A/N: I have no excuse for this: the result of too many renditions of "Pity for the Pious."

In Bondage

By: Marchwriter

She met him sitting upon an unearthed mortsafe. She did not ask how he'd gotten it out of the ground. Its occupant was well-trammeled regardless.

His heavy-lidded eyes, aged mirrors of her own, followed her from out of hollow tunnels, the light a long ways away.

The bony, quick-fluttering hands on their limp wrists curled around the grating. His heels banged against the ice-rimed cage. A vague—and knowing—smile curved his lips, eliciting a head sharply inclined in uncomfortable acknowledgment as she hurried past.

She snapped the double-bolt on her bedroom door, chained it, stared at the locked door.