scars do heal

5. 92 days

Pain. It was an interesting concept. To some, it was unbearable. To others, it was a release. The slashing of skin, or the tightness around a throat, or the snap one could feel in their ankle when slipping on ice. Everyone felt pain differently. It all depended on what sort of pain you wanted to feel. Did you want to feel a release from your trauma, from your troubles? Did you want to punish yourself for something out of your control? Or did you just want to feel something? Anything? When it was in your control, pain felt different. You knew your own limits, you knew when to stop, you knew when you should stop but you kept going until it exhausted you and the pain felt so little you needed to up the pressure to make sure you could still experience what it felt like.

But when it was out of your control...that was a different story. You couldn't control how deep the knife pierced into your skin. You couldn't stop the hand that beat your face and body until your skin felt like a giant painted bruise. You couldn't tell yourself it would all be over after this last time.

Pain.

It was an interesting concept.

You would know. It was all you had felt for the past ninety-two days.

-

The same four walls. The same distinct three cracks that spanned from floor to ceiling on the wall with the door. The door was steel, dented, scratched. Fingernail scratches. People had been here before you. But the blood splatter on the floor in front of you, you don't think it ended well for them.

Wetting your lips with your tongue, you felt how cracked they were, bloodied from the men that repeatedly came in here like clockwise to beat you senseless. Your right cheek was painful to the touch, a small bump on your cheekbone had made itself present there a few days ago and hadn't seemed to go down since. Your fingernails were bloody and chewed to within an inch of their existence from when you first came to this place. The clothes you wore, you didn't know how you'd gotten them. They must have dressed you whilst you were unconscious, which made your skin crawl.

A pair of tan trousers and a white oversized shirt clung to your body, your feet adorned with boots. Rusted, scuffed black boots with your own blood dried on the soles from when you had paced the floor of the confines of your prison. There was no window, no way of knowing what time of the day it was. Or where you even were. You could hear nothing outside, no people or birds or traffic or anything. You were stuck. Lost. Wiped off the face of the earth.

Where were your team? Were they alive? Were they looking for you still? Did they even think you were alive? The thought of it brought so much stress to you, it was going to start making your hair fall out. God, you hoped they were alive, and that they'd gotten out safely.

But without Hassan. Fucking Hassan. You'd overheard the soldiers speaking while you were in the room when they'd first brought you here. An English soldier from the 141, they didn't expect you to speak Persian. But you did, thankfully. You praised yourself internally for taking classes before being flown out here to join the 141.

They'd spoken of how Hassan had escaped the British soldiers, how he'd ordered for the sniper to be captured as leverage. You. They had you now.

You thought after a couple weeks at most that they would kill you. But here you were. Ninety-two days later, still in this fucking room. They'd tried everything to get you to reveal the location of Alejandro's base. More recently they'd turned to hosing you with freezing water and leaving you to shiver and shake in a metal chair for hours. They were losing their touch. First, it was deep slashes to your legs and arms and face. Now water. They were running out of ideas. Eventually, they were just going to kill you and cut their losses. They would destroy every part of the world if they had to.