Days passed slowly for Ida, or maybe quickly. It was hard to measure time on Alkaid. Did the sun rise and fall faster? Slower? It was impossible to tell. Even her inner clock was off as she spent more time in dark, blessed oblivion than she did awake, where her world was pain, exhaustion and nausea. Sometimes, there was no thinking past her misery before she was out again. Other times, she managed to dredge up enough consciousness to remember where she was and actually pay attentions to her surroundings.
They rarely changed. Just the bleak stone walls of Alkaid's tower, or what she assumed was the tower. She had woken here after the fist time the ascended had drained her, with no knowledge of having been moved. Waking up had been a surprise. Ida had been sure she wouldn't, not with how deeply the other had pulled on her reserves of energy. She knew, from memories that weren't memories, how something like that could kill. Like hypothermia, you just... slipped away. It seemed she was too resilient, though, or Alkaid was too controlled. She'd survived being stripped to her very last spark.
But the question became: why? It wasn't hard to come up with reasons, really, but none of them boded well for the senshi. If she were left to recover, she could be stripped again, over and over again as her connection to her planet replenished what was taken far sooner than any normal human, or senshi for that matter. It didn't take much imagination to see herself kept like that, used over and over, until her body finally gave out or a misstep caused her not to wake again afterwards. It was a terrifying thought... Facing this for the rest of her very short, and yet far too long, life.
Another possibility was torture... she was an eternal senshi, she'd been around for years now. There were things she knew that could put people at risk, people she cared about. This option scared her, but with it came a firming of her resolve. She wouldn't talk. She cared more about the well fare of the people she'd left behind than she did about her own. She could take any amount of pain and humiliation, for their sake.
Rescue seemed an impossibility. Alkaid had taken her phone, she remembered vaguely, and whatever had happened to it, she couldn't summon it. She'd tried, repeatedly, despite the strain of fighting her exhaustion. Being on Alkaid, that desolate, corrupted world, meant there was no way anyone would discover her and no where to go even if she managed enough energy to get to her feet. Most of the time, she couldn't even sit upright.
Dark eyes traced the featureless wall across from her, the rest of Ida immobile in a desperate attempt to save up energy. There was no doing anything until she was strong enough to move and no sense wasting any scrap of it on anything that wasn't essential.
Ida's thoughts kept circling back to her capture, running the scene over and over again in her mind.
A long while ago, she'd been forced to admit that there was no way Gehenna couldn't have noticed what was happening. Maybe he hadn't known the girl in the bedroom was ascended under her glamour, but he'd been there when she'd gone to her. He'd held the door... and when she concentrated, she remembered hearing it close softly behind her. He knew an ascended had her. There was no way he didn't. But then, why had he done nothing? Maybe it had happened too fast... maybe he hadn't realized until too late. She wanted to believe that, so very much. The alternative; that he'd led her there intentionally and stood aside while Alkaid took her, was too horrible to consider. Gehenna had been her friend, or she'd thought he was. She'd been kind to him and him to her in return. There was no reason why he'd have given her up like that.
No. Ghen hadn't known. He hadn't meant for this to happen. She had to hold onto that hope, when there was so little else to hope for.
The drift into sleep didn't bring much relief. Almost as soon as she lost her grip on reality, the dreams started. They pounced on her like dogs and shook her viciously in their teeth. She stood in the center of her city on Ida, staring at the wishing tree, when flame suddenly leaped to life and licked up its bark. The fire swept along its curling limbs and soon everything was flames and heat and choking black smoke. Ida burned around her and she was rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but watch her precious world destroyed around her.
Ida ripped herself out of the dream with a sob that shook her, sending pain flaring through her body, sparking in her joints and low in her stomach. She wanted to throw up, but nothing would come but bile in the back of her throat. Hot flashes and chills swept her in turns, making her shiver miserably. This feeling... it was familiar. When she could think past her misery she remembered it the same way she remembered being a nurse in the field hospital. She'd felt this sickness often, then. Was it the draining that caused it? Ida suspected so, but it was hard to say for sure. All she knew was that she ached to return to Ida and feel the waves of energy from it sooth away the hurt. It pained her in an entirely different way to think she might never see its stately trees and gently rolling hills of tall grass again.
I want to go home... The senshi dredged up enough energy to pull her knees up higher, curling up on her side on the hard stone floor as another chill swept through her. It left little to cry with, but the tears slipped out anyway, making her feel pathetic and alone. Someone... please... Help me.
Word count: 1015
Felyn
fyi~
