After falling asleep and waking back up still in this god forsaken room, I know that I’m probably going to be stuck here until I can heal fully. Who knows how long that will be…

I can smell what seems like…pasta or something and my stomach growls loudly and angrily. How long have I been out for it to sound so aggressive? Looking over at the IV and the dresser I can see a ceramic white bowl and glass of water. Sitting up, I bite my lip to keep from moaning in pain at the aching and stinging that goes through my body. I have to push away the discomfort in order to sit up against the headboard of the bed to see what’s on the dresser. My mind and body are both groggy and starving. Have I been medicated while I was out?

Looking into the bowl I can see what looks like ravioli and my mouth immediately starts to salivate.

What if it’s poisoned, you jackass?

Well…that would be an issue for me to deal with later. I take the glass of water in my weak hands and drink it quickly before moving on to the ravioli and eating it greedily. It’s cold, but so so good.

Thanks to the nutrients my muscles feel slightly less like hell and I feel a tiny bit more awake. I set the empty dishes back on top of the dresser and toss the covers off of me. A slight moan of pain follows at the sudden movement.

Jesus Christ.

I’m barely wearing any clothes. There is a thick gauze that is wrapped around my torso like a makeshift bra making me feel like a burrito, and the tattered underwear that I showed up in is still (thankfully) on my lower half. There are smaller bandages on the smaller cuts I acquired during the fight the other day, and the skin on my body is littered with dark purple bruises. My foot is a different story. It’s completely wrapped up in a cast of sorts and I can see the tips of my toes. When I try to wiggle them I’m pleasantly surprised to see them move. Its hurts, yes. But this just means that it isn’t broken.

I have the urge to pee, but there are three doors and at least one of the leads to a world and to people I’m not ready to face. I don’t want to leave the room yet. I’m not sure what I’ll have to face once I leave the confines of this little safe haven. I snatch the IV out of my arm and hiss quietly.

Once the pain subsides, a yawn forces it way out of me, and I twist my body so that my feet dangle over the side of the bed. Okay, three doors. One has to be a bathroom right?

I hobble over to the door farthest from my bed (with much difficulty), and turn the handle. Behind door number 1 is a closet. There are only 2 outfits in here. A pair of black sweats, a gray t-shirt, gray shorts, and a dark blue long sleeved shirt. After looking down at my half naked body I decide that maybe I should put on some clothes. Who cares who they belong to? I throw the blue shirt over my body and groan with each stretch that my muscles have to make. I get it on without dying, and then grab the grey sweats for later. I let out a sigh and limp over to the next door. Luckily it is actually a bathroom.

I sit on the toilet to relieve myself and attempt to put the sweats on at the same time while I’m sitting down. The bathroom is smaller than the one I was used to using back home, but it was significantly cleaner. One would expect that of a restroom that isn’t being used by like 30 people.

The walls are cream colored and a walk-in shower stands next to the toilet. Its glass walls show that there is no tub of any sort, and if I want to bathe, I’m out of luck. A small sink sits across from the toilet with an oval mirror above it. The mirror is in a pretty golden frame, it’s definitely fake, but this particular fake would definitely fool any other amateur thief.

There are maroon towels on a silver rack above the toilet and I find myself nodding in approval. It’s a nice little bathroom.

When I finish wiping, flushing, and then washing my hands I finally take a look in the mirror. I don’t think that I’ve seen myself in a mirror in like a year. Of course I’ve seen my blurry reflection in glass and windows, but I’ve haven’t taken a good look at myself in a while. My face is clean of blood but the healed scars from previous encounters are still present. They’ve faded, but they stand out against my face. I pucker my lips and tilt my head to the side. My hair is a mess. Really, if they were going to clean me up they could have at least taken a brush and done something to the mess of strands that I dare call hair.

With a final sigh I turn off the light and struggle to situate myself back into the bed. I don’t exactly know how to reattach the IV so I lie down without it and let sleep and the left over medication over take me instead.

---

I wake up feeling way better than I did before I went to bed. I sit up, not sure of how long I was asleep, and nothing hurts. Surprising.

