Estranged [Completed]

Trapped

Kalei could feel her face pressed against something cold and smooth. The pressure of the object against her cheek and shoulder seemed to be holding her erect.

The joints in her legs complained as they sat tucked beneath her at awkward and painful angles. She couldn't fully stretch them out because her feet were already pushed up against something solid behind her. Confused, Kalei opened her eyes and pulled her legs forward into a more comfortable position.

She found herself sitting in a glass tube. It had a cement floor with a perfect circle of glass sealing her in on all sides. She had barely enough room to move her elbows, no more.

Looking past the glass, Kalei realized she wasn't alone. Another dozen tubes lined either side of the long hallway, each with another person – another Estranged – within. They were like so many test subjects, lined up for study. Some of them slept, some of them cried, some of them shouted intermittently or banged on the glass with bloody knuckles. Kalei might have done the same, if she didn't already know it was pointless.

She knew where she was. This was solitary confinement. Built several levels below the basement of headquarters, this was where SWORDE put Estranged who were too dangerous to wander the district on their own. She had been given a tour during training. At the time, she had wanted to kill every one of them for being murdering bastards. Now she wondered how many of them were like her: people who had simply pissed off Terin.

But was she really in here because she had pissed him off? It was more likely he had discovered her connection to Tusic. 

Dammit! 

She had grown lax about where and when she met Lecia. It didn't surprise her that they had found out. Kalei had never exactly been trained for espionage.

She reached her hand out and traced the curving line where the cement and glass came together to form her cell. She knew the cement wasn't holding the tube up. Apparently, the ground beneath was hollow, allowing the glass to slide up and down using some mechanism below. But all Kalei could see was a small black gap between the two surfaces, no larger than the width of a wedding ring. She pulled her hand back.

Kalei knew she couldn't break out. Erit had offered her the chance to execute these dangerous inmates if only she could crack the glass. Even with a pistol at close range, she couldn't make a scratch. In fact, she nearly killed herself when she tried.

She leaned her head back against the tube and looked up at the featureless, cement ceiling. The only things to interrupt its monotonous grey expanse were the bright lights recessed into the cement at regular intervals, drawing a straight path along the center of the hall. Kalei's eyes traced the path of the lights to their beginning, and then her eyes slid down to settle on the heavy steel door that marked the entrance to the prison.

What is happening out there? Is Fenn really all right as Terin said, or is Xamic on his way to kill him now? Perhaps he was already dead.

Kalei punched the glass. No! She refused to believe that. She refused to accept that he was. Even if—No. Fenn and the girls were alive. She remembered Xamic's darkness within her, the way it resonated with his innermost thoughts while he held her hostage. When he spoke, she could sense the emotions – the truth behind his words. Xamic knew Fenn was alive, and he knew where to find her husband. But his intentions didn't feel like death. They felt like... excitement? Elation? That couldn't be right. Perhaps she had just imagined it.

But where is Fenn? And the girls? Kalei furrowed her brows. What about their father? Kalei shifted her weight in an attempt to find a more comfortable position. Come to think of it, what did they tell Qain when he came back from his trip to Takaio? Had they kept him from seeing his daughters, or did they take him into protective custody as well? 

Kalei couldn't see that going well. Qain was a high-profile employee for a high-profile company. There was no way he would allow them to take him off the map.

But then again, being a high-profile employee for a high-profile – international – company meant it would be easy for Qain to pick up and move. Were they even in Celan anymore?

Kalei tried to imagine Fenn lying on some beach somewhere without her. It was hard, not only to imagine him alone, but to imagine him leaving without her. She knew Fenn; he wouldn't have left without a fight. They must have told him that she was dead, or what if Xamic really had told him that I'm...

But what did she know? She wasn't there when they enrolled him into Victim's Protection. What if he just skipped into the office, happy to be free of his nagging wife?

Kalei shook her head. Stop it. You know that wasn't the case. He loves me, and I love him. He wouldn't do that.

But that was then. What about now? It has been two years since the attack...

Kalei remembered the night before her first day at the police station. A hundred thoughts had run through her mind, each more bizarre and paranoid than the last. What if she spilled coffee on the police chief? What if her partner was a smelly old man? But there was one thought that was more plausible and scary than the rest. What if she died on the job?

It didn't happen all the time, but it happened. Kalei started to think about what the world would be like if one day she just... wasn't here.

A sudden fear had grown inside her and she woke up Fenn. She told him that if she ever passed away, be it that day or a hundred years off, she wanted him to remarry. She didn't want him to spend the rest of his life miserable over the woman he had lost. She wanted him to find love again, to be happy, to live his life. She wouldn't let him rest until he promised.

Fenn had run his hand through her hair, looked her in the eyes, and told her he would never love another woman the way he loved her. She was the only one in the world for him. But if this was what she wanted, then he promised he would find love again, even if it could never touch what they had, and he wanted her to do the same.

When they made those promises, Kalei had never imagined she would become... this. Estranged. She was dead to Fenn, but at the same time, she was still very much alive.

She knew he should forget about her; it was better for him that way. But what if he had listened to her? What if he had found some woman to comfort him through his grief, to hold his hand, to keep his bed warm at night...?

Kalei's hands began to tremble. She began to fidget with the diamond ring on her left hand, its largest diamond sitting on the white gold band like a queen announcing her shining presence to the world, while a trio of smaller gems framed it on either side. Its beautiful design brought back memories of a candlelit dinner and a question she had been breathless to answer...

Kalei gritted her teeth against the tears streaming from her eyes and the painful tightening of her throat. The swirls on her nails began to bleed and blur. The biting pain in her heart turned into a cruel stabbing and twisting that made her stomach clench. When the sobs came, she couldn't stop them.