Starless Night (A Twilight/Stranger Things Fan Fiction)

Chaper 18: Friends

(Last time for major warnings about this, but trigger warning for non-graphic depictions of sexual assault in this chapter.)

Something happened one day that broke the hold my numbness had over me.

I didn't count days like some of the others did. I saw it everywhere—tiny tally marks scratched into the walls, sometimes hundreds of them, as the people trapped here alongside me tried to find meaning in this meaningless place. I was a little surprised, one day, when I saw the tally marks on Ian's wall, right behind his spot on the bench. It looked like it hadn't taken him long to stop counting, though, because there were only a couple months there.

Maybe I would have counted days if I'd had any hope of getting out. If I'd thought freedom was a possibility anymore. If I hadn't known vampires so well before ever coming to this realm. I knew more than most of these people did how strong, how unrelenting vampires were. Those traits were beautiful in a vampire who was good, but they were ugly in the Volturi.

I didn't count the days, so I had no idea how long I'd been here. I'd also stopped counting the number of times Eugene had raped me.

I was starting to wear thin.

I was so tired. Exhausted. It ran body, mind, soul-deep, and I didn't know that I could keep holding on to the tiny ledge I was hanging from. I didn't know if I could keep going on the bare sliver of hope that maybe, maybe, if I just kept surviving the horror one day at a time, something would change someday and I'd get out. I didn't want to hold on. I wanted to fall asleep and never feel anything again. Feeling nothing would be better than this.

But I held on and clung to my numbness. Until, one day, I felt it slip away from me.

I was in Eugene's room. He'd captured me from one of the little walks we're forced into, and I didn't even feel his awful, groping hands as he tore off my shirt and unzipped my jeans and dropped my clothes on the floor next to the bed. I didn't feel anything until, very suddenly, he breathed a few cold words on my face.

"You know, Isabella," he said, "while Edward was still alive, he tried to kill me."

It was the first jolt of adrenaline I'd felt in what seemed like forever. At Edward's name, sensation flooded back in.

No. No. I could not afford to stop being numb now, not here, not in this moment. But I felt pain in my chest, a huge gaping hole that I hadn't paid attention to in a long time, the gaping hole Edward left behind when he told me he didn't want me anymore.

I turned my face away from Eugene's cold breath, wincing. "Don't talk about him," I snapped.

Eugene smiled, and it was too late. I tried to disconnect from my body again as he started taking off his own pants. I fought against the current of fear, but it pulled me under. I started to cry.

"Edward loved you, you know," Eugene said in my ear. "When he learned what I'd done to you, he was so furious that he tore me to shreds. If Aro hadn't called in some of his other lackeys, I would be dead, and you wouldn't be... here now."

His hand clamped down on my legs; his nails dug there and drew blood. It hurt so badly that I gave a gurgling sob. I fought to be numb. I fought, and fought, and failed.

When he dumped me back in my cell, across from Ian, I was still crying, and I couldn't make myself stop.

Ian reached across the cell, and this time I let him take my hand. He squeezed my hand comfortingly and murmured "Oh, Bella."

Next to me, the woman with the gray hair took my hand, too. I clung to them, these two humans, like I'd never let myself cling to anyone before.

The next day—or, I thought it was probably the next day, because it was the next time they let us out to take a walk—my numbness still hadn't returned to me.