Chapter Text
I’ve been locked up for 264 days. Or something like that - my numeracy skills rival Pythagoras in places, but without much light outside it’s hard to count.
This prison has held me here for too long - but I deserve it. After I tickled a child to death.
A child. I killed a child.
And what if I kill again? I have a chance now - a strange, muscular man joined my solitary cell just a few days ago, claiming his name to be Clark Kent or something.
I wasn’t really paying attention. I have to remain in my teen angst ark so my progression in the future is more significant.
“Yo, so… thanks for the bed and that,” Clark says to me. He pushed my bed into his when he’d arrived. I’m content - the floor is where I’ve been sat since I was locked in here anyway.
I don’t respond. Just stare at my hands.
My hands. The terrible thing they are.
Not human - monstrous. Each finger purple and suctioned like an octopus. They visualise my curse, the one that killed that child, my terrible tickle that laughs the life out all who feel it.
“Hey, uh… I gotta tell you something,” Clark mutters, standing from his bed(s). “So like, you know how I’ve been kinda nice?”
I look up, nod somewhat.
“Yea well, promise I’m not gaslighting, but I sort of have to hand you in.”
“What?”
The doors burst open. Men clad in black lift me, hands covered so to avoid my fearful fingers, and carry me through the dark halls of the prison, dumping me on the ground before a wooden stool.
A man walks in, and despite my track record of never feeling anything emotionally but eternal sadness, my tight heart flutters at the sight of him.
He might be rather small, standing no higher than 5’0, but he makes up for it in his striding gate. His hair is so blonde it glitters in the low light, eyes glowing green like kryptonite.
“Juliette,” he greets with a smirk, sitting upon the wooden stood with attempted gracefulness. “You’re absolutely delightful to meet.”
I decide right then I hate him. He’s torn me from the hellish cell I’ve lived in for less than a year - how could he?
Clark moves to stand beside him, a stern look to all but his stare on me is soft.
Clark is good. I can rely on Clark.
“I am to take you with me to Sector 69,” the man explains, crossing a leg over the other. I note his fine clothes, consisting of a deep green suit and tie, white shirt, and black shoes.
He must have forgotten about his socks, which I note to have a design of cookies and forks patterned on it.
How strange.
“Why?” I demand, hiding my fingers beneath my collapsed thighs.
“Because, love,” he smiles, standing from his stool and crouching before me. With a leather-clad hand, he reaches and raises my wrist. “Your talent here is fascinating to me. And I must study it in great detail.”
“No!” I deny, pulling my arm from his loose grip. “I will not come with you! I want to stay here with Clark!”
“Clark is with me,” the blonde man announces, standing to look down at my crumbled form. “He will stand at your side whilst you’re made comfortable in my fine quarters. You could bathe and rest on soft silks - if only you would join me.”
How dare he? To kidnap me and trial me and then kindly offer to allow me a good wash and sleep? What sort of a psychopath?
Clark steps forward slightly, watching me carefully.
“You should listen, Juliette,” he advises, voice cold. It’s hard to spot his expression from beneath his too-broad-to-not-be-steroids chest. “I’ll come with you.
I swallow, but if Clark is advising me, I’d be a fool not to listen. I’ve been living in four dark walls for 264 days! Surely this 6’5, poor spoken man with very little emotional availability is trustworthy to know how I should live my life.
Still, I’ll miss my cell a little. I’d been writing diary entries over the walls, scratching the words with my chipped nails day by day by day until it became too legible to ignore.
The well-dressed man before me elegantly offers his gloved hand.
And my curling fingers suction around it as he pulls me up.
“I am Aaron Weiner. Chief Commander and Regent of Sector 69, Son of the Supreme Commander of North America.”
The nepobaby leads me from the dark room, Clark stationed behind him, the unknown, face-covered guards at my back.
I wish I could speak to Clark. Wish he would turn and tell me all is well. Something in my teen angst-ridden heart, something looses whenever I see his face.
It is familiarity. He reminds me of the calm I feel when I have a book in my lap and my suctioning fingers don’t cling to every page.
He is a new assurance, and I cannot let him leave my side.
And so. I escape from this prison that has held me. But I sense I am walking straight into another.