Wiping tears, I explained, “I don’t want you to punish me for saying.”
He touched my knees. “I will stay calm. Tell me.”
I grabbed my chest. “I am missing him holding me.”
“What does it feel like when he holds you?”
I covered my mouth. “Hasn’t anyone ever held you before, Master?”
His eyes slammed shut. “Don’t call me that.”
Gently, I touched his face. “Has anyone ever held you in their arms… Yury?”
His eyes opened. He moved to rest on his knees while biting his inner cheek. “I don’t know.”
I thought of my first experience in the training room, when I asked him to hold me, and how it took him so long to properly react. I actually experienced sorrow when I realized I had not offered comfort in return. At that moment, I had only been a taker. “What about your mama?”
His nostrils flared. “What about yours?”
I hissed as I recoiled in my chair. “Why are you being cruel?”
“It’s who I am.”
Exhaling, I stared at his bed. “At times, yes.”
“Other times?” Yury rested his arms on my thighs.
“Other times, I see… pain in your eyes.”
“Why do you sound as if that is good?”
“Because, if you can feel pain, you can feel love.”
He shook his head as he sneered, “Don’t romanticize me. You will lose.”
“I just watched you rape someone. Romance is far from my mind.”
I was very surprised when he leaned his forehead to my stomach. “That wasn’t rape.”
“Maybe not in your world, but that treatment would kill me.”
His body became heavier in my lap.
My head leaned back as I understood… “You already know this.”
No reply.
“Yury, what am I doing here?”
He spoke into my belly. “She fought for you, on her death bed.”
My heart started to pound heavily. “Who?”
“Seafoam.”
My biological mother. “Isn’t it right that she fought for me?”
Hesitantly, Yury rose from my lap to stare at me. I wanted to know what was racing through his mind, but he refused to talk.
“Talk to me.”
“I want to understand her loyalty to you.”
I cringed. “That question makes no sense to me.”
“The mother who raised you knew you, yet she has let you go without a second thought. I understand that. It’s what I know. So, why did Seafoam care for you before she ever even met you?” He gazed to my lap. “Which she never did.”
Warmth rushed through my achy heart.
He pointed to me. “That. How does that please you when you never knew her either? What is this blind affection?”
“Blind?”
His agitation grew. “How is there a bond with no bond?”
“Love can’t always be seen.”
He growled. “I don’t know love. Your words are not helping me understand.”
Trying to explain an intangible emotion was harder than I thought. I decided to give an example instead. “If someone were to burst through your bedroom door and shoot you, I would be sad.”
His eyes flared. “That is only because I have tricked you, as I was trained to.”
“Maybe, but I would still hurt.” I touched my chest again. “Right here.” His hand laid on top of mine as if mystified by the possibility. “If I can feel that for you after all you have done to me,” he pulled his hand from mine, “I can only imagine how I would feel about a child of my very own. Maybe that is what my mother felt for me.” I reached for the retracted hand. He let me. “In the bathroom, you said you saw me be born.”
“You were pulled from her dead body.”
Tears began to flow again. “So, you saw her die?”
After a pause, his voice deepened. “I watched her be murdered.”
I almost choked. “By who?”
Slowly, he shook his head.
I rushed forward, grabbing his shoulders. “Please! What happened? Why was she murdered?”
“Many reasons, but I think the main one was for becoming desirable.”
My face scrunched to the idiocy until I felt his hands pull on my hips. Watching Pretend Whit exit his bathroom, it all started making sense. “Someone started caring for my mother.”
Yury didn’t answer me directly but said, “I have been taught this is the time to have one soiled.”
“S-Soiled?”
I could feel a chill from the coldness that took him over right before my eyes. “By another.” Yury rose to his feet. “Seafoam fought for you. You fight for him.” Annoyed, he gestured to the laptop.
“I love him.”
“You said you care for me, too.”
“Y-Yes, but he has been there for me my whole life.”
“I’m here for you now.”
“By force.”
“Then I will force him.” He walked toward his bed.
I blinked. “See? How can I fall for someone like that—”
I stopped talking when he pulled back his sheets. He watched me, then his eyes raced to naked and clean Pretend Whit. He told her, “Get in.” He told me. “Over there.”
Staring at the dog bed, I felt pain as Pretend Whit climbed into his bed. Yury observed me as I slowly went to where I was to sleep. The sun was setting as I laid down fighting tears.
Closing my eyes, I heard him say, “Learn to choose me, Fire.”
Exasperated, not wanting to be ‘soiled’, I stuttered, “I-I can’t force what my heart wants.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Admitting I cared for him was a mistake that he used against me.
4 weeks later…
It is impressive how captivity can change you. The constant fear starts to fade. You become numb and no longer respond to certain situations like you once would. You no longer care if you live or die. You just go through the motions demanded of you while you mentally slip away even more.
From my dog bed in the corner of Yury’s room, it was dark when I woke to moaning. I pressed my palm to my exposed ear to shut out the sounds of Yury having sex with the Pretend Whit. He liked to taunt me this way. He was still searching for a bond between us and was taking the approach of jealousy. He attempted this by giving Pretend Whit sexual pleasure, always in front of me, and feeding her delicious foods, forcing me to watch.
As I had drastically changed from who I once was, so had she. There was no longer sympathy in her eyes as I suffered while she was properly provided for, in more than one way. We were both there against our will, but it had become a battle of survival. The weakest of us two was going to perish in one form or another.
When Yury was off ‘working’—AKA, being one of the worst humans on this earth—I would stare at the laptop that we were shown had a restriction in place; we couldn’t ask for help. Pretend Whit would lounge in his bed as if simply on a vacation and catching up on rest. Talking to each other was forbidden, but coy women know how to get their point across. I was intelligent enough to get the message. She was winning.