Work Text:
The cell is damp and dark and cold. Missa's bloody clothes do nothing to shield him, not as he curls in the corner. The cell is underground and completely internal, starved of any light or of indication towards the time of day. He knows he's been there a while - he's been fed a few times, but kept hungry with all of them. With the food comes torture, though - he can feel how his nose is broken, and the blood still sticky on his torn about skin.
He had been stupid, too stupid, of course it had been a trap! It was always a trap, and he never listens; Spreen had told him again and again to be careful, to stay hidden and snipe from a distance.
But there had been a child, a little girl, and Missa…
Missa had not thought, he had just acted.
He went to the girl, and tried to get her to safety, and then all of a sudden she grinned. Before he knew she had called for her papa, and there was a needle in Missa's throat.
He's lucky, he supposes, that he woke up at all.
He doesn't feel it.
Rescue isn't coming, Missa's pretty sure of that, and even if it does… His brother leads their haven, Missa knows how they stay safe; if he is rescued they will be followed, and then the secrecy that keeps them safe is gone. There are too many people who cannot fight at their haven, far too many to risk. Sometimes people go out to rescue those who were captured, but…
But a rescue mission means nobody gets to come home. Not for months, at least, not until the Federation tires of the chase and any implanted tracking devices have run out of battery.
So Spreen won't come, because Spreen has everyone else to think about - Missa knows this, Missa has always known this, but that does not mean he has to like it. He wants his brother, to be tugged a little too roughly into his arms, to be told that everything is okay and he's safe and they'll try again tomorrow. Spreen has always been there, and was always supposed to be there - bailing him out, and saying it's okay, you'll make it someday.
If not Spreen, who else? The people at camp know better, and he's nobody's best friend, nobody will be willing to die for his stupidity. Once he might have counted on Roier, but…
Dead cat, dead dogs, a bullet in the back and a corpse in the wilderness, and Missa knows better than to think about that.
It's how he knows not even Spreen will save him, though; if Spreen killed Roier for leaving and coming back, Missa knows he won't come for him. Neither will anybody else, because it will kill them all. Missa knows this, he understands this.
Missa does not want to die, but he knows that saving him from his own stupidity is not worth the lives of everyone else.
So he will die here. He is going to die here, and no matter what he does or does not do all paths end the same.
He is cold and hungry and injured and weak, curled on the floor of a cell and rapidly loosing his little warmth left to the concrete. He's too weak to warm himself, his body having slowly, slowly been shutting down for a while now. His tears have run dry, and his throat is raw from all the whimpering he has done, and sometimes it's difficult to tell if the darkness is just darkness or he is about to faint.
He has definitely fainted a few times, but he isn't really sure. Once or twice he remembers sitting up and then suddenly being on the floor, in more pain and dizzier and confused.
After the third time it happened he decided to just lie down. He can't hurt himself falling, if there is nowhere to fall to.
He's not sure why he bothers; cracking his skull on the concrete sounds much more pleasant than continuing to slowly die, torment prolonged by occasional deliveries of food and water. Oh, sure, they feed him from time to time, and they do give him water, but it's not enough; all it does is delay the inevitable, and yet he eats it anyway.
Missa is a weak, weak man. He knows it, he understands it, but it does not change the fact.
Maybe there's still hope in him, silly as it seems; once he dreamed of a shining saviour swooping in to carry him away. His prayers were answered, then, with Spreen's fists breaking the bully's nose and convincing his parents to take Missa as their own.
These days…
Time skips again; he's thinking, and then there's water and half a slice of toast, and Missa just barely forces himself through the motions of consuming them before he curls up again.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts…
His body screams for more, eating away at itself. He can taste blood with his pain, but swallows it down - he cannot risk it, cannot risk what little fluids he has left. He is never going to be saved, nobody will come for him, but still he hopes and he prays and he fights the inevitable.
Eventually, sleep steals him away.
He dreams of Philza, golden haired and furious, hacking open a route down to Missa's cell. He knows it won't happen - if their haven is secretive then Philza's is fully isolationist - but he can dream. Of a vengeful angel with a glowing sword, his flower-formed guardian laughing behind him and…
And Missa knows that Philza has terrible luck with rescue missions, so maybe he'll just wish for the man to carve out vengeance upon their foes.
Neither is going to happen, the darkness is going to take him, but…
… But the darkness isn't so scary, not when he thinks of Spreen's fur, Roier's eyes, and Philza's wings.