A/N: So I wrote this as an exercise for my Speculative Fiction class. In the original, I had to change the names so it wasn't a fanfiction, but… Well, it was all with a certain group of kiddies in mind that this idea came about.

The exercise was to write from first-person plural. It was actually a lot of fun to do it, and I suggest everyone give it a shot.

We claimed, again and again, in secret to one another and whenever Brain wasn't around, that we did these things because we wanted to. Each of us knew, deep down, we did it because Brain said we had to. Erik was the last to conform, always the stubborn one, but once he did he became one of us again.

Macbeth said every day that he missed the closeness we had with Erik. He missed how our body heat warmed one another in the harsh winters that crept into Brain's chilly basement, the only home we'd known after leaving the Tower. He missed Erik's smile and how his arms, no matter how thin, were so warm and inviting. We all missed Erik's hugs, how he would sometimes pretend to be a dog and nuzzle our cheeks to brighten our dreary days.

But when Erik came back, his smiles were gone. It was wishful thinking on our part, that he would come back from Brain's Room untamed. We'd believed in that spark of life that slipped from between his lips in sharp barbs, those twisted little jokes about the shackles chafing our wrists being the best accessories for our bruised arms. He'd been tamed by Brain, just like we'd all been in some way, forced into Brain's mold for the perfect little soldier.

"Kids are the best. So malleable. So easy to manage, when you have the proper motivation."

Sawyer remembered Brain's words the best. He was the eldest, the first to go through their conditioning. He couldn't tell us what was to come, but we'd seen the terror in his eyes when he rolled down the stairs with a bone-rattling thud-taptap-thud-thud. How he'd scrambled over to the empty place Brain had taken him from weeks before and chained himself up once again. He was clean though, so much cleaner than us, and we'd envied him those baths he'd had the chance to take.

"Erik," Macbeth whispered, eyeing the open door at the top of the stairs. We knew Brain was up there, waiting to see if Erik would chain himself up again. That was the ultimate test. We'd all chained ourselves up again when we came back. It was better than anything else. Brain didn't come to the basement if he didn't need to. "Erik, are you with us?"

"With you?" Erik whispered. He sounded delirious. Maybe Brain hadn't let him sleep, or maybe he just couldn't sleep any longer. That had happened to Sorano. We hadn't known how to help her relax once she came back down, how to mute her terrified whimpers when our chains rattled against the dusty concrete.

"We're here," Sawyer said. His voice was soft. We weren't supposed to speak when the door was open unless Brain talked to us. "Are you here with us?"

Erik's eyes, once so full of life, were dull. Vacant. He had been our only hope of finding ourselves again. Why we'd thought to push it to the youngest, we didn't know. But he'd been so strong, no matter how bad things got. He had been the one to break Brain's bindings on us. We played the part when He was around, always the dutiful pupils, his slaves, his soldiers. Once he was gone, we were ourselves. Children. We laughed behind dirt-crusted fingers and held each other. We told stories of worlds we knew were far beyond what would ever grace our dark-filled eyes.

"What did he do?"

"Talk to us, Erik."

"Come sit down, it's alright."

"Put on your chains again."

"It's okay now."

"We're here."

Erik stumbled forward, and we reached out to him as one. Three sets of hands grasping for his limbs and body and face. We knew it wouldn't be the same for Erik. We should have done something to protect him. He collapsed against us, frail shoulders trembling. His head buried in Macbeth' neck, legs across Sawyer's arms, one hand desperately latched onto Sorano's. Richard was still upstairs somewhere. We didn't know if he would ever come back down to us.

The door closed and we were left with only a thin sliver of lamplight that peeked in from the high, cobwebbed window. It was enough to look at him, to see the runes etched onto his collar bones and down the length of his spine. They were new, but not scabbed over. Fresh scars littered his once pristine flesh with a vile, ravenous pink against ghostly pale caramel.

We didn't ask why Brain had marked him this way, why we hadn't been cut and scored. Sawyer's hands were gentle as they massaged Erik's thighs. Sorano held the hand grasping her own just as tightly, assuring him in silence that she was there, that she knew the pain in his soul in the way we all knew it. Macbeth's fingers carded through the gossamer strands of hair, dark as blood, and we all watched as Erik rubbed at the skin around his wrists, unblemished and so beautifully tanned.

He was our breath of innocence. We knew there wasn't much time to spare before his shackles had to be in place - Brain would be coming soon to make sure everything was as it should be - but we cherished every moment of his freedom as though it was our own.

Before we could do much more than comfort him, Erik reached out for the empty shackles between Macbeth and Sorano, then locked them around his wrists.

"We'll get out of here one day," we whispered. It was a surprise when Erik's tremulous voice, barely more than a breath, joined us right away. Almost as though he'd been waiting for our words to pull him back from the precipice of darkness that Brain dragged us all into.

"We'll get out of here one day," Erik said again, though we never said it more than once before. His lips curled into a vicious sneer, and his body shook with something we'd never seen from him before. There was a new spark in his eyes - now colored a bright amethyst, instead of the muddy brown they'd been when he was taken away - as he pulled away from Macbeth. Something darker than we'd ever seen in even Brain before. Something depraved. "We'll get out," he growled, "Because I'll kill that bastard for doing this to us."

We were shocked at the venom in his small voice, but suddenly there was something new binding us together. Something we'd never dared to say aloud, something each of us had harbored in our secret havens of thought. We wanted Brain dead. We wanted freedom.

It was only because of Erik that one day, we would have the sun beating down on our backs and breezes scattering our uneven hair in dancing flurries. Because of him, because of what Brain did to him, we finally found our voice. Together.

.The End.