The Moments Between

Adelais stood in front of the mirror of the small bathroom they had been provided. A tiny shower sat off to the left, a sink and mirror in the center, and a toilet to the right. It was a tiny bathroom, and there was no lock on the door to provide any kind of haven. However, Adelais needed to get away from Claire and Marcia for a few minutes before she lost the last of her patience and sanity.

Taking a calming breathe, the blonde leaned her hands on the edge of the sink as she looked down into the pristine, shining porcelain. Everything was so meticulously cleaned and tended to, decorated with a single flower to match the one on the pillows of each cot. Tracing her thumb along the surface of the sink, a faint squeezing sound was created. The bathtub had been messed by Marcia when she cleaned her tights in the tub, but everything else was still mostly untouched.

Raising her attention back to her reflection, Adelais almost flinched at her unkempt appearance. Her mother would be livid when she saw her; hair messed up, makeup either gone or smudged, and her shoulders hunching forward in emotional exhaustion. A disgusting disappointment to look at.

An embarrassment.

Pulling her hair away from her face and holding it with one hand, she used the other to turn on the cold water and leant low over the sink. The first handful of water against her eyes was frighteningly cold, but refreshing all the same. Wiping at the remaining makeup around her eyes, she continued splashing water against her skin to remove anything that had survived until that point.

It almost felt liberating, like shedding armor after a war.

The makeup her mother forced her to wear had served its purpose around the teenagers of Claire's party, but it was useless here. This was not the place that appearances would save you.

Releasing her hair, Adelais gave no care as it fell into the stream of water and soaked the tips. She continued splashing her face with cupped hands, rubbing at her skin to make sure none of the irritating cover-up remained. Only when her cheeks began to prickle uncomfortably from the chill did she finally turn off the tap and straighten up.

Water dripped from her chin and nose, landing on her shirt and leaving dark spots across the fabric, but she ignored the sight in favour of meeting her eyes in the mirror. Skin slightly reddened from the cold and scrubbing, areas of her hair wet and stringy around her face, Adelais felt clean. The cold had helped to wake her slightly, as well as bring down the hot anger that had been settling under her skin from sitting and listening to Claire.

Wiping her hands back over her hair, she slicked it back with the water that remained on her palms.

The shadows beneath her eyes from lack of sleep were now visible, as well as the few little freckles she had inherited from her mother. The rest of her skin was as pale as ivory, having been cast out of the sun for so many years. Tracing a cold fingertip beneath her eye, the skin frail and thin, Adelais wondered if her sleep would be better or worse while in the clutches of this strange man.

The man who sought contact. Affection.

The soft knock on the bathroom door caused her shoulders to tense abruptly before she forced them to lower and turned toward the door. Claire was standing on the other side, looking frazzled and high-strung. "What?" Adelais asked tiredly, ignoring the cold water that remained clinging to her skin and dripping from the tips of her hair.

"We're trying to come up with a plan," Claire explained, motioning for the older woman to come forward. Adelais heaved another sigh before shaking her head.

"You're idiots," she muttered, turning away a second time and closing the door. "Leave me alone," she added on, knowing that if they wanted to come in they could. She wished there was something she could push against the door to keep it shut.

"Adelais!" Claire whisper-yelled through the door, turning the handle to open it.

"Let me go pee," she hissed back, knowing that Claire would be too embarrassed and shy to burst in when someone might be on the toilet. Thankfully, she was right and the door handle turned back into place as it was released from her cousin's grasp.

Deciding to use the brief time she had to herself to actually tend to her needs, Adelais went to the washroom and took her time washing her hands afterword. She refused to look up into the mirror again, knowing that her present state would just bring back the haunting shriek of her mother, scolding her and belittling her.

When she emerged from the bathroom a second time, Claire gave her a heated look similar to a glare. It was easy to ignore her. Moving to the cot that Casey was sitting on, Adelais took up the free space behind the brunette—closer to the pillow and back corner—before she looked to Claire. "You could help us, you know," Claire snapped, finally, as she marched slightly toward the oldest of the group.

"With what?"

"You're the oldest one here! Take some responsibility!"

Adelais nearly scoffed. "Just because I'm older than you doesn't mean I will take credit for whatever stupid decisions you make. I'm not an expert in abductions, I don't have some secret knowledge to offer that will save any of us. Aside from…don't piss of the guy that can kill you. I thought we'd already established this?"

