Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Chapter 33 - Fauna - Fighting Our Demons

There are voices - whisperings so quietly in my head that I can't hear a word they're saying, but I know they're talking.
There's pain, and it's a pain I so badly want to get rid of, but I don't know how. It makes breathing near impossible, and it's even harder to move without needing to vomit because it hurts too much. It's a torment that not even being tortured can dull.

Despite my wanting so badly to beg the man to stop breaking bones, words never form in my mouth, only screams. Screaming is the only way that I can convey any emotion, and even then it feels hollow.
I feel hollow.

The healer has been gentle as always. Telling me these grand stories that she sometimes makes me try and recite a summary to if my voice is stable enough for me to talk. Sometimes it isn't, and sometimes I wish it weren't if only so I didn't have to give the summaries. I just don't understand them.

I don't understand much aside from what the scratching sound of the door opening means. I don't understand much other than whose footsteps sound as they come closer, and I don't know who he is nor why he does what he does to me when no one else is close enough to hear, but...there's...something. Something more to him than any of the people the healer claims I know and love have.

He doesn't roll me over this time. Instead slides his back against the wall as he sits down, his legs outstretched by my head. For some reason, this seems a lot worse than when he unbuckles his belt. I want to see his face, but it hurts to move my head the most, so I don't. He never lets me face him when he's thrusting into me and part of me thanks him for it, but the other part - the part that now wants to curl into a ball and disappear into space, yells at me to take my last bit of strength to take two of the knives from his person and drive one into my own heart and the other into his.

Curiosity shoves aside the violent thoughts and has me studying his silhouette instead.

"Who are you?" I ask, utterly surprised at the fact that my mouth actually let me ask the question, though my voice is hoarse and scratches enough to make me go into a small and rather weak coughing fit. The healer wasn't able to heal them all the way, just enough to make the vaguest of sounds that just barely translate into words.

He waits until my throat settles to speak. "You don't remember." It's more of a statement than a question, so I don't answer. "How many times I've begged the Gods that they take your memories of me, and now that they have, I pray for them to return them. If only so you'd yell at me and tell me to get out."

"I could try to yell, but my voice seems to have left me with little of it to do so," I whisper, not wanting to land in more coughs that make my ribs feel like they're all broken and my stomach all twisted and torn. Even my toes hurt, though I'm more surprised that I can feel them than anything. Numbness usually creeps everywhere when I lay with no one but myself. The air's cold, sure, but my lack of feeling isn't due to that. I have enough sense to know that.

"I suppose I should be blaming no one else but myself for where we are now."

"Did you put us in here?" I ask, still curious as to who I am and why I'm here. Not even the healer's repetition of my name seems to have stayed with me.

"No," he answers. I try looking up at him at the tired roughness of his own voice, but my neck quietly asks me to stop, so I do. "I put us through hell."

"If this is not hell, then I do not wish to know nor remember what is."

"And I do not wish to make you relive that."

Neither of us continues, so I go back to listening to the voices in my head to see if I can hear what they're saying. Some seemed to have grown louder since he arrived, but I still can't seem to entirely make out what they say. Few seem angry, others are sorrowful or joyous. How can one hate the same person that makes them feel joyous? I suppose it has to do with this supposed hell he put us through, and if so, then no, I don't wish to know nor remember it.