanted to bite the words out of my mouth. Why the fuck was I talking about this? The past was a wound. The past didn’t heal.
I slammed the brakes on that train of thought, voice sharpening.
“Anyway. Don’t get any ideas. Just bored as hell and needed to kill the silence.”
I risked a glance at her. She’d lifted her face just enough that I could see the shine on her cheek, maybe a tear, maybe just sweat. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her wrist was shaking.
“You don’t have to…” she started, voice ragged. She cleared her throat, tried again. “You don’t have to pretend.”
That stung. Deep.
“Pretend what?” My words snapped like bone. “That there’s any point to this? That we’re getting out?”
Her jaw tightened. I recognized that set to her mouth.
“You…you didn’t have to say that stuff,” she mumbled at last.
I grinned, humorless. “Why not? You said it yourself once. We’re both just bad memories in the making. No point fighting it.”
She huffed out an unsteady breath. I could see goosebumps on her arms, even from this distance. The cold sank in, deep as marrow.
I pressed my palm to the glass, the way you might press a hand to a grave.
“You ever wonder if people like us are just born wrong?” The words came out bleak, a flat fact. “Like, maybe there’s a glitch in the code. Some people get love and safety. Some get cages. Some get glass walls and freaks with knives.”
She didn’t answer. But I knew she was listening.
The quiet swelled. Thickened. It was almost comforting, in a sick way.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “Maybe it’s just…bad luck. Maybe we both just got unlucky.”
For some reason, I wanted to laugh. I wanted to break something. Instead, I slumped against the far wall, exhaustion stretching me thin.
I said: “When we get out of here, we should wreck his goddamn house.”
She startled, a reluctant smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. “You think we’re getting out?”
I bared my teeth, all challenge. “We’re not dying down here. Not without turning the tables first.”
That felt like a promise. I hated the hope in it.
I forced myself to look at her, even with all the bruises she was still here. Still fighting. Not dead yet.
“We’ll make it hurt,” I murmured. “For everything he did to us.”
For what he did to you, I almost added. But that would have been too much. Too fucking sentimental.
I let the silence fill back in.
Eventually, she whispered, “You think we’ll remember all this? After?”
I considered that. Rolled it around in my head.
“The bad shit, yeah,” I said. “Never goes away. But maybe the rest, too.” My voice got softer, more dangerous: “The parts where we kept each other sane, even for a second.”
I regretted it as soon as it left my mouth.
I threw a punch at the air, tried to kill the softness before it grew mold.
