Rookery ~ Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Chapter Fifty Six

My lips cracked more and more with every movement. My tongue didn't sit properly in my mouth due to the dryness surrounding it. Growling, my stomach warned me that if I didn't eat soon, there was a chance I wouldn't survive. I was exhausted. It was difficult to sleep when I was trapped in a cell with an insane murderer outside the door.

He would often come in to see me and his handiwork. My bruised, puffy eyelid of my left eye made me look pathetic - he liked that. It made it seem as if he had won. He would threaten me. Showed me the freshly sharpened blade of a knife, held it to my right eye, then quickly pulled it away, left and locked the door.

There was hay on the floor, something I was allergic to. I had rashes and bumps all up my arms, legs and face. Plus, it wasn't fresh hay. It stank of urine from whoever had stayed here before me. Anything not covered with hay was just a slab of concrete - not the most comfortable when you are trying to get to sleep. Plus, concrete doesn't absorb urine. I was constantly making piles of hay to piss in so that my surroundings weren't too filthy.

And then I faced my son. His boyish attitude had completely disappeared in here. He had nothing to play with and no friends to talk to. Only me, his father. I could tell he felt lonely and isolated. He had idolised me, but I had ruined that when we got locked up in here by the Ripper. He simply wanted basically nothing to do with me. He would sit in the corner all day, mumbling to himself or having fake conversations with people who were neither there nor real. Elias had never had any imaginary friends. Now, within the space of a month, he had sixteen of them.

We would cuddle up for warmth at night. I would drape my arms over him and he would huddle into a ball and lean into my chest. My undershirt was folded to make a pillow and I used my jacket as a blanket for the two of us. Of course, neither of us wanted to be so close to each other, not when neither of us had bathed for a month, but it had to be done to stay alive. Any fat on our bodies had worn away due to lack of food. We were starving. We were desperate.

Whenever I couldn't sleep, I shed my jacket, wrapped it around Elias and walked to the other side of the cell in nothing but my vest, trousers and boots. I took off my left boot and reached into the bottom of it. There, lying at the very bottom, was a small sheet of fabric. Underneath that, however, was a photograph. A four months pregnant Carina Faraday in a wedding dress, having only become a 'Frye' just seven minutes earlier, stood beside a sloppy looking version of me. The woman beside me was completely different from the person I had fallen in love with. At the age of twenty one, she had been a boisterous, broken, grief-stricken young lady. She hadn't a single care in the world. Her only goal in life at that point was to survive. However, when I married her three years later, she had changed so very much. She was a glamourous woman with such charm and wit that only most people could dream of having. I admired her free spirit and her will to do things. She became stubborn. She stopped caring about herself and focused on her family. The child growing inside of her gave her a new future. Her husband, me, Jacob Frye, gave her hope. And the peace in London gave her somewhere to raise her child without fear.

Tears began to well in my eyes as I ran my fingers over the paper. She was so beautiful. Even though the photo only showed browns, greys and white, I could almost see the exact captivating blue colour of her eyes. They were such an important feature on her face - my favourite feature on her entire body - and I always remembered them. Those delicate orbs were like a sea of crystals which I often found myself drowning in. There was no better place to drown.