a/n: oh ye, of little faith. come on guys, by this site's standards, eight months isn't even all that long to wait for an update.

I admittedly did give up on this story for a long time, simply out of laziness at first, then out of sheer revulsion (I was at a new job for a while that involved taking care of young kids, and suddenly, I no longer had the stomach to read/write/edit about awful things happening to children...even my own fanfic). but I'm back now, and this chapter is easily the longest in the entire story, so, enjoy. hopefully it was worth the wait.

It was hours past dawn before Billy saw the outside of the crate again. By that time, his whole reality had been reduced to freezing pain and despair.

Out of the blank nothingness that filled the world around him, there were suddenly sounds of furniture being moved, objects shifting. The crate shook with vibrations everywhere, sending waves of rolling pain-needles flaring through Billy's cramped limbs. He whimpered involuntarily, causing his sore throat to flare with pain, and suddenly the top of the crate lifted away. There was bright stabbing light pressing against eyelids, even though they were already squeezed as tightly shut as they could go, and he understood that his tormentor had returned.

"Hi, Junior," came a subdued, quiet voice from above. Billy trembled violently, unable (unwilling) to open his eyes, but suddenly there were bony hands gripping his sides, yanking him up out of the crate.

Billy screamed, eyes snapping open and seeing nothing but the world gone white around the edges. The painful light, the soreness in his throat, became nothing in an instant compared to the knives plunging into his body, in his legs and everywhere at once. Everything was pain, so much that it would surely be easier just to cut off his limbs now and be done with it, or possibly even to die –

"There, there, hush now," Alex said distantly over his screams, holding him firmly in place with her wiry arms while his muscles spasmed and writhed of their own accord. There were no knives, of course, nothing stabbing him: it was all in his mind, save for the terrible pain.

"Of course it's going to hurt, Billy. You were in that crate for an awfully long time. See what happens when you fight me?"

Billy sobbed, clinging helplessly to her and hating himself for it. Alex Merkel was his torturer, he couldn't forget that, but right now she was also the only source of comfort. And Billy needed comfort, desperately, when his body was in more pain now from these cramps than he ever knew could exist.

She sat beside him on the carpeted floor for close to an hour and a half, kneading patiently at the vicious cramps in Billy's muscles. Slowly, the circulation worked its way back into his knotted limbs, one miserable beat of his heart at a time. Billy shivered and cried while she worked, knowing the reprieve was temporary and it was only a matter of time before the next punishment came. Alex's steady, quiet words to him throughout the massage did nothing to dissuade his fears.

"Tell me who you love, Billy," she whispered, leaning so that her mouth was close against his ear, her fingers still rubbing gentle circles into his arms. "You're not like the other boys and girls at the shelter, staring at me with dead eyes that can see how ugly the world is. It's obvious someone out there cares about you. I can see their love on your face, Billy. Like a stain..."

Without warning, she dug her nails sharply into the skin of his arms, making him cry out in pain. Then she hummed, the sound contemplative, and returned to her massaging a moment later.

"If you want, I can make it stop," she continued, conversationally, as though nothing had happened. "Trade you for the ones you care about. I could do all this to them, instead of you."

Billy trembled and shook his head, refusing to meet eyes. He couldn't let Alex hurt Uncle Dudley, or the Justice League, or the Team. He'd never let them suffer like this because of him. The thought of it frightened him far more than anything else his captor had done so far.

Not seeming to mind Billy's refusal, Alex only kept working circles through his muscles in the same manner as before. "You'll change your mind soon enough," she said, tonelessly. As though it were inevitable.

Billy had to bite down on a sob at the words.

After another half hour or so, Alex lifted him up like a ragdoll and limped her way out of the living room, moving toward the adjacent hallway. It was ominously dark, carrying them further into the apartment, and suddenly Billy wished he were back in the crate.

Familiar terror and hysteria clawed their way up his throat, but before he had time to really panic, Alex abruptly dumped him outside one of the doors in the hallway. She turned the knob and opened it to reveal a harmless-looking bathroom, blue-tiled and completely unremarkable.

"Clean up if you want, Junior," Alex said impassively. "I'll be back to get you when it's time."