Claire bared her teeth, fighting the urge to yell, and made a motion with her hands like she wanted to wrap them around Adelais's neck. Casey watched the exchange from the corner of her eye, wondering how Adelais seemed so calm over the entire thing. Had this happened to her before? Was that the secret that Casey could see hidden in her actions?

No, that was something different.

The way Adelais acted didn't match up to a controlling male figure.

So, a controlling female figure.

A mother.

It made sense when one thought on it—Adelais was entirely uncomfortable in the heels she was wearing, and her meticulously put-together appearance was the kind that would please a woman, someone who held appearances in high-regard. She'd washed off the makeup, revealing a natural beauty that Casey fully believed deserved to be seen on its own, rather than hindered with eye-makeup or cover-up.

"We can't just sit in here and wait for him to come back—which could be at any second. The only chance all four of us stand a chance against him is if we work together. Okay, I took six months of kempo karate class and you distract the assailant with pain-"

This time, Adelais did scoff. It cut off Claire, who looked both started and enraged. "That man is pure muscle, and I'm going to guess he knows how to use it. Hitting him, even in a soft spot, would be like punching that wall," Adelais explained, jerked her head toward the back wall composed entirely of stones. "He'd put you down in a heartbeat and you wouldn't even see it coming."

"She's right," Casey agreed calmly. "You guys keep thinking that everything is so easy. You do one thing and can predict the next thing," she elaborated. "That's not how it's going to be in this situation."

Marcia stood up this time, rushing over to the cot that Casey and Adelais sat on, crouching between the two. "Please, we need you two to work with us. Claire is smart, let's listen to her-"

"Claire was just trying to push responsibility onto me because I'm a few years older. Her idea of a plan is to blindly rush at a man who successfully took down your father and us. All in broad daylight. All by himself. Does this room, this set up, look like he's someone who's new to this?" The other three turned to look at her with a sudden realization. "You really think this is a first? That we're something new and unique that he had to have? This was planned. Very carefully."

Marcia finally shook her head. "What other option do we have? To wait to die? Or be raped?"

Adelais shook her head tiredly. "If he wanted to rape one of you, he'd have done it while you were unconscious on the bed."

Marcia grabbed at her hair in frustration. "We could win, Adelais, if we just tried! We could get out of here!" Realizing that the older blonde wasn't going to help, Marcia turned to look at Casey. "Please, Casey, we could win-"

"He'll hurt us," Casey countered, stopping Marcia from continuing. Her tone had taken on a sharp edge. "No." Shaking her head, she turned to look between Claire and Marcia. "Shut up. Both of you."

Adelais glanced at the back of Casey's head, sitting behind her as she was, and relaxed slightly knowing that she wasn't going to agree to help the other two with some foolish plan. She'd been concerned that Casey was susceptible to manipulation from others, but she appeared to have a bit more backbone than that.

"You're going to pick your miserable-self up, and help us get out of here," Claire ordered in a low, calm voice. She was trying so desperately to take control of the entire situation, she was becoming increasingly agitated with Casey and Adelais refusing her at every turn. In her mind, she was on the right track—the two silent survivors in her midst knew otherwise.

Casey just shook her head again. "Blow me." Adelais raised an eyebrow at her sudden outburst, calmly stated but just as powerful. "And your six months of karate at the King of Prussia Mall can blow me, too." She had wanted to say something similar to her mother many times, she wished she had worked up the nerve. However, it was still entertaining to hear Casey say it to her spoiled cousin.

"No, no, no, you-you can't do this today," Claire snapped. "You can't do this right now. Why do you do this? Why do you act like this? Why do you act like you're not one of us?"

"One of you?" Adelais repeated in a slow drawn, sounding agitated but bored. "The stuck-up princess, who considers someone like Casey to be a mercy-invite? One of those?" Claire's face reddened in embarrassment at her cousin's words, forgetting that she had been there for that conversation with her father. "People like you, Claire, the ones who step into the real world and realize it's not all makeup and selfies. What, all the friends or popularity in high school will elevate your social standing in the real world? Is that what you think?"

Casey glanced at the enraged blonde over her shoulder, registering the slight raise in Adelais's voice the more she spoke.

"You're a pathetic little girl who's never had to work for anything in her life. This is the real world, Claire, where the actions you take can and will get you killed. Now, would you kindly climb down from your imaginary pedestal and shut the fuck up?"

