He didn’t know how long he’d been there. It could have been days or years. There was no light in the basement, no sense of night or day. Drifting in and out of consciousness he could only dimly grasp the routines of his captors and often when he slept he would rehearse what had happened and throw his timing off. Starved and frequently tortured he spent a lot of time in a delirious haze. Pain was a companion, always by his side throughout the long hours hanging there.

It made no sense, he had done nothing wrong to anyone other than being perhaps a rather poor parent as parents went, and no one deserved this for inexperience borne of an equally poor upbringing. He missed Sup and Tula in a way that was deep rooted and visceral, more than the pain and more than the solitude it was the bond to his kin that ached the most. He didn’t know if he’d get to see them again or if he was simply doomed to stay here for the rest of time.

Perhaps they’d be better off, the insidious and creeping voice of negativity hissed in his ear. Perhaps things would turn out better for everyone if he were gone. Calder had done nothing but suffer at the hands of his spite and jealousy from day one, he’d be better off without it, able to thrive and care for Barth and able to take an equal fifty percent stake in their life without always feeling pushed to the perimeter and alien while he was surrounded by demons. The scarelings would be fine without him, Superbia was already showing inclinations towards science and that would likely work out just fine without him there to blunder it up.

He’d tried escaping and was resigned to the fact it was impossible. He’d managed to contort his body into a new shape, using strong new tentacles to fight his captors. All it had earned him was more pain, the sharp pins through the cuffs digging into his flesh. He’d given up, fully reliant on rescue over the hope of ever managing to free himself. He’d be here until he got home again, until someone came for him.

They would come for him. That was one thing that he couldn’t let go of, even if it took forever, even if the scarelings grew up without him there, one day they would come for him. As much as he could be believe in FEAR he secretly, (probably illegally) believed in LOVE and in the enduring power tied up in the bond he’d made and the mark he wore. There had been satisfaction in the way it had stood up to claws and fury, written so deeply into his very self that it was impossible to gouge out without dissipating him and in doing so restoring it to its full glory. He was a captive here but he did not belong to any of them and it was that steely certainty which made it ultimately impossible to break him. He had given up on escape but he had not given up on anything else. Sloth was not quick but it was enduring and persistent, and he had said many many times that Barth’s patience was almost a virtue. He wouldn’t let a slight like this go unpaid.
It was a slight against them both, drawing the mark taut and testing it, always tormenting him with the words he couldn’t utter thanks to the twisted steel wire around his jaw and the seals draining him of his energy.

He didn’t want to be far from everyone who mattered, and in his solitude he had plenty of chances to think about all the mean things he’d said and done and how he had always just wanted to do them differently, to change things and make them better now that the prospect of never being able to do anything about them loomed large on the horizon. He wanted to tell Calder he was important, to tell Tula and Superbia that he was proud. Maybe, if he was feeling especially mad he’d tell Barth some things too. He pushed people away and always had, but it didn’t mean that it was what he wanted to do, given a choice he’d have pulled them closer again, but anxiety and fear dominated his choices.

All in all for the moment there was nothing to do but wait, nothing to do but linger and patiently hope that there would be some kind of resolution and that Rah would at some point mess up a torture session and dissipate him or that the pain might become tolerable rather than the relentless nightmare it presently was. But he wasn’t weak, once upon a time he had been, willing to die for ever if it meant that he’d find a place to call home in doing so, he was strong and had a home and a place to be.

And he’d get back there no matter what.