With a low sound of agony, Dastan of Persia opened his eyes.

The world swam nauseatingly, the darkness of the cave he sat in only making it harder to ground himself in the present. The only light came from the flicker of fire in a pit to his left, the rest of the cave lost to the shadows. His mind, what was left of it anyway, told him he was below the actual lair of the men who had taken him, shoved into a place men were never meant to come out of. How he was still alive, he could not say, or even if he was truly alive still at all. The agony of his broken bones and torn flesh was dulled by the drugs that swirled through his head. He could not focus on anything, his thoughts slipping through his desperate fingers as easily as water. Only the odd, sharp burst of pain reminded him that he was, in some way, still alive.

Every time he had found the shreds of sanity to move, he had forced his body to do so. To flex his bloody, torn wrists against the unforgiving ropes that burned into his skin. To move his ankles, both the good and the broken, against the ropes that bound them. Gentle movements that sent agony up his body followed, testing how he was bound that day. Today the ropes that bound his bruised and broken ribs were gone, leaving his chest aching. He felt that under the fog of the herbs that had overcome his system. It was odd what came through the haze and what did not. Which bumps and bruises hurt, which were lost in the smoke. As quickly as the thought of its oddity had occurred to him, it slipped away, retreating into the fog like the half forgotten caress of a long lost lover.

Within moments, Dastan forgot he had thought them at all.

Time, emotion, none of it mattered in this place. There were times when Dastan thought he could see Garsiv's face or smell the oils Tus used in his hair. Once he had even imagined the touch of his father's hand on his head. But those thoughts only made him sad, in the brief moments when he could feel such things. And more often than not the face he saw most often was that of his Uncle. Mostly he saw him in the moment before his death, when rage twisted his features before Tus's blade wiped his face blank with shock. But sometimes he would see him sanding before the Sands, the ruler over his dark empire as he dangled over the edge of the rocks, his hand still cold from where Tamina's had pulled free. It was moments like that when Dastan was glad for every step the drugs and the torture forced him to take forward as they drove him closer to madness.

How the sound of feet reached his ears, he did not know. It seemed as though something as soft as footsteps should not have made it to his ears. But they did. And whatever fragments of the man he had once been forced his head up, turning it to the rough doorway carved into the wall of the cave. There was no door there, as though his captors knew the men they forced down to this place were not going to be escaping. Not after the first day anyway. Dastan barely managed to keep his head up long enough to identify the man who walked down into the room. Or to try to at least. His face was lost to the shadows, his identity as useless to Dastan as every other thing he tried to remember as he sat in the cave.

He could not even feel comfort at the knowledge he would not be tortured.

The torture always began silently, soundlessly, without any sort of warning. He would see a flash of black or silver and then the pain would roar up. It always hurt, in the beginning. But the man had let him hear his footsteps, something Dastan was sure he was capable of preventing. But he heard the mans quiet, precise footfalls as they moved to the fire. There was the sound of metal moving against the stone and the light of the fire changed, sending colored spots dancing across Dastan's vision. Squeezing his eyes shut, Dastan turned his head away from the blinding light but it made no difference as his senses lurched sickeningly.

"It will pass," the voice of the man said, no emotion in his tone.

Dastan forced his eyes open, looking at the rocks under his feet. An ornate black disk, burning with embers lay in between his feet now, the coals red and bright. His chest heaved, the action not hurting as much as Dastan knew it should. Perhaps he was finally dying, though the thought did not strike him as a troublesome one. Death would at least be something final, something real. Rather than the fog and the haze and the confusion. He heard the man move, stepping away from the fire and moving towards him on steps that seemed to ring in his ears. There was no point in looking at the man, he would be beside him soon enough. The man stood in front of him, just out of his range of sight.

"It always passes."

The smell of the herbs filled his nose, the putrid stench making some part of him cringe. But the beautiful fog filled his nose, seeping through every ache and thought until all that remained was-well, was nothing. He was not there, no more than his ankle was broken or his wrists were bound with rope. There was nothing anymore. In that blissful nothingness, Dastan raised his head to take in the sight of the man who waited patiently for the herbs to take hold. He looked at Dastan with a gaze devoid of emotion. As Dastan looked at him the man walked closer to him, towering over his bound form though Dastan was fairly sure they would have been close to the same height if he had been able to stand. The mans eyes moved over his features, seemingly searching for something Dastan was not sure he would find.

Unable to look at the man anymore, Dastan let his head roll back, bringing the ceiling into the view of his eyes. The world seemed to spin further as more of the herbs invaded his senses, taking his mind away. The world became lost to him as he looked up at the ceiling, his eye taking in the uneven surface of the rocks. A distant part of him thought that he should feel sick. An even more distant part told him that he should be fighting. That he should be worried, that he should be doing everything in his power to get out of this place. But that part grew softer with each beat of his heart, each breath of his lungs. He had nothing to fight for, he had nothing to protect. Not for some time and certainly not in the moment he lay suspended in. He had nothing to protect.

Not anymore.

He did not realize the man had moved until he stood beside him, the swish of the black robes he wore the only indication that he had moved at all. The man looked at him, his eyes taking in the sight of Dastan's features once more before he stepped back, letting the ceiling take over Dastan's gaze. Whether the man stood there for minutes or hours, the Prince could not have said. Time, that strange, precious thing seemed to have no place in the darkness of the cave. When the man spoke, his voice was edged in something Dastan could not have named if his very life depended on it. But the moment the mans voice reached his ear, it became the only thing that mattered in the distorted world.

"Tell me about the Princess."