Without another word, she turned away from him and walked back out to the living room.

Disoriented, Billy watched her go. He wondered stupidly if he'd somehow missed something in her words. Was she actually leaving him alone?

He decided it didn't matter, whether or not he'd understood correctly. In this place, blessings didn't last long, and he didn't need her permission to take advantage of them. He didn't. He took a deep breath, trying to clear his aching head, then slowly dragged himself into the bathroom on his hands and knees. His body trembled, aching legs not feeling like they could support him.

"The collected barks inside," he said, just to test if the language-altering effects of the Blue Ice had worn off yet. Apparently they hadn't. "Why doesn't it, scream into the tear..."

Well, he hadn't expected anything better. The Cap was still out of reach. Billy would simply have to make the best of the situation and freedom that he did have.

Alex probably thinks I'm too helpless to get away on my own, he thought feverishly, pulling himself all the way inside the bathroom and haphazardly closing the door behind him. But I'm not. I'm not helpless. Someone like that wouldn't have been picked to be Captain Marvel.

With a tremendous effort, Billy braced one arm against the side of the bathtub, and slowly pushed himself up to his knees. Trembling, he reached out for the doorknob. With shaking fingers he clumsily closed the door all the way, and, stretching, managed to secure the lock with a satisfying click.

That done, he collapsed bodily against the door. Utterly drained.

She's wrong about me, Billy assured himself, breathing raggedly to stave off his swimming lightheadedness. Billy Batson never gives up! It's up to me to find a way out of here and warn the Justice League before she comes back.

Of course, doing so was easier said than done. Billy couldn't even stand up in his current condition, let alone make a daring escape. He'd have to start smaller. Sluggishly, he looked around the darkened bathroom, noting with disappointment that the only window was built very high up into the wall. It was also tiny, too small for even his slight frame to squeeze through. He needed another plan of attack.

"Wrote...style," he rasped experimentally again, his tongue swollen and dry. It hurt to speak – with his limbs finally scaled back to an acceptable level of pain, the smaller hurts were becoming more pronounced, and his mouth and throat were among the worst. Tiredly, Billy blinked back a sudden, dizzying wave of tears and tried again. He felt so impatient with himself for wasting time.

"Too, arrived. Arrived. Law others, wizard..."

Closer. But still, no good. The Blue Ice wasn't out of his system yet, even if the chemical high had worn off hours and hours ago. Billy sighed shakily and rubbed his eyes, wishing that he had the Wisdom of Solomon to help him out as Billy Batson. He couldn't decide what on Earth he ought to do next.

Think, Batson, he urged himself tiredly, come on!

His throat burned painfully from the effort of speaking, enough to be a distraction. Maybe he should attend to that first. Billy glanced longingly up at the bathroom sink looming overhead – he still didn't trust his legs to support him long enough to reach the faucet. The bathtub, though...the bathtub was much closer. Right? Sure. He'd do that.

The effort of moving again after his quick reprieve was phenomenal. Billy felt tired and empty and cold, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up on the tiled floor and sleep for an eternity. Still, he forced himself up off the ground an inch at a time and flung his arms over the side of the bathtub, reaching out blindly for the glass spigot sticking out from the wall. It took him a few attempts, hands slipping unsteadily, but he finally managed to turn the tap to one side. Cold water gushed out of the faucet like a waterfall, splashing into the tub and drenching Billy's hands and clothes. He smiled, exhausted but pleased.

Faucet...Fawcett. Like Fawcett City. Home. Billy let his mind drift blankly for a moment, soothed to numbness by the sensation of cold water running against his hands. They sound the same...ha, ha. If only it could be that easy.

He suddenly slumped over the side of the tub, his body racked with violent, shaking sobs. I want to go home, he thought, desperately, fighting to breathe through the gasping, shaking convulsions that overpowered his thin frame. I want to go home...

