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Never again.
Many would say it was a mantra.
She’d rather call it a promise.
A promise to a little kid, not quite old enough to understand bad and good.
A promise to the feathers left on the white tiles, scarreted amongst the blood.
A promise to the drawings she hung on the walls, dots of colors lost in the blinding white of the wallpaper.
A promise to herself, before all.
Never again.
They’d never get a hold of her again.
The plane was silent, the only sound coming from her friends’ snores.
Silence was nice, comforting almost. It had grown to be her friend, after years of dreading it.
Silence meant everything was fine, meant there weren’t any neon lights constantly on and preventing her from falling asleep, meant she was free and had yet to be caught again.
Yet.
Baghera had never quite managed to believe she wouldn’t ever go back to being a prisoner.
See, when you grow up between four walls, you tend to think there’s nothing outside of them. That was their way of making sure no one would try to escape.
You can’t escape when you don’t know if anything other than your cage exist.
You can’t escape what you think is normal.
You can’t escape family, because family is in your blood, just like the feathers on the floor, just like the drawings who got ripped off the walls, just like Baghera, each time they were done with their experiments.
And so, for years, Baghera hadn’t even thought of escaping.
White walls, not so white lies, white flashes of pain blinding her eyes.
That was her normalcy.
Until one day, one colorful day, they made a mistake : they taught her how to read.
And Baghera, starved of colors and hope, couldn’t help but drink the words down until they weren’t any left for her to consume. When that happened, she wrote her own, created a language filled of symbols she was the only one able to decipher.
The walls weren’t white anymore, covered in black ink, in words she had created for herself.
Cucurucho could take the feathers away, but the Federation couldn’t rip the words out of her mind.
Existence wouldn’t be colorless anymore.
Books filled her world with green grass, blue skies and yellow suns.
One day, she introduced the words to Jaiden, the kid in the cell next to hers.
Jaiden was just as colorful as the words, with wings fading from turquoise to purple. Jaiden had learned how to read as well, but she hadn’t found the same freedom as Baghera had in the books.
After all, she had never seen the feathers dropping, the blood dripping, the drawings getting ripped.
Jaiden already knew all about the green grass, the blue skies, the yellow suns but nothing about the red stains, the black words, the white flashes.
And so, Jaiden had never thought to escape, for there was nothing for her to flee.
Baghera sometimes wondered what became of her.
Did she leave, just like her ?
Did she become their new test subject, now that their past toy was gone ?
Did she survive long enough to understand what Baghera was running away from ?
A knock.
Baghera jumped to her feet, startled.
If silence meant peace, sound meant danger.
She looked around, mentally counting her friends.
One : Aypierre was still snoring in his seat.
Two : Kameto’s face was burried in his mask, as usual.
Three : Etoiles had his backpack on his knees, never quite lowering his guard.
Four : Antoine was… Antoine ? He wasn’t in his seat anymore. Where is he ? They took him. The Federation took him didn’t they ? (you are on a plane, they can’t get to you, breathe) They took him away and they’ll torture him, just like they did to her. They’ll take his feathers (he doesn’t have any, stay rational), they’ll take his words away (they can’t, you need to stay grounded), they’ll lock him in the white room and he’ll never escape, and she’ll never see him again, and they’ll make him bleed too, and they’ll break his wings, and he’ll never, never, never, nev-
A door creaked.
Baghera’s head turned fast enough to catch a sight of Antoine closing the cockpit’s door.
Oh.
They didn’t take him.
He won’t be locked away in the room.
Breathe in.
One, two, three, four.
Breathe out.
One, two, three, four.
Her friends were all fine and all there, in the plane, with her.
And they would never get a hold of them.
And they would never get her back there.
Never again, she promised under her breath.
Never, ever again.
The first time she made that promise, she had woken up in a pile of feathers.
Everything was silent when she regained consciousness.
No sounds, other than the never-ending buzzing of the neon above her bed.
No sounds but still so many words, dancing around her, melting with her pain to alleviate it a little.
They’ll kill her.
They’ll kill her, someday, once her pain and her cries stop being enough to appease their science.
Baghera doesn’t want to die.
No, she doesn’t.
She doesn’t want to die, that she is sure of. She wants to explore the horizons the words had promised her. She wants to see the green grass, the blue skies and the yellow suns.
She wants, she wants, she wants.
When had she started to be so demanding ?
When had her manner failed her, despite being engraved with her blood on the white tiles of the floor ?
When had she started to demand rather than beg ?
Baghera wasn’t begging anymore.
She had done her share of it.
Begging for forgiveness, begging for the pain to stop, begging for the light to stop buzzing, begging, begging, begging and never getting anything anyway.
They would never get her to beg again.
And they will never touch her again.
