Set Me Free

"I believe him"

"Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day."

I don't say anything, there are no words to respond to what he's admitted.

"I knew they were going to kidnap someone, I knew that she would be someone's daughter and there was nothing I could do to stop it." He hangs his head in shame, breaking the eye contact that we had bonded.

"It's not your fault," I say. I wasn't expecting to say this. Up until this point, he was one of the bad guys, one of my captors. Now, I don't know how to think of him.

He looks up at me and smiles. I can't help but smile back. It's not my usual smile, full of happiness and joy. It's strained and I think he knows this. His smiles turns sad as he notices.

"So Elizabeth, tell me about yourself," he says, settling back against the wall to get comfortable.

"What do you think this is, a bonding exercise? I don't think we're here to get to know each other," I can't help but bite back. I was angry and sometimes it was hard for me to control this, even if it was aimed at someone who was just trying to make light conversion. There was nothing light and fluffy about what was going on here. The situation was dark and scary and should be treated as such.

He face changes as I snap this, hanging his head as he hears the anger in my voice.

I almost feel bad for him.

"I was just trying to take your mind off it I guess," he sighs, directing his words at the floor instead of me.

"You can't," I admit, "you can make all the polite conversation in the world, ask me question after question about me and my life but it won't change the fact that I'm here." I feel tears roll down my cheeks and once again I don't do a thing to remove them. "I just want to go home."

He looks at me, watching as the tears fall and roll down my cheeks. He moves slightly, almost as if he is planning to make a move to comfort me. He stops himself, lying back against the wall and staring at the ceiling. I'm glad of this, I don't think it would help me to be comforted by him right now.

"We could play cards," he suggests after a minute of silence, pulling out a tattered deck from his back pocket. I look at him in disbelief that after I shot him down once before, he's still trying to make me interact with him.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be that doesn't involve a prison cell?" I ask him curiously, wondering why he was choosing to sit here with me when he had to power to go where ever he wanted. A power that had been denied to me.

"My whole life is a prison cell," he mutters under his breathe, shuffling the cards back and forth between his hands. I almost didn't hear him, but I couldn't ignore the distinct sadness in his voice, the meaning behind his words.

Maybe he was just as much of a prisoner as I was.

"Do you know how to play rummy?" He asks, dealing the cards out between us. His hands work quickly as he passes the cards from one pile to the next, counting under his breathe as he goes. His hands were skilled, like he had done this a thousand times before. He was clearly experienced when it came to cards.

Little did he know that I spent many holidays passing the time playing rummy.

I was going to wipe the floor with him.

He hands me my cards and I immediately start sorting them into categories. He looks at me in curiosity.

"So, you have to get three of one and four of the other. Get it?" He loosely explains the rules. 

"I think I get it," I blag.

We play in silence for a while, both of us concentrating on the cards before us. I only needed to find one more card before I won.

"Let's make a deal," Daniel says, peering at me over his cards.

I don't say anything, just look at him and raise one eyebrow. He takes this as a cue to carry on.

"I win, I get to ask you a question about yourself that you must answer honestly. If you win you can do the same to me, interested?"

"I would be more interested if we were playing for my freedom but I'll take what I can get," I say cockily, knowing for a fact that I was on to a winner. Now it was time for me to think of a decent question to ask.

He smiles back, laying his cards on the floor between us. Staring back at me was the King of hearts, the one card I needed.

"Rummy," he smirks.

He did that on purpose, when he made the bet he already knew he had won.

"Fine," I sigh placing my cards down, "ask away."

He thinks for a second, looking away as tries to come up with a question to ask. Finally, he looks at me and I knew he had thought of one.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" He asks. The question was so unexpected, so basic that for some reason it made my heart do something funny in my chest.

Why was he asking that?

"No," I finally answer, "no boyfriend."

He continues to smile as he collects the cards and begins shuffling them again.

"Good, let's play again."

The next game I won.

It was hard to think of a decent question to ask, there were so many things that I needed answers to I didn't know where to start.

"Would they really kill me?" I finally squeak out, looking away as I was terrified to see the answer in his eyes. I don't know why I asked that, I think I was better off not knowing.

"No," he answers, "I wouldn't let them."

Once again, my heart does something funny. The sincerity in his answer, the truth in his eyes makes me catch my breathe.

I believe him.