I lift up my shirt and the bandages are still on my body, but the bruises that decorated my skin have vanished. I swing my legs over the bed and again, nothing aches. When my feet touch the ground they both feel perfectly fine, and I realize that my cast is gone. I look around the room warily and notice that the IV is gone and my dishes from yesterday with it. This must be some kind of dream or hallucination. There is no way that I could be better all of a sudden.

I walk to the bathroom still with no signs of discomfort and turn on the lights. When I look in the mirror my eyes widen in horror.

All of my scars are gone.

No trace of a single skin discoloration adorns my face and I feel like I’ve lost some part of me. I’ve lost my scars, and all of their stories and reminders.

When I raise a hand to touch my face, it sinks in that they’re gone. A quick look under my sleeves show that there is no trace that I’ve ever had any sort of injury.

“What the fuck is going on...” I whisper to my reflection as I poke at my flesh. My skin is back to the way it was when I was a child…but my hair is still a hot mess. Decided to tackle the nest myself, I take my fingers and roughly rake them through the strands so that I can twist it in to a makeshift braid.

Now to deal with the real issues at hand. Where the fuck am I? What the fuck happened to my injuries? Where the fuck is Tao? I turn off the light in the bathroom and walk around the small room pensively.

I can’t stay in this room forever. Would it be better for them to come to me, or for me to go to them? I have no weapons, but Tao has taught me some self-defense over the years. I won’t be any match for him if we have to fight, but I could probably escape while fighting someone else. I take tentative steps to the final door. It’s the last door in the room, and it could either lead to my death or my salvation. I close my eyes and inhale.

Here goes nothing. Or everything. Whatever.

I turn the handle and ease the door open. It squeaks slightly and I cringe hoping that no one heard it. Peeking out the door I see one door across from my own. To the left are two more doors and to the right a set of stairs. As I expected.

Looking out of my own window I could already tell that I was in the upper half of a house, so now I definitely know there is another floor waiting for me.

I slide out of the room and close the door softly behind me. I stand in silence and can hear light talking and clattering down the stairs. I clench my fists and try to sneak down them. I press myself against the wall and I can see that there is a large wooden door down the hallway across from this staircase. If I make a run for it I can probably make it out of here. The carpeted stair creaks under me and the voices quiet. I squeeze my eyes together and let out a quiet curse. Looks like the Gods aren’t on my side.

“You can come out you know.” An unfamiliar voice calls out. I let out the breath I was holding and decide to face my maker head on. There’s no use in pretending I’m not here any longer.

I walk down the final stairs and to the left is a large opening that leads to a kitchen. The kitchen overlooks a large living room, a TV set up on its wall surrounded by comfy looking couches. At the kitchen island are two people. One is a tall man who looks very very intimidating. His hair is black and short. Shaved along the sides. He’s really handsome, but he looks guarded and frosty. He observes me while the other jumps out of his seat to pull me in a hug.

“Tao.” I deadpan. He tenses at my tone and pulls away sheepishly. I glance at the other male for a second more before turning my full attention on my friend.

“June look I just-”

“Shut it.” I say stonily. He closes his mouth and waits for me to continue on. “How long was I out?”

“About 4 days.”

“Why do I feel better already? I know for a fact that I had a sprained ankle and that doesn’t just heal overnight.” I press on. I can feel the other male’s gaze on my face, but I continue to question Tao.

“Um, Yixing came and healed you.” He says quietly.

“Yixing? Is Yixing a mu-” he covers my mouth with a hand before the slur can fall from my lips. We’re both very aware that calling the mutants “mutts” is an extremely derogatory term. He flicks his eyes over to the other guy in the room and I look at him again before it clicks. That guy is a mutant too. My eyes widen in horror. He brought me to a house of mutts. My eyes snap back to Tao and he shakes his head slightly as if to tell me not to freak out. I narrow my eyes but close my mouth. He moves his hand away and he relaxes slightly.

“June…this is Kris. This is Kris’s house.” He says motioning to the man. Kris stands up and I can see just how tall he is. I try to keep my expression neutral as he holds out his hand for a hand shake. When I make no move to meet his hand he closes it and coughs awkwardly.

