XO Cassandra

*6*

They had let her write her letters, they even removed her from her padded room. She had been stuck in solitary confinement for a few weeks and they decided that since she had been doing better with her food they would give her a chance to do better with a little (definitely not a lot) freedom. They had put her in a room full of concrete walls and concrete floors, it was furnished with a twin bed, a coffee table, and bars on the single window. She knew it was better than what her current room had been, but she was still alone. After living in this room for several weeks they gave her another freedom, once a week she was given a single piece of paper and a safety pen. She had an hour to do whatever she wanted with the two objects, so of course she wrote to Nick. They would let her keep the paper, as long as it was locked away in a drawer on the coffee table, if she ever wanted to re-read a previous paper then her free hour would be spent doing that instead of writing a new one. Though it was little it was a lot to her, as long as she could talk to Nick she didn't need other people or a lot of normal activities.

She hadn't been back to her little Wonderland since she ran off into the woods during her last encounter; she hasn't even wandered there in her dreams. Hatter was probably mad at her, but she couldn't bring herself to want to go back; to her doctors this was a good sign, after she explained Wonderland and all of the people in it to the therapist that she met with once every other week she began to tell him about how Hatter had called her mad and how she was starting to believe him, the doctor was thrilled during her next visit when she told him that she hasn't been back and that she was even a little scared to go back. The doctor took this as her getting better, she took this as her getting better, but in reality it was only her getting worse. With no one to talk to she began to talk to herself, and when that bored her the voices in her mind would take over, on occasions the voices sounded like Nick, sometimes they even sounded like Hatter, and when they didn't sound like either of those they sounded like monsters, reminding her of all of the bad and making her forget that there was ever any good.

Once the voices began to take over the silence was when it became noticeable that she wasn't getting any better, and that something was changing. She started putting on a show, convincing them that she didn't need to be watched during her free hour, it took several weeks and a whole lot of acting but eventually they told her that she was allowed thirty minutes to herself with her paper and pen, but there would be a doctor and a guard standing right outside of her door so she couldn't fool around. She was grateful, and the moment they dropped off the objects and closed the door her mind would kick into overdrive. At first the cuts were painful, they scared her, and the fact that she was causing herself harm didn't bring her any relief but only concern. A few weeks into this and she welcomed the pain and the escape with open arms, with each new mark was a second without the voices. After several weeks she decided she couldn't cut her thighs anymore, at least not until the scars healed a little, so she cut her wrist, it was only one mark but it was enough to catch the doctor's attention. They couldn't figure out how she was making cuts with the two object, especially since the pen was safe and she couldn't have used it. Eventually they discovered that it was the paper, and so her free hour was replaced with an extra hour of therapy every day.

Weeks passed and she was eventually granted the freedom to write while sitting in therapy, of course she would take this freedom to write to Nick. She would spend hours upon hours each day thinking of him, thinking of how she had wasted her time to write to him cutting herself, she was beginning to regret each scar, eventually staring at the one on her wrist became too much... that's when she finally snapped.