Never, ever, again.
She crawled out of her bed, to flee the buzzing of the neon.
To get closer to the words, still covering the walls.
She winced as she set a foot on the floor and almost screamed when she tried to open her wings to gain some balance back.
They had been harsher this time, leaving her with what seemed to be a broken wing and a sore ankle.
Never again.
She looked at the blood on the floor, somehow recognizing herself in the red stains, for the crimson shade had been part of her life before being part of her pain.
Never again.
The words moved along the lines of the walls, joining the blood on the floor, red and black mixing together to hug her a bit tighter.
Never again.
Her functionning wing came around her, blocking the outside world from her view, the second one staying folded against her back.
Never again.
Never again, never again, never again, they’d never touch her again, right ? (Breathe)
Never again but there was blood dripping, feathers dropping, and it would never stop, they wouldn’t allow it. (You escaped, breathe)
They got her once and they’d get her again, and again, and again, and-
(Wake up)
Baghera opened her eyes, jumping on her feet, once more. The quicker she was standing, the quicker she’d be able to run.
But only the silence answered her fear.
Oh.
The plane.
Right.
One, two, three, four.
One : Aypierre twisted in his seat, letting his head fall against the plane’s wall.
Two : Kameto opened one eye to check his phone before going back to sleep.
Three : Etoiles was whispering something to himself, his hand reaching for the dagger he usually kept in his pocket by habit.
Four : Antoine was back in his seat, looking through the window.
Five : Baghera was in the plane, safe and surrounded by friends. There was no blood, no feathers, no white tiles and no buzzing sound.
Only the silence, as peaceful as ever.
The color came before the sound.
Suddenly, everything was back to being red, the lights flashing, bouncing on the walls of the plane.
The alarm blared in her ears, as if telling to flee, to run, to escape while she still could, to save her friends or maybe even to let them fend for themselves, anything, anything for them to never get a hold of her again.
The ground started shaking under her feet.
No, no, no, no, it couldn’t be them, it couldn’t, right ? They’d never get a hold of her again, she escaped, she did, she really did, they couldn’t, it’s unfair, un-
Focus.
One : Aypierre was buckling his belt, reaching for something in his bag.
Two : Kameto was still sleeping, somehow, but his belt was in place.
Three : Etoiles was standing too, rushing towards the cockpit to try and open the door.
Four : Antoine was looking throught the window. « We’re gonna crash, you know. »
A moment passed.
Five : Baghera looked at her friend, struggling to keep her balance. « Yeah. This is the end, mh ? ».
Antoine shrugged his shoulders, visibly not affected by the whole ordeal. « Maybe. But I don’t think so. They won’t let us escape twice. »
« What did you just say ? »
They won’t let us escape again.
They got you once and so, they shall get you twice.
You can’t escape.
You can’t run.
You can only fall, fall, fall and pray for them to get to you before Death does. Or maybe wish for the opposite. Perhaps eternal slumber would be kinder to your soul that the years of hatred they must have accumulated for that little winged kid who escaped by boat.
Baghera doesn’t quite remember what happened next.
She remembers red flashes, the loud yells of the alarm, the banging of Etoiles’ fists on the cockpit’s door, the shake of the floor, Antoine’s shrug « they won’t let us escape twice » and then the dark.
The silence.
Never again.
Many would say it was a mantra.
She’d rather call it a promise.
A promise to a little kid, not quite old enough to understand bad and good.
A promise to the feathers left on the white tiles, scarreted in the blood.
A promise to the drawings she hung on the walls, dots of colors lost in the blinding white of the wallpaper.
A promise to herself, before all.
Baghera was used to lies.
Perhaps she should have seen this one coming.
Perhaps it had been obvious.
Perhaps she hadn’t learned anything after leaving.
The mirror looks at her, the reflection distorted by the years of ignoring her image.
She didn’t remember her wings to be so big, reaching far above her head.
She remembers the blood dripping, the feathers dropping, her body falling, falling, falling.
The walls weren’t white anymore but it was all the same.
In another world, a braver, stronger Baghera would be laughing.
They cut her wings, as if she was nothing but a misbehaved pet you’d want to keep pinned to the ground.Her feathers were clipped, hanging at various angles from her skin.
There wasn’t even a need for this.
She had never learnt how to fly.
They had never taught her.
Pathetic, perhaps, to mourn a skill she had never learnt.
Laughable, perhaps, for a bird to gain freedom through the sea and to loose it to the air.
Ironic, perhaps, for a bitter adult to hold on to a promise made to a betrayed child.
Blood dripping, feathers dropping, ink spilling.
« You’ll never hurt me again. »
White tiles, not so white lies, white fur in between the white flashes.
« You said that last time too. »