“Follow me.” Kris says. So he was the one who spoke to me when I was hiding on the stairs. Usually such a statement would be a command, but this Kris guy says it as a suggestion. I feel as though he wouldn’t care if I listened or didn’t. Kris walks in to the living room I noticed earlier and sits on a couch perpendicular to the television, I sit in a chair parallel to him, and Tao sits on the couch between the two of us that faces the TV. The room is silent and I can almost touch the heavy tension in the air. Tao is the one to break the silence.

“So…” he starts. I send a glare in his direction and he swallows before looking away. Yeah, you’re in trouble you little shit.

“Why am I here?” I decide to ask.

“You were really hurt, and I didn’t want you to die out on the street! You were like really really hurt and I was already headed back to your place when I saw you passed out on the street so I brought you-”

“Tao I swear on my life, if you don’t shut your mouth. I wasn’t talking to you.” I say through clenched teeth. I can hear him whimper and I look at the Kris guy in the eyes. “Why am I here?” I ask again hoping that he gets the point. He stays quiet and continues to just observe me with his cold and guarded eyes. I can’t sense anything from his gaze. “What do you want from me? Why are you helping me?”

“Okay, I won’t sugarcoat things. You seem like a smart girl. And you look like you know what you want.” Kris starts. He glances at Tao who is looking down at the floor before looking back at me. “He’s right that I want to help you both. Tao has been staying here with me for years now, and as you can see he’s perfectly fine. I haven’t brought you here to hurt you, and Tao didn’t bring you here to betray you. I’m running a…cult of sorts. I, along with a handful of other individuals, are trying to overthrow the current royals. We don’t like how they are handling things, and we want a change. People are dying, your people are being hunted and killed, and my people are being enslaved and abused.”

“What does any of that have to do with me?” I ask snappily. This isn’t my problem. Who gives a shit what’s happening to his kind? They deserve it. They deserve to be treated just as shitty as they treated me.

“Well, we want you to join us. Right now it just me, a few other Charmers, and Tao. We need a girl- a human girl to go in to the castle. They need someone higher up on the inside to help them, and if you go in as the Queen’s human it’d be a huge step in the right direction.” He says while gauging my reaction.

Go in as her human he says? Memories flash before my eyes. Falling in to Momma’s ring and letting her push me around to do her bidding like some kind of work mule.

“…takes orders very well.”

“Very well trained…”

I blindly let her treat me as she wanted and she sold me out in the end. I’m not just someone’s toy. I am not a pet. I don’t belong to anyone.

“Look here Kris,” I let his name leave my mouth with as much venom as possible before continuing on, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are. And I don’t know who you think I am, but I don’t belong to anyone. You can’t just ‘plant’ me in the castle like a fucking chess piece and expect me to just let her treat me like some kind of a play thing.” I won’t do it. I won’t let someone beat me and make me feel like shit any longer.

His face gives away nothing when he says, “You won’t be hurt under the Queen. That is the last thing she would do to you. You would be more like her daughter than anything else.”

“No. I’m not going to do it. That last person to treat me like a daughter sold me off to people like I was a cheap whore.” Which I guess I was, but I won’t own up to how little I was rented out for. “I’d rather be back out on the streets on my own than in there with those royal mutts.” I spit out, letting the slur fall between us. He flinches slightly as if my choice of words physically hurt him. Good. I hope they hurt.

“Fine.” He says. He blinks slowly and leans back in to the cushion of the couch. “Fine, go ahead and leave. Go back to back to the suffering the abuse, go back to selling and doing the drugs, go back to being scum.” He says icily. How did he know about the drugs? I didn’t say anything about selling…and especially not about doing them. I haven’t even used in over 2 years.

It clicks quickly and angry tears fill my eyes when I look over at Tao. My glare is full of betrayal and he doesn’t look up from the ground. He’s snitched. He’s given Kris reports on me. The first tear falls and I quickly wipe it away. I stand up quickly and Tao looks up at the sudden movement. “Fuck you.” I say. To whom it was directed at? I’m not sure myself. It was directed mainly at Kris, but I hope it reaches Tao and that he feels just as hurt as he’s hurt me.

I stomp angrily out of the room, but I don’t go out the front door.

No, I go right back up the stairs and back to the maroon room.

Notes