One Heart

34. I will never be yours

"You need to eat."

Sorah sat in the chair, her wrists tethered to the sides and her chest strapped, ensuring she didn't pull out her IV line. As with prior attempts, she refused to acknowledge her captor. She had retreated into herself, escaping reality, replaying every memory she had of Kensie a million times over. Two days had passed since she woke up. Two days spent with the insane blonde never leaving her side. She knew she should fight, to try and find some way of removing the insidious poison they were pumping through her body, but she couldn't bring herself to try. She could find nothing worth fighting for and had every intention of giving up and retreating into her mind, to the only world where Kensie still existed.

A voice in the back of her mind told her Kensie was still alive, that she was looking for her in that very moment. But the more dominant thought in her mind was to believe Alyssa. How else could she have pried the twin swords away from her or have known about the promise. Kensie was too good a fighter to ever let someone take her blade, let alone both and the belt. It would be impossible for an enemy to get that close unless she couldn't fight back.

She pushed against those thoughts, fighting them as hard as she could and replacing them with ones of hope. Perhaps Kensie had taken the belt off for some reason. Then another insidious thought burrowed its way in and taunted her. Even without her weapons, Kensie still would have defeated Alyssa and taken the blades back. Every thought she let into her mind poisoned the rest till they were blanketed by a thick cloud of pessimism.

No. There was no possible way Kensie was alive.

"Fine." Alyssa sighed and placed the bowl on the table. "I'll have them add nutrients to your IV." She stood and walked to the window. "I'm not sure what it will take for you to acknowledge me, Sorah. I'm not going to let you waste away, you mean too much to me."

"I mean too much to you? Me? To you?" Sorah's rage bubbled to the surface. "Is that painful for you, Alyssa? Would losing me be painful for you?" Alyssa moved to comfort her then stepped back when the torrent of angry words continued. "Imagine having your body, mind, and soul so intertwined with another that you have no idea what is you, and what is them." Alyssa opened her mouth to speak when Sorah interrupted. "Imagine your entire entity being interwoven with theirs in an intricate mingling of threads, all dependent and tangled up in one another. Then imagine having that person ripped from you so that every single one of those threads snaps. You can't simply untangle something like that. It doesn't work that way! So don't tell me that I mean a thing to you until you can fathom what I have just described!"

She clenched her eyes shut and forced the warm, salted tears to retreat back to where they came from. She was queen. They had seen enough of her weakness. She forced herself to remember that even if she forgot how to be Sorah, she must never forget that she was their queen. The solitary, optimistic thought stood tall amongst the dark tendrils that tried to force it beneath the surface.

She wondered how long it would be before it too succumbed and allowed the current to drive it deep beneath the surface.

Sorah fell into a pattern. She would sleep upright, shackled to the chair, and when she woke, she would thrash about, resisting Alyssa as she attempted to bathe her. Sometimes she would express her frustration, spitting in her captor's face. Other times she would give up, resigned to her fate.

She spent her days staring at the wall, cocooned in her fantasy world. Her mind swam in her memories. Any time spent fully conscious and fully aware felt far too bright for her. Every sound, every sensation or light pained her. She retreated deep within herself, pretending that her captor was merely a nightmare. That the real world was fiction, and that her fantasy was reality.