A ficlet. Possibly a prelude to something bigger. An idea's a-brewin', but I haven't decided whether I want to write the whole thing. So this may be all there is. Enjoy. Or mock at your leisure, but hopefully you'll enjoy that too.

He felt cold. Strange, that. He was cold by default, so he never really noticed it. To be warm, that was the anomaly. The thing to be noticed. Savored. But now he was so cold. At least he'd finally stopped shivering. Maybe. Couldn't really tell any more, truth be told. No ... he'd stopped. Shivering took more energy than he had to give.

The cold was just an extension of the darkness. The others had taken all the light with them when they'd left, left him there, hanging by his straps. He had no blood left to rush to his head, but he still felt woozy. Weak. Lifeless. This was what dying felt like, some part of him remembered. This was what those girls had felt, before he'd buried them. At least they'd gotten to finish. No such mercy for him. For him this feeling would go on forever.

She kept telling him that. Coming to him, long after they'd left. The room was too dark for even his enhanced vision to make out anything but black, but she brought her own light. She glowed from within as she told him, softly, that nobody would come for him. That even if they did, the room was hidden, they wouldn't find him. But they weren't coming, she said. They believed he'd gone willingly. That he'd turned against them. And if they did find him, they would kill him.

That was what she said. But he knew. He knew she wasn't the real one. He was on to this one's tricks. Wouldn't be fooled again. Her voice, nearby, calling his name ... he didn't know if that was real. He wanted it to be. But even if it was, he had no voice to answer. Probably all in his head, anyway.

In the basement -- the other basement. That had been real. It -- she'd -- oh, God. She could see him now. She could see ... and she ...

He felt himself shaking again. Not shivering, though. The moisture running down his nose wasn't blood. Sod it all, he was crying. He'd done his best not to holler when he was being sliced and diced, or when that thing had come crawling up out of the ground, unleashed by his own blood. He'd kept mum whenever the other one taunted him, tried to get a rise out of him. But now ...

She believed in him. And all he could do was hang here and weep like a bloody useless git, praying she believed enough to come and save him.