Scattered Sanity (Sanvers)

Day Five Hundred Seventy-Four.

(It's currently about 5:15 in the morning and at the moment I'm stuck in my bathroom because I'm sick. So I'm just gonna post this really early in the morning so I don't have to worry about it later.)

Alex was crumbling. Pieces of her were being lost to the wind, and it took every scrap of energy and the little concentration that she still had to keep herself somewhat intact. Her mind was deteriorating, finally starting to give into the abuse, bending under the sheer weight of emotional trauma that Alex now carried on her weary shoulders. She was a husk of her former self, a poor recreation of the woman she used to be, though she could barely even remember who that woman was. The old Alex Danvers seemed so far away, a shadow in the distance that was calling out, but her voice was so faint, swept up in the chaos of the world and never quite reaching her ears. Instead of the old Alex Danvers consoling her and reminding her of the quiet hero she once was, she had harsh, angry voices spitting toxic words in her brain, wrapping around her mind and squeezing, choking, making her lose her sense of place even more. The more familiar she became with her surroundings, with the old, dingy warehouse, the more disoriented she was. Her head was full of fog, unable to think clearly. It was demeaning, certainly, but her days of resistance were drawing to an end.

The scuffing sound, caused by the bottoms of shoes being dragged along the floor, signaled that Rick had arrived, and Alex could barely lift her tired head to make eye contact with him. Her hazel eyes were bleary, her eyelids heavy and threatening to droop closed. Her neck sparked with pain as it struggled to support her looking up. In the past, Alex had always greeted Rick coldly, making sure that he knew how much she despised being here, but now she couldn't even manage to move her cracked, bloody lips and form the words.

"Alex." Rick nodded his head in her direction casually. Today, he held nothing in his hands and carried nothing on his back, the only weapons present being his bare hands, a slightly better alternative to the machinery that he had once brought. Those hands were linked behind him, gently knocking against him with each pacing step that he took, and Alex kept a close eye on them to make sure that they stayed there.

"How are you holding up?" Rick asked, tilting his head. When he received no response except a clouded stare, he sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, today's agenda is going to be determined by your actions." He glanced up and down Alex's frail body. "If you're able to act at all, I mean." He placed a finger under Alex's chin and helped to lift it up, gazing at her thoughtfully. "You know, when I first brought you here, I didn't know how this was going to turn out at all. I simply executed my plan with an end goal in mind, and I knew that I wanted to achieve that goal, no matter the cost. The goal, of course, was to prove my love to you and to have you eventually reciprocate those feelings.

"However, in your typical Danvers fashion, you were extremely stubborn, and refused to see how deeply I cared about you. I provided for you, and I kept you alive, making sure that you would survive each day. I showed you the extent of my love for you, and how I would do absolutely anything to have you with me, but you never acknowledged that dedication. Instead, you repeatedly cast me aside, staying resistant.

"It was infuriating. I tried everything I could to have you realize the truth behind my boundless devotion to you, attempting to convince you in every way possible, but you just refused to give in. I'll admit, I admired your perseverance, though it was frustrating. You have always been such a tough soul, Alex Danvers, and everyone knows that you'll never go down without a fight. But it seems like you're finally going down now, and I don't know whether to be excited or disappointed. I was actually becoming quite intrigued by how far you would go to protect your sanity, and, as if you were on a cue to ruin everything for me, your mind decided to collapse. You've started to lose the fire behind my eyes that I always thought would make you glow with beauty, but even so, I feel like you might be close to accepting me."

Alex blinked slowly, clearing her throat and feeling the dryness ignite in her vocal chords. "I..." She pronounced the word deliberately, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth and her speech foreign. "I will...never...accept...you." She forced out, panting afterwards. "I...will never...love...you."

Rick's passive expression morphed into a scowl, and his hand under her chin moved to grasp at her oily, stringy red hair and tug it backwards.

Alex hissed through her teeth, every ache in her body flaring with the sudden jerk of movement.

"Well, if you're so determined to reject me, then let me ask you this, Alex Danvers." Rick requested, his tone menacing and his grip vicious on her hair, tightening with each syllable. "Who do you love? Because if you can remember properly, which I know must be difficult for you at this point, you came into this situation with a lover, and the reason that you despised me so vehemently was because they held your heart. Do you know who they are? Huh?" His voice was pressuring, desperate to force an answer out of Alex and rattling her to the core.

Alex's torn lips parted. She remembered Kara, definitely, but that was her sister. She remembered the DEO, but that was her workplace, and she didn't have any extraordinary relationships there. She remembered dry, double-toasted, sesame seed bagels and black coffee in the mornings, giggles at night. She remembered the Barenaked Ladies, her favorite band in college, missing a concert because of an accident at the DEO. She remembered countless nights of pool at a dive bar, accompanied with a chilly beer. She remembered tiramisu, bonsai trees, and Scotch. She remembered all of that, but she remembered all of that as events she had experienced alone.

If she arrived in this warehouse with a lover in mind, she couldn't remember them now.