Eventually, he forced himself to stop. The sounds and wetness of the gushing water helped to clear his mind of grief. Exhaustedly wiping his eyes, his dripping nose, Billy straightened his posture a bit and thought out tiredly what he needed to do. First, he reached out to cup his hands beneath the running water, unsteadily raising a shaking mouthful to his lips. He sipped slowly at first, then got greedy, drinking handful after handful before forgoing his hands entirely to stick his head directly beneath the faucet. He drank and drank until he thought he might burst, gulping water down like air or life itself. Nothing had ever tasted so wonderful.

Rehydration brought a sudden, unexpected resurgence of strength. Billy felt alive again. With new zeal, he dragged himself over to the toilet, then the sink. He leaned his weight against the countertop and washed the dirt off his hands and face.

Glancing up, he saw mirror above the sink was cracked in several places. The breaks started small then spindled out in all directions, like spiderwebs. Billy took in his at his fractured reflection and saw an unfamiliar boy staring out at him, harried and pale, with swollen eyes that were red from crying and drug injections. His black pupils were blown so wide that he could hardly make out any blue lurking in the irises. The image burned in his mind, nagging at him like it meant something, and in a moment of weakness he let himself be taken in by it.

A sudden, loud knock startled Billy from his thoughts, heavy fists pounding hard against the door outside. "Time's up, Billy," Alex growled from the hallway, her voice an unmistakable threat. His reprieve had officially ended.

Billy's newfound energy fled him all at once. The blood in his veins froze, this time out of fear, not a chemical high. "No," he croaked, voice tinny and unfamiliar in his ears.

Without warning, the pounding on the door intensified, causing Billy's lower half to spasm involuntarily in terror – betraying him, like he'd somehow lost control of his legs purely out of fear, in addition to the loss of his voice. He scrabbled at the tiled counter with both hands, feeling like he was clawing through water, and barely he managed not to collapse. A part of him, a part he very nearly hated, told him insistently that his efforts to hold himself together were futile. That he might as well just surrender.

"Open the door," Alex warned from the hallway, pausing her knocking just long enough for him to hear her. "It'll be worse for you if you don't."

She didn't have to say what they both knew: that she would get in either way, with or without his cooperation. That there was no escape for him now. Billy understood that, accepted it, and the knowledge terrified him, utterly. Hyperventilating, he glanced wildly around the bathroom, seeking out something, anything he could use to fight her off when she got in. Because she would get in, and when she did, he was going to fight.

He would not go quietly to his death, would not give this maniac anything she wanted to make her happy. He would not tell her the names of the people he loved, even if his suffering was a hundred times more terrible because of it.

Billy was afraid, more afraid than he'd ever felt before, but he still had no intentions of surrendering. Alex Merkel could end his life, break his spirit, silence his voice; but if she wanted those things then she would have to take them. He would not give them up to her without a fight. He would not.

Whatever else happened, Billy's heart was still his own. Alex would not have it, not even if she tortured him for a hundred years. It was the only promise left he had to keep.

Fighting back tears, Billy caught sight of a small, decorated porcelain lamp on the counter beside the soap dish. He forced his hands to reach forward and seize it, hoping it could do some damage. All energy spent, he stepped away from the counter and sank, shuddering, to his knees on the ground. Knuckles white, he held his makeshift weapon in both hands and watched the door with rapt attention, trembling.

Alex knocked several more times, the sounds growing louder and more impatient the longer they went on. The doorknob rattled forebodingly as it was tested; once, twice. Then, stillness. Terrible stillness.

Billy sucked in his breath and waited.

BANG.

He gasped and started, not daring to look away from the entryway. The entire bathroom shook from the impact of the blow to the door, shards of glass falling free of the mirror to scatter on the countertop below.

BANG.

This time, there were sounds of wood splintering that accompanied the deafening slam. Billy forced himself to inhale, exhale, his eyes wide and filled with unshed tears. His pupils had been constricted to nothing.

BANG!

At last the door burst open, and there was Alex, looming over Billy like a mountain. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she walked forward, her slow, limping strides impossibly powerful. Her hands twitched with anticipation as she reached out for him there on the ground, trying to grab him, and Billy –

– Billy hurtled forward, with an explosion of strength he hadn't known he possessed, his mouth screaming sound without words –

– and smashed the lamp as hard as he could into Alex's left knee, shattering the object to pieces in a hideous spray of blood and glass, porcelain shards cutting into his hands with even more pain –

– and that didn't matter, because this was his last chance, his very, very last chance to escape this living nightmare –

– and he had to take it!

