In Silas' hold of the metal chains, Sky began screaming again. Pulling against the strength of Silas' stone grasp. Her wails, banshee cries meant to destroy the sanity of men.
"Silence!" He shouted his command, giving her chains another sharp pull against her struggles to bring her attention to him. Instantly the screams fell silent and Sky went still. Bringing her face to face to him, the fury rising in his chest quelled. He saw the ethereal tears streaming from her wide, empty eyes. Teeth, the locks of her hair floated around her head, half veiling her face from view. He didn't need to see her face to know what was going on.
She was still dreaming. Still drowning.
He released the close hold on the chains, Sky remaining still. The marked hand rising to her face. A long finger brushing her forehead, down to her cheek.
"Your Silas commands my Sky, awaken." He whispered.
It only took a moment for the resonance of his voice to take effect. There was a pause. Sky twitched again. Processing the words her keeper spoke. She blinked once. And then again. Her senses coming back to her. Her glazed eyes slowly recognizing him as her thoughts broke through the surface of consciousness.
Another shudder.
She looked at his face and the fear left her in a gasp as the realization dawned from the ink dripping down his chin.
Her form shrank away from his touch.
"Silas..." She muttered in horror. "You..."
Her mind began to race, piecing together what she could remember.
"How... how could you?"
They had been separated from the beginning of the illusion. Silas imprisoned in his sterilized white cell, in relative comfort compared to Sky's captivity. She'd awoken on the floor of the hospital's hall. Lined with closed metal doors, there had been no one around when she opened her eyes. No patients, no nurses. Yet someone else was holding her chains. It was a faceless black at the entrance to the basement. Pulling her down into the depths of its burrow to be consumed. She was reeled, screaming and struggling against her chains, down into the basement of insanity.
The most special of that dark collection.
Pulled into the tank, in a blink, her chains anchored into the concrete. She was left alone, or at least alone on display. There was no Silas. She called for him, again and again. Alone in that place, there was a fear she had never thought of before growing inside her. Her chains were weighed down. She struggled to pull her chains free but there was little slack to do so. Then the water was turned on and its level was quick to rise. In horror, her struggles became more frantic. Over her legs, she felt it. The all enveloping silence of the water. Flowing upwards until it reached her neck and then her chin.
'Help me! Silas!'
She remembered the screams as she tried to keep her head above the surface. The pained screams gradually silenced as she was sentenced to drown forever.
Eventually somewhere in the nightmare, release came. In the form of the forbidden words Silas whispered to her in that darkness. The seal lifted, releasing the monster planted in her by Lucifer, taken control by Silas' command, she was given freedom to kill. Kill and consume more than ever before.
Silas had cast the forbidden. An incantation of control that reaffirmed the status of master and slave. With no resistance, yet fully aware, Sky was puppetted by Silas to shatter the dream.
"The voice that commands me. The voice that controls me. It brings no comfort. I become this evil thing by which only you control as you so willingly let whatever humanity you have left rot." Sky cried. The resonance of her pain vibrated the chains. Running water flowing through the Collectors grasp. The torture of the drowning raw in her broken thoughts. "Silas, I have died a thousand deaths for you."
The madness of it all threatened to take her mind.
After several long empty moments, her eyes shut to block out the world, she heard Silas' strained whisper,
"Look at your Silas." The Collector' was quiet and calm. Reaching out, he took her by a hand that fell reluctantly away from her face, bending his tall form in an effort to catch her lowered gaze. "Look at him."
Sky's face lifted but for a long time, her eyes remained looking not to his face but to the very bottom seam of his pant leg, bending the rules of obeying commands as she was ashamed to catch his gaze. The agony in her. Threatening to steal away the air, the vacuum Silas' presence created around them sucked away the world, leaving only the Collector before her in the black void of his still ocean.
The great monolith that was the Soul Collector, always a black tower before all, began to come down. At his movement, Sky looked, watching as Silas knelt to bend a knee. Bringing the back of her ethereal hand to his forehead, waiting. Silence but Sky knew its meaning. The way they spoke to one another without words. That action alone meant everything.
A greeting. An apology. Grief, relief and forgiveness.
Its countless meanings known only to them. A long pause ensued as all Sky could do was watch and consider with her expression stricken. He was not commanding his exoneration. There was no command. Without words, it was for her to decide.
Sky was biting back on something. Ghostly tears rolled down her cheeks, disappearing into the air when they fell as any word she wished to say, died in her throat. Finally, she nodded meekly, a quiet yes escaping her. She accepted and Silas' sight lifted just as Sky fell into him like water, burying her face into his shoulder. His arm circled around her, pulling her against him as the floating chains gathered to him. Together, descending the staircases of the dozens of floors beneath them to the ground floor of the construction site and back into the night to their sanctuary where Miss Yona would come.
Only there they could rest.
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