Ilia Amitola is color coded for your convenience (amitola) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-06-02 06:43:00 |
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Ilia didn't know how long she'd been in this place. She didn't know where this place was. She just knew that she was freezing. Time had lost all meaning. The sun never went down so she couldn't even attempt to get a number for days. There were times it felt like she was being kept up for days on end but she didn't know, not really. Other times she was locked in a dark room with no light - artificial or not. In the darkness she was sometimes given a reprieve of sleep but it wasn't a real reprieve. In those brief moments of sleep, it was always the same. The extremist factions of the White Fang taking over, Blake leaving and rising in the ranks. The dreams she'd had right before she'd been taken from the restaurant and everything completely upended. It certainly didn't help matters.
There was also a lot of pain. Forced fighting. Food withheld depending on how well she did. Water withheld. There was desperation. The better that she did in fighting, in whatever it was they wanted from her? The more likely she was to get something to eat, something drink, maybe even the chance to sleep instead of being locked in complete silence or constant noise to keep her awake.
Then there was the complete A Clockwork Orange treatment. Strapped to a board of some sort, eyes kept open by some sort of contraption and forced to watch videos. Of course there was no rhyme or reason to the images. Just constant images flashing before her. Pain. Suffering. Colors. What it meant, she didn't know. Her eyes would hurt after that. Her head and where the straps had been to keep her in place that were bruised from her struggling against them to get out.
Electric shocks when she tried to fight back. That had been more in the beginning when she first got there. Every time she lunged forward at one of her captors to fight back (as if she was going to be able to get back to Orange County if she somehow managed to incapacitate her captors). Always there was punishment for the slightest infraction let alone Ilia's attempts to fight back and get away.
Still she tried to hold onto something. Her friendship with Blake. The deep connection with Chloe. Something to prove that this wasn't the end. That she wasn't what they wanted just like everyone else. A scapegoat. A weapon. But as time went on in its continuous way with no sense of breaks, no rhyme or reason... the harder it got to hold onto them. The images grew fuzzy, the words disjointed.
There was no rhyme or reason to what happened. When she'd be forced into the extreme temperatures outside, unable to leave. When she'd be locked in complete darkness and silence. When the noise would start up. When she'd be forced to fight or kill, when she'd be strapped to the board and subjected to the horrible images. There was simply the anticipation. The fear. The exhaustion and adrenaline. Not to mention the betrayal. Even knowing what she was being subjected to and that it was common practice here (it was too methodical not to be), the fact that Jing-Wei had been involved in this.... it cut deeply, made her question everything. Another reminder that people only got close to her so that they could use her. Especially as the images and voices of Blake and Chloe became more disjointed from the constant barrage of pain and anxiety and adrenaline and fighting.
The disjointed sounds of machinery were maddening and getting louder and suddenly Ilia was shoved out into the elements once again with a weapon. It was time to fight. The figures in front of her, they were faceless. She just wanted sleep, and warmth, and food. To get that, she needed to fight. She needed to win. She didn't know where they came from, these faceless people. She didn't care. She just knew the dance, the routine, what would happen if she didn't defeat them. And now it was time to fight with all she had. Even with the lack of sleep or nutrition, she was still more agile and able to fight. More lethal than she'd been before. It was becoming second nature, ingrained in her movement.
And at this point, what did it even matter?