Cinders [Completed]

Chapter 54: Homesickness

//tw: gore, body horror//

Even though I've seen this hallway before, the first steel door I open is empty. It looks identical to Orion's, with hooks on the walls for chains. I close the door tightly.

The next two are the same, but the third is locked. I shove up against it twice, running at it with my shoulder tight to my body, and finally the lock breaks under me, and I'm in the room.

The lights are off, drenching the area in complete darkness. At first, I don't even recognize it, without the dim, swinging fluorescents; but it is the room from my nightmares.

A figure is hidden in the shadows, arms bound to chains attached to the walls. The figure is half-naked, exposing a series of violent marks across his entire body, which is covered in dirt and blood. Even as the light from the hall falls across him, he doesn't raise his head or give the smallest indication that he is alive, let alone conscious.

But it's him.

Orion. My Orion.

He looks so broken.

His dark hair is matted with blood. His cheek and top lip are swollen into a beaten, bruised mass. His russet skin, usually so glowing and golden, has paled almost beyond recognition, leaving his cheeks and eye sockets with a purple sort of pallor.

It takes a moment before my body will move.

"Orion," I try to say, but my voice is empty of sound.

I almost trip as I run towards him.

"Orion! Orion!"

I kneel down so that I'm at his eye level, but he still doesn't respond. My hands hover above his face, horrified to make contact with his injuries.

His injuries, which are so much worse up close. He's too still - is he even breathing?

"Please be alive," I sob.

Gently, I press my hand to his throat, feeling for a pulse.

At my touch, Orion finally raises his head, ever so slightly.

"Ow," he wheezes.

"Orion!" I've never cried so much in my life. I wipe the tears away from my eyes quickly, upset that they obscure my vision of him. Without even thinking, I lift my arms and embrace him.

"Lee?" he asks, uncertain, "Lee - Lee - !"

I press my hands across his back. I can feel how my touch numbs the pain across his body, but I can still feel the burning in his hands.

"You're going to be okay," I try to say through the sobs racking my chest. I move towards the chains on his right wrist and, without thinking about it, start pulling on them.

"Don't," he protests, his voice still so weak that I can barely hear it.

The chains begin burning my fingertips, but I still tug at them, hysteria ruling over logic. I know that I don't have the strength to break him out, but I can't do nothing. The wolfsbane burns.

"Lee," Orion mumbles, his voice slipping away.

"No, no, no no no," I say, and I abandon the chains and place my hands on his face. His head lolls to the side, his body slumping forwards.

"No," I cry, my voice pitchy and weak. "Orion, Orion, wake up. It's me. It's Lee."

They had shorn his hair. It was cut with recklessness in patchy, uneven strokes, so that some of it is nearly bald and some is long and tangled. I still trace my hand through it, hoping that he would feel me, hoping that somehow, just like those mornings long ago, he would wake to my touch and smile.