Maybe Alex stumbled, maybe Billy only imagined it, but he somehow darted around her anyway and out the bathroom faster than he could move. He sobbed as he sprinted down the hallway, ignoring every ache in his abused body as he flew through the door to the living room. He skidded violently and spun in the direction of the door, hurtling toward it. He'd done everything he could, he'd done absolutely everything, please let it could it have possibly been enough please please please, and a flash of breathless running later he was miraculously standing at the entrance, the exit, to the apartment. His hand slammed onto the doorknob and turned

crack

and Billy was falling, collapsing like a stone to the floor, with Alex Merkel standing over his limp body expressionlessly. He hadn't heard her coming, hadn't dared to look, but it didn't matter. His last bid for life was ended.

Fighting unconsciousness, and renewed despair, Billy weakly forced himself to look up. He saw Alex's weakened, crippled leg gushing blood from where he'd struck her with the lamp, the limb sticking out horrifyingly at a wrong angle from the knee. Any other human would be screaming, debilitated from their agony, after suffering an injury like that, and yet – but Alex didn't even look like the damage was causing her pain at all. She stared coldly down at Billy, with the same lack of expression as before, as though the porcelain shards digging into her flesh and the horrific break below her knee were nothing but an inconvenience.

"You can't hurt me, Junior," she said tonelessly, and dropped the broken chair she'd struck him with.

Billy moaned and tried to move away, but Alex seized him by his arm, jerking him up roughly so that Billy felt something snap out of place in his shoulder with an explosion of white-hot pain.

He screamed, the sound tearing unbidden from his throat more animal that human. He tried madly to get away, but Alex held him fast and yanked him to her body and she shook him by his dislocated upper arm and made him scream like he was dead and she kept doing it and didn't, didn't stop.

Billy's eyes finally rolled back in his head, blinded white by torture. She was hurting him so badly he didn't even know who he was anymore.

After what might have been hours, Alex dropped him to the ground again and walked away. Billy saw nothing, only blackness that was also whiteness that was also his pain. He sobbed in panic, unable to breathe, and for a few long seconds there was nothing in his world but agonizing whiteness, pain in its purest form.

Unconcerned, Alex walked over to a standing tripod camera that had been set up against the wall. As she spent a few minutes pressing buttons and leaning down to check on things, Billy came back to himself and saw, dazedly, what she was doing. She casually adjusted something on the camera, and Billy closed his eyes to her and whimpered and curled in on himself. He felt certain that he was dying already. His shoulder screamed and he couldn't breathe.

There was a glint of metal in Alex's hand when she returned, something steel with jagged edges. Billy forced his eyes open as she drew near, sobbing and hyperventilating as he recognized the handsaw in her grasp. She laid down a plastic tarp over the carpet, smoothing the edges as Billy sobbed, like their entire situation was of little consequence. Then she walked over and kicked him hard, directly in the chest, forcing Billy to roll over and onto the tarp. He felt the sharp pain of one of his ribs cracking, a stabbing sensation that traveled deep into his chest and didn't fade. He mewled in agony, still fighting just to breathe, and Alex knelt beside him on the plastic. Her blank face shifted into an expression of terrible rage.

"Won't give you any more drugs. Going to make you suffer while you bleed," she growled, roughly, reaching out and pinning Billy by the throat. He choked and cried out, terrified, finally realizing that there was no way out.

"Cah, C-Can link it surprise please!" he begged, thrashing on the ground despite his injuries, fighting the lack of air in his terror-struck chest. "Please, please, m-make it to the running!"

Suddenly, he felt a grinding, biting pain in his injured arm. The metal saw was tearing into his skin – Alex intended to fully dismember him before she killed him. Billy sobbed helplessly through his tears, finding the air to scream one final time:

"N-Never, but, help! Sometimes gave own way MARVEL!"

And, eons away, in the shadow of the Rock of Eternity, an old, old Wizard suddenly opened his eyes.