Trapped (A Ticci Toby Story)

Chapter 6- My Sweetest Friend

"Toby, please calm down. You shouldn't waste your energy over this." Jane pleaded.
I was back to my usual routine.
Pacing this suffocating concrete box of a cell.
Only this time, I was in complete darkness.
Jane told me that the lights were powered inconsistently down here. Sometimes the lights stayed on or off for days at a time.
On or off,
I couldn't stand it either way.
This was my hell.
My world felt even smaller in darkness.
The sound of the metal bell dragging behind my strides grew unbearably loud.
The dirty rough concrete underneath my feet was driving me mad.
But this wasn't what was getting to me the most. It only fueled the unbearable fire under my skin.
I stopped abruptly and spun to the sound of her voice.
"Waste my energy? You're going to die, Jane! Why am I the only one worrying here? Why are you just sitting there and letting them do this to you?"
In the darkness she didn't speak.
I could feel my breath grow heavier with frustration as I waited for her to say something.
Just say something! Anything!
Tell me im wrong!
You're not going to die!
Please
She didn't.
You're a cowered.
"Is it because you're weak? You're weak. You can't fight because they'll hurt you." I pushed on. "It won't happen! I'll protect you! Just let me think of something! you're just weak right now. You all are!"
She still didn't answer.
My thoughts only raced faster.
There were others here now. I know that now. I need to protect them. I need to protect all of them.
I grabbed a fistful of my hair and spun back around.
I paced away from her.
My twisted energy burned inside me. I couldn't stay still, I needed to move, I needed to think, to move, to think.
I need space, I needed to breathe.
My strides took me to the wall and back to her, to the wall and back.
To the wall and back.
I can't understand these feelings, I can't understand how to handle this.
I'm so scared.
I'm so angry.
I'm so sorry,
Confused,
Guilty,
Betrayed,
Pissed.
"You're an idiot! It's because you don't want to hurt them!" The words were like acid the moment they forced themselves out of my mouth. Scolding, hot, and dangerous.
The underlying cause of my stress was brought out in full force of my anger.
"Toby..." She started.
Maybe to soothe me.
Maybe to defend herself.
It doesn't matter.
He words meant that my words were true.
I was inconsolable.
"What is wrong with you?" I yelled, "After everything they did, you won't hurt them! You're going to let them get away with it? Why? Do you think you're some kind of saint? Is that why you're so nice all the time? Do you think you're a better person for letting them kill you? What are you trying to accomplish here? What is going through your head?" why would you be so kind to me if you knew this was going to happen? "You're going to die, Jane! Nothing you been through would matter! Nothing you ever did would matter! You won't matter! You'll just be like the others! You'll just be gone, a nameless body behind the shed! Someone's teeth pulled up from the mud and tossed aside because they're in the way! No one would care that you were nice! you're gone! Is that what you want?"
I was across the cell before I realized what I was doing. I heard the springs of the bed squeak as she flinched away from my sudden movement.
I could almost see her hold her arms up to shield her face in my mind's eye.
Even though It didn't even cross my mind to hurt her, I moved toward her the way I've always done with masky and jeff when I fought with them. The way I physically expressed my pent up emotions and anxiety. Two men who had no reason to fear me. The two men who didn't fear the world the way she does.
This wasn't something I should have done with her.
I scared her.
When she has so much to fear already.
I didn't want her to fear me.
I couldn't live knowing that.
The weight of her fear was heavy on my chest.
With my anger quickly numbing into guilt, I turned away from her and crossed the cell. I dropped down facing the far wall and buried my face in my hands--away from the fears and hate that remained trapped within me.
There was no hiding from it all.
Without my anger I was scared for her.
I was terrified for this person I only met yesterday.
She needed to stay with me.
In our shared time of desperation, she was the only person I had to hold on to.
Both of us unwilling to face our fates alone.
I needed her.
"Please understand." Jane said weakly. "I can't." I bared my teeth and closed my eyes tightly.
I can't hear this. I won't. I can't watch this happen. I can't allow this.
but this was the way the world worked. Jeff told me this while he drank on behalf of Jack's and the proxies temporary absence.
'The weak die and the strongest are the only ones left behind.'
I didn't want this.
Jane existed among the weak.
I was going to survive with or without her.
Our existences weren't going to stay intertwined and connected for long.
Through twisted obsession for which our lives became disposable possessions to waste, it was only a matter of time before she is taken from me and I find my inevitable escape.
And yet.
