| Shining Armour |
[04 Jun 2008|09:58pm] |
It started slowly, after a couple of days. He'd started mumbling to himself when the guard came in to bring him his meal trays, looking off at nothing with his lips moving, the words barely audible. He could feel time passing despite the absence of his watch, knew that days must have gone by since they'd stuffed him into that truck, and the more time he felt pass, the more he knew they were watching him.
And so he let it progress, withdrawing further into himself as he looked through the bars of his cell at someone who wasn't there, occasionally raising his voice to a shout until another uniformed watchdog would come along and growl at him to sit down on his bunk. He usually responded by spitting on whoever it as, or at least cursing them in no uncertain terms. He'd taken off all of his clothes except for his underwear at the end of the fourth day, and the burns and razor cuts stood out in sharp evidence against his pale skin. His bed had gone unused since the third day, so he now slept on the floor, sometimes with his thumb in his mouth.
They suspected he was faking. Suspected it but couldn't know for sure, not with his psychiatric history. In one of his more lucid periods, he suggested they call his mother and ask her about it. He didn't think they took him up on that.
Oliver was currently sitting in the corner of his cell, his bare legs pulled up against his chest as the cold floor chilled his ass. He would have killed for a cigarette. He wrapped his arms tighter around his knees, fingers whitening from the grip. His unwashed hair fell into his face as he tucked further into himself, and his lips started moving as a mumble rose from the knot of limbs. If he'd learned nothing else, he learned they hated Patsy Cline songs.
"I'm cra-zee... cra-zee for feelin' so lonely....."
Loneliness had become familiar territory for Hannah.
Four days in a row, she came to Oliver's hotel room and sat on his mattress. Hours passed but he never arrived. At first she merely bit her lip and worried she'd mixed up the date. That progressed into a terrible, gnawing fear that Oliver no longer wanted to see her. After all, theirs was an unlikely match. Perhaps he'd met another girl... No, a woman who could spend nights and go to martini lounges and see art exhibits. As badly as that settled on her guts, nothing was worse than noticing how, over several days, Oliver's shoes didn't move. Not once.
An awful thing must've happened.
One thing Hannah did know? He wasn't dead. For that, she thanked her lucky stars.
Begging and pleading weren't effective ways of getting the goods from the Powers That Be. What eventually worked was nagging. Lots and lots of it. Hannah got her way. Oliver had been stolen.
The headquarters of Project Integration were locked up tight. Nothing short of a hydrogen bomb would knock those walls down. It was nearly impossible to infiltrate by spellwork. The one thing they didn't count on was a ghost. She slipped into the ether in increments, at first resembling nothing more than dust particles illuminated by sunlight. Gradually she coalesced into the shape of a girl.
'Cra-zee... cra-zee for feelin' so blue...'
By the time Hannah crouched down and touched his hair, she was solid. "Oliver?"
( A Fairy Tale Rescue? )
"Keep safe, pixie," he said, loudly enough that anyone lurking outside might simply think he was rambling again. "I'll save an extra slice of cake for you tonight."
Once she was gone, he sank back against the wall, his skull making muted contact with the unforgiving concrete blocks. She would save him, she and the vampire.
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