(Word Count = 589)

Things had been quieter - probably because she had nothing she could offer them. Amphitrite couldn't say she was surprised.

...

No, she was. After the screams she had heard before, the death of the person she would never know, she was shocked they had left her here alive. Her own starseed had been threatened twice, and some part of her thought it was just a matter of time. She was a worthless captive to them, more trouble alive than dead.

Her daydreams offered her solice, but not in the same way they did before. It was harder to pretend everything would be okay with her wrist and pinkie swollen, visible shattered by the negaverse officer whose name she didn't even know. The bond on her wrists made them better and worse; better, because they inadvertently kept them from moving much. Worse, because the swelling of her wrist pressed against the bond, and every time she shifted in that chair... it was fresh agony all over again.

Her face, especially her jaw, were swollen and would be hot to the touch if she could do it, throbbing with a slow ache. Talking hurt. She could still taste blood in her mouth, and one of her back teeth felt loose when she tentatively pressed her tongue against it. Never mind the whip mark against her back, her sides, her... everything. She would try to envision how her salvation might come from this place, but pain kept her bound to the moment, to reality.

She desperately feared each step she heard from the hall - but she hated being left alone almost as much. She hated the eyes of the negaverse officer that had begun to haunt her whenever her eyes closed. She hated him for what he'd done to her, how he'd spoken to her. She hated her faceless tormentors.

She hated herself more than anything, for being hasty, weak, for getting herself locked up here in the first place. She hated herself for being relieved when she wasn't killed, or forced to take on the burden of another's starseed. She hated herself for being so selfish. She hated herself for resenting Ash's decision to awaken her. She hated herself for being weak and telling her father a truth he couldn't accept. She hated herself for doubting the rest of the Order, in her darkest times; if they did come, would they come for her? She was nothing to them. To any of these people. If they did come, if they made it before the negaverse realized their folly in keeping her alive, would anyone bother to take the risk to save someone so...

Amphitrite didn't like calling herself inconsequential. But it's how she felt, and she felt it more and more with each passing day. It was linked with her fears, her doubts, her resentment, her regrets. It felt like a web that was rapidly closing in around her, and bound to this chair in this hell, there was nowhere to go to escape it.

Sometimes she tried not thinking at all. For about a month, back in freshman year, she had been really into meditation and things like that. She'd only half-assed it at best, but it was more welcoming than prayer. But the smallest sound, the softest voice, anything was enough to jolt her violently back to the reality she still sometimes hoped she had dreamed up.

Sometimes all she could do was cry. Sometimes she couldn't even do that.

In the end, all she could do was wait.