Despite the fact that I knew she was weak-
When she touched me, her hands gently placed on my shoulders,
I didn't fight her.
I needed her touch--
She was still alive.
And I needed her.
"Im going to be okay, Toby." she shoothed.
"I don't understand you."
"I don't expect you too."
"But you expect me to believe you?" My anger protects me from the other emotions that threatened to hurt me. "You think that just because you're too stupid to fight back I'm supposed to just accept this and listen to your bogus spew about how its okay?" I pointed to my eye. "Look at my face, Jane! Look at you! We are being held in a basement!" I threw my arm up to the direction of the others above ground. "There are kids being starved and worked like slaves! Tom came at you with a hammer! He was going to kill you! He was going to kill you with a hammer, Jane! How are you okay? How are you okay with any of this?"
"It isn't like I have a choice, Toby! I would drive myself insane if i contuined see every horrible thing they've done to us!"
"So you just pretend that none of it happened?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Then tell me! What did you mean? Make me understand what the hell you're talking about because I'm starting to think you're completely delusional!"
The sound of our voices surrounded us in a choir that rang down the tight hall.
This causes us to fall into a pained silence.
Yelling at each other wasn't what Cheryl wanted us to do in here.
I didn't understand her intentions for leaving us down here, or what she wanted from me to begin with, but I knew this wasn't it.
The possibility of her coming back down here was becoming too real.
Jane lowered her head and spoke against my shoulder.
"When you have nothing else, you need to focus on what you do have."
"You don't have anything. They took everything from you." I growled.
Why don't you hate them? Why can't you hate them? Hate them as much as I do. Hate them for everything they did to you
"No. You're wrong. I'm still me and no matter what they do to me, I won't let them change that."
"hah." I gave a dry laugh. "Why would it matter? You're going to die." a sudden thought hit me. "You tried to help Cheryl, didn't you? Is that how she brought you here? Did she fall down or stub a toe? Did she 'accidentally' kicked a puppy?"
Of course Jane didn't say anything. Even though it was just a guess, it was painfully easy to see the truth in her actions.
Oh god, Jane...
I smiled sadly into my hands "I bet the puppy was in on it too."
I could almost feel her eyes roll over my shoulder.
"She didn't kick a puppy, Toby." she sighed. "Maybe I wouldn't be here if I chose to look the other way, but I suppose this is my fatal flaw. I would help her again if given a chance."
"Why?" I scowled at her.
'There is always a reason for the way someone acts.'
Hoodies words came to me as I asked.
Was he talking about people like her? People who do something unbelievably stupid and never learn from their mistakes?
"Its because of my mother, Toby. She tried to kill me before I was born... She believed I was the spawn of the devil because of what my father did to her. She believed that I was truly evil..." Jane pushed her head into the back of my shoulder as if she was using me for comfort. "She wasn't well, and I knew this. She was mentally ill and self medicated with abusive drugs long before I was conceived. My grandmother found out she was pregnant and put her in a attention center while she carried me, to keep me safe from her until I was born. Even after I arrived in the psych ward, my mother still tried to hurt me. She didn't even hold me... She didn't even try to see who I truly was. She repeated over and over again that I shouldn't be here. T-that I was never meant to be alive. She told me this my entire life... Over and over... And over." her hands slowly left my shoulders as she spoke. I felt her soft pant leg brush against the back of my arm as she settled herself onto the floor and pulled her knees to her chest.
"My older brother and grandmother were my primary caregivers. I love them more than anything, but I needed more. I needed my mother to see that I wasn't evil." she laughed a small humourless laugh. "For as long as I can remember I did everything I could to be that good person she didn't believe I was. I wanted to deserve her love. I wanted to prove that I deserved the mother my brother had. Even if my brother wanted nothing to do with her for what she did to me. I have always forgave and loved everyone with every breath I took, but she never saw me. She didn't care." she scooted forward next to me and leaned her head against the wall. "I obsessed so much about the way she felt about me, that I surrounded my entire life around trying to be good. Now I can't see myself being any other way. I don't want to be anything else."
I closed my eyes painfully knowing what she was going to say next.
"When Cheryl decides to take my life, I will be okay knowing that... My mother was wrong about me."
Unbelievably wrong...
Mothers are the heart and souls of all children.
A child is who they are because of them.
So similar, but yet not the same.
Can a mother just hate their child? Could they want to kill their own children?
There was a lot about this world that I didn't understand, but i knew this was a situation that I was never going to understand.
Perhaps this is why Jane was so different from her mother.
