ᴀꜱʏʟᴜᴍ :: ᴛ.ꜱʜᴇʟʙʏ

i: too loud

The door slammed closed—loud. Too loud.

Trapped in the dark, surrounded on three sides by cushioned walls and on one by bars, Winnow flinched back from the sound, pressing herself against the stuffing spilling out from the back corner. Footsteps echoed through the hall, slow and sure.

Then yellow-gold lights flickered on overhead, and Winnow pressed herself even more closely against the wall, raising her hands to cover her eyes, rubbing at their unyielding ache. Her head throbbed, the pain only worsened by the strength of the sound. But for the screams and the moans and the whimpers, Winnow was so used to silence.

Too loud.

Low voices started in the cell next to hers—low and deep and hoarse, one of them, unfamiliar, though the other she knew well enough. Barney. She had heard Barney's shouts in the night, like all the rest; even during the day, sometimes, he would yell against an enemy who wasn't there, scrabbling for a weapon and shrieking at soldiers only he could see. Soon enough, his yells would devolve into frenzied sobs—perhaps as reality came to the fore, or as he leaned over yet another hallucinated soldier who had been felled. From his shouts, Winnow knew he was comfortable with a gun in his hands, but there were no weapons here.

Only endless nothing. Only ripped stuffing and iron bars and the dark and the dark and the dark.

A chair dragged against the stone. Winnow pressed her face against her knees, curling her fingers into the tangles of her hair. Today, Barney didn't sob or scream—he spoke to somebody else, though his words were fractured by stutters.

Parasitic, cruel, the cold burrowed beneath Winnow's skin, wracking her frame with shivers she couldn't control. Or perhaps something else did that, something no warmth could ever ease, something which remained at her side, day after day in this prison with cushioned walls.

Opium and cyanide. They won't even check the cause.

For only a moment, Winnow's head lifted. Her fingers shifted from her hair to her wrists, curling around brittle, bird-like bones.

You won't even feel a thing.

Who was this man, this voice? Not the cruel guards from the asylum, that was for certain, or the hard-eyed women who tipped back Winnow's head and stuffed the medicine down her throat on some days, holding her face and steadying her arms so she wouldn't choke or spit or bite.

Too loud.

Still, Winnow listened. Even when the sounds overwhelmed her, even when they were enough to drown her every sense, even when she longed to tear them all from her head, she listened. In this world, listening had always been the only way she could ever gain any power of her own. Any control.

Lord only knew she had little enough as it was.

Fractions of sound drifted towards her cell, cutting cleanly through the ache in her skull. A breakout. Ten years. A job. Best sniper in our company. Get you free—

A fist struck the door, and Winnow jumped once more, pressing back against the wall.

"You alright in there?"

The stranger's voice rose, smooth and certain. "Grand in here." Then it lowered again, and Winnow found herself shifting towards its hoarse whisper, moving on her hands and knees towards the bars which formed her front door. She wrapped her fingers around them, pressed her ear to them to catch each trace of sound.

After midnight on Wednesday. A big fucking bang.

Years ago, so many years ago, Winnow had learned to crush her hope like a cigarette beneath the heel of her boot. She wore no boots now, of course, dressed only in the rags they'd toss at her after her frozen showers on some mornings, but still hope was a thing to be crushed—never nurtured. Like a rose, hope would only deceive you with its beauty, then prick you when you reached out to grab it by the stem.

But Winnow felt her heart beat faster all the same at the danger in those words. Her fingers curled more tightly around the bars. Fabric rustled and footsteps struck stone.

"A big bang," Winnow whispered into the quiet, leaning her forehead against the bars. They were colder than her brittle bones, colder than ice against her skin. "A big fucking bang."

The footsteps slowed. Stopped. Started again.

Struck with sudden terror, Winnow recoiled from the bars a moment before the man stopped in front of her cell.

shdjfh im too excited, i love winnow, my heart hurts for tommy, & i hope one random person out there reads this