Morning of June 21, 2014 [TW: VIOLENCE, KIDNAPPING, TORTURE]

[callmeemily]

Trigger Warning: This thread contains violence, kidnapping, and torture. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to tweet @thestarsplay for clarification. Thanks!

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The beeping of her alarm's incessant - it's got to be to get her out of bed at 3:30am, and that's after it's also gone off at 3:00. Groping to silence it, Raleigh's entirely blurry as she yawns, rubbing a hand over her face.

It's taken a lot to get used to waking up this early; it comes part and parcel with working at a bakery, and even if makes her miserable she's got a job and she really does need it - and honestly, she likes what she's doing. Maybe she's not all that fond of where she works, but she feels like she's found her calling with the bakery thing. It'd been a hobby, but now...

She loves it. Getting ready is minimal on purpose; she showers before bed, so now it's just pulling on jeans and a t-shirt, hobbling until the muscle in her leg finally gives up on it's mission to make her life suck. She pulls her hair back in a ponytail and brushes her teeth, trying to be quiet so she wouldn't wake the other people in the boarding house. It's a delicate situation, that she's got as much of a right as anyone else to be there, but she doesn't want to be the dick that's banging shit at 3:45.

It's 3:50 when she slips out the front door, her hands shoved in the front of her hoodie and her sneakers crunch on the rock driveway as she looks out at the green of pre-dawn and the birds start to sing incessantly loud. It's a little magical (as much as she hates using the descriptor now that she knows about the town a little) with the way it is in the morning, everything untouched and not a soul to be seen. You could almost taste the dew in the air when you inhale, and Raleigh smiles, for all that it's not even 4am.

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[callmeemily]

The water was freezing cold and she was soaked in a matter of seconds. Staring up at him, she listened to what he was saying even though it was far away, even though his voice sounded weird and small and far away and she knew why. She knew how shock worked, she knew from when she'd broken her leg so badly and had been trapped in that basement.

His partner ripped off the tape and she cried out in pain, but she stared up at him. "Why? Why bring me here? Why- What did I do-" She was crying, because she knew - she knew that no one would find her. The only reason anybody'd been able to find Spencer was because Joel already knew about Mark.

"What did I do wrong?" Her voice cracked as she cried, and her foot felt like it was on fire, the wet bandage already starting to slowly stain red from the water wicking the blood. "What did I do!?"

[tarnishedbadge]

"I'm sure when you think about it hard enough, you'll know what it was you did."

She had, of course, done nothing wrong other than be convenient and someone that wouldn't be missed. That was all there was too it, Joseph wasn't punishing the unrighteous or anything like that. If she thought she had done something wrong though, let her go with that. Perhaps eventually she would think of something and accept her fate. It made little difference to him.

"You can take solace in the fact that despite what you did, neither my partner or I have any interest in... violating you. And as I said, your stay with us will be fairly short."

[callmeemily]

"I didn't do anything! I didn't- They started following me, I didn't-" She was pleading now, and she was trying to get out, out of the shower, out of the room, out of somewhere because she'd die in here, she'd die in a motel bathroom and that's when he says that he doesn't plan on violating her and it's so absurd that she laughs.

She laughs, a half-hysterical sound, because 'the ritual' was tomorrow, because when that happens, whenever the ritual happens - oh good. Oh, good. "What's the ritual. What's going to happen? What're you going to do?" She knows the answer, she knows it, but she's got to ask.

[tarnishedbadge]

"You know what you did," he repeated, more sure this time. It was amusing to him that someone was supposedly following her and here Joseph and his partner had gotten to her first. Well, that just proved that the universe had a sense of humor.

"It's short but painful," he said, not mincing words. Lying to her wouldn't help. Neither would the truth, but the truth was simple to give in this case. "You'll be ensuring that I live just a little bit longer, dear."

[callmeemily]

"I didn't do anything." She said it again, but this time she sounds defeated, her shoulders hunched. "I'm assuming I'm dead by the end of it." The words are oddly flat, and she's glaring up at him, her skin pale white as she's started to uncontrollably shiver. It's the pain, the cold, the wet.

She's going to find some way to get out of here. She has to. He says there's no sneaking out, but she's wondering about the chain already, if she can get her hands out of it, if she can do something because she's got to do something. Because otherwise she'll die in here, and no one will know.

That's always been the sticking point for her, ever since the basement. Ever since she was so sure she would die, deep in the ground, in the dark. That no one would ever find her, and she'd forever just be a missing person - but when you got old enough, people stopped assuming that you were missing. Adults didn't go missing. They left, and so they'd just think you moved on.

"Why don't you just fucking give it up and die?" That's a wish. That's a wish that he'd just keel over and die, although she'd still be chained here. She looks over at the guy who's grabbed her, and her eyes are shiny with more tears. "And you? What do you get? I'm twenty-two. I haven't even lived yet, and great, you're helping him-"

That's when she starts to cry again, when she stops talking and just curls up as far away from them both as she can. The moment of clarity is gone, and all she wants to do is hide. To protect herself, the way a wounded animal would.

[tarnishedbadge]

"Because I don't want to die," Joseph added simply, even as she began to cry. His partner said nothing. He was a great, hulking beast of a man, sometimes looking more beast than man. His partner said nothing unless Joseph allowed it, and he never allowed it.

"I don't want to die and I'm willing to fight for it harder than most, that's all. A young girl that no one would miss walking alone before the sun is up... perhaps you should have valued your own life more."

With that Joseph turned off the light, left the bathroom, and locked the door.