Her heart and soul was never given to her from the start. She needed to mend one on her own.
She created a delicate and kind soul for herself.
A soul that will kill me if it was taken away.
I'm completely in awe of who she is.
I was falling for her and I couldn't stop it.
It hurt.
"Toby?" Jane asked in my grief stricken silence.
I didn't want this.
I sensed her hand reaching out to find my face, to see if I moved away from her.
I caught her wrist.
"Yeah, I'm still here." I mumbled dully.
"Okay." was all she said before we fell into a another silence.
I couldn't understand the feelings I carried in my chest for her.
I knew what it was, but I didn't know how much it was going to affect my ability to think.
I didn't understand love. I only knew what sally told me and nothing else.
The way she romanticized about it and smiled dreamily with her fantasies.
She was never going to find love, but I wasn't supposed to either.
I was never supposed to be exposed to anyone my age due to my rapid attachments.
I needed to mature.
I needed to learn understand my hormones and emotions.
I needed to be immuned to it like the other proxies.
But I'm not and I haven't.
I fell for her quickly and unforgivably hard.
"What was your family like?" Janes voice broke into my thoughts.
"My..." I asked slowly as if i was waking up from a dream. "Family?"
"Yes...your mother and father, your family? I think since we're here together... Now. It might be best if we take your mind away from here. Even if its just for a little while."
I heard her shift to face me. My heart drumbbed against my chest.
"I-I don't have a mother or a father..." I paused "My family isn't from blood. My brothers aren't really my brothers... But they raised me. Like how your brother raised you."
I hear her smile.
"What are they like?"
"Busy." I said bluntly.
She waited for a better response.
I shifted uncomfortably under her hidden gaze.
"My brothers...they are different from everyone else in my family. They are strong and respected. Smart, skilled--everything I'm not." All the insecurities that built up over the last year, the insecurities I actually miss, were now nostalgic to me. I couldn't help but smile. "They wanted me to be like them, but I just kept disappointing them. It drove my older brother nuts. I think he had a migraine everytime he saw me."
"I'm sure they weren't disappointed in you, Toby." Jane tried to reassure me.
I shook my head and dug at a blister on my wrist.
I think you're wrong.
I told her everything.
I told her how I woke up in the infirmary with a blank mind.
How masky looked at me in disgust and how I saw hoodie's devastated eyes.
I recalled my earliest memories of how they watched me fall to the ground over and over again as I remembered how to stand. How they looked the other way when jeff beat me and never protected me from his murderos dominance.
How I was treated as an out cast and was avoided by everyone because I was just a screwed up mistake. A mistake no one wanted to deal with or look at because I was morally wrong in nature.
I told her how sally was the first one to be kind to me. She was the first to give me a chance and treat me like a person after she finally stopped hiding from me, to see that I was more than an empty shell. I was still alive.
I told her that Masky and hoodie quickly followed after her. Taking their role as my protectors and reteaching me the basic skills that were lost with my memory.
How quickly our bond started to form the moment they saw who I was.
I told her about my old family. About my mother and father and older sister. I told her how masky and hoodie told me about them, eagerly trying to get me to remember. That I couldn't grieve for the sister I no longer remembered.
That no matter how hard I tried I could only feel sympathy for her death.
I told her how the angry person who lived in my body before me wasn't me.
He was the person masky and hoodie watched my father beat without knowing he was the one slender picked.
How they believed slender was after my father.
I told her about my training to be a "assassin, tracker, spy," because she didn't understand what a proxy was.
"proxies are whatever slender needs us to be."
I told her about sally, jack, jeff, and Ben and the events leading up to my abduction.
Everything I told her scared her. She commented on how starge I acted and understood my aggression towards Tom.
She told me about her older brother and grandmother. How her brother worked constantly to give her everything he could. That he hated how she spoke about their mother, how protective he tended to be over her. How he hated ketchup and gagged at the sight of tomatoes.
She told me that her grandmother was dying of an illness before she was taken. She grieved over the fact that she never said goodbye to her and how her brother lost both of them in such a short time.
In the darkness we talked about our past. We talked about our futures, dreams, and the 'what ifs'.
Hours pass and we drifted closer together. Touching as shared fears and held onto each other as we pretended that we were no longer in the cell.
For a time I truly believed it.
We were free together.
We could explore our newly discovered love without being separated before we had a chance.
But in the end, we knew that was impossible.
"Oh how sweet." Cheryl said behind a blinding beam of light that shined into our sleep hazed eyes. "I almost don't want to break you two up."