Claire and Marcia could do no more than stare in horrified shock as the reserved, quiet cousin they had been exposed to all through the party completely crumbled away. They couldn't look or listen past the words being seeing, disregarding all else as they were distracted by the insults being thrown at them by the older woman.

Casey, on the other hand, was focused on the sudden change in tone. Adelais's voice had dropped, deepening slightly, and taken on a slower and more controlled gate. Blinking in shock as she concentrated on the different nuances of the blonde's tone, Casey began focusing on Adelais for a new reason.

Her posture had changed, less reserved and drawn in as she had been up until that point. It was more…defiant, like she had gone on the offensive. The look in her eyes were a challenge, sharp green glaring at the teens across from them like she was daring them to speak; daring them to accept the masked challenge in her words and actions.

Knowing Claire, she would be stupid enough to accept without knowing the challenge had even been issued.

"I'll let you know when I hear something that makes sense," Casey spoke up, drawing Claire's attention back to her. She did not like Claire, but something about Adelais—the abrupt shift in behaviour—suddenly made her feel like a wild card. "We don't even know what this is yet."

Claire's attention shifted between Casey and Adelais, the older blonde appearing to calm as she leaned back into the corner with her eyes directed to the stone wall. It was similar to how she had stared at it before the man had come back in and snatched her up. Focus solely on the wall, as though it held secrets that she was able to decipher from between the brick and mortar.

Gradually, Adelais's posture reverted back to how it had been—she wrapped her arms around her torso and lifted one shoulder as though to defend her neck from exposure to the rest of the room, her hair was pulled over the other shoulder as a sort of cover to replace her missing scarf, and her legs tucked in close to her body. Silence fell over the room as the other three wisely remained quiet about what had taken place.

As the other two turned in toward one another and started whispering in low levels, Casey situated her back against the wall to watch Adelais a bit more discretely while resting her cheek on one of her bent knees. Soft and quiet—easily blending into the background, submissive—turned to low and strong—wrought with challenge and domination.

It was like she had become a completely different person.

She didn't remember saying it. It was the one word she had never said to her mother or father before, not since she was too young to know the consequences or it.

No.

When the word had slipped passed her lips, she wasn't sure. But she knew that her mother had been ordering her to start on dinner—a dinner she would not be allowed to eat—and then she was suddenly on the floor with the agony of her mother's slap burning the tender skin of her cheek. Thin as she was, the strike had caused her mother's ring to split the skin over her cheekbone when there was nothing to cushion the blow.

"Don't you ever say no to me again, you useless brat. When I tell you to do something, you will do it without question and without comment. Am I understood?"

Unsure of what had just transpired, since Adelais knew better than to ever tell either of her parents no, the young adolescent could do no more than nod dumbly as she placed a hand over her bleeding cheek. The only thing she could do to make the situation worse would be to bleed on the floors, or the clothing her mother had provided her with.

Trying so desperately to remember when the word could have slipped out, Adelais could come up with nothing as she scrambled into the kitchen to begin on her parents' dinner.

Unfortunately, it was not the only or last time she lost control of herself and was left with no memory of the event. When being around her mother—and it usually was her mother, though sometimes her father as well—became too much and she could feel the cold, silent rage beginning to boil over, everything just disappeared. It was similar to a blink, one that seemed to carry her from one moment to the next with no recollection of the in-between.

Then, after she had woken to enough bloody wounds or bruised limbs, the opposite occurred. When she felt on the cusp of losing control of her anger, or was witness to her mother's mood spiralling downward to end in a devastating climax for Adelais, she was suddenly waking in her bed. Not a single mark or bruise marring her body as she stared up at her ceiling in confused awe.

Sometimes, it wasn't enough. Sometimes, nothing could save her from the wrath that festered within her mother. However, the bruises and scars had lessened over the years thanks to the odd moments of waking-sleep. That is how she began to think of it—her body was awake and some part of her consciousness remained alongside it, but she—Adelais—slept.

"We're here! We're in here!"

Adelais jolted awake at the sudden shouting, her eyes snapping open dazedly as she was left to stare across at the wall with the other cot in front of it. After falling asleep in the corner, she had eventually laid down in her sleep and curled tightly in on herself near the pillow. It left room for Casey, but not much.

Lifting her head to look toward the door, craning her neck uncomfortably in the process, Adelais watched as the three teenagers rapidly stepped away from where the door was being unlocked.

Propping her body up on one arm, Adelais didn't even have time to swing her legs off the cot before the door opened with a quiet shriek of old hinges.

I'm baaaaack ;)