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516.

Snippets of Vi's life in prison as she grows from a girl into a woman. / word count: 4,182 / blood, death, violence cw

She looks up when the cell door rattles. Despite the deep dark bruise she can feel blooming on her left cheek, the crack in her jaw that makes her whole face ache like it's being split in half every time she inhales, she musters every drop of bitterness in her blood to say, with an impeccable tone of cheery hostility, "back for more? can't get enough of me?"

She has been a Stillwater Bay prisoner for five years and eight months when the nameless soldier standing guard that is now leaning heavily against her cell door says, “I knew you... when you were a kid. I knew your father... Vander?”

Vi stares up at the ceiling, watching the lightbulb overhead ripple red, hating the lazily-amused tinge to his voice.

"congrats. so did I." she dead-pans, and does not look at him, her eyes are hard and on the ceiling, her hand curled into a fist at her side on the bed, and she can smell the salt tang of her unwashed sheets, her knuckles (thin-skinned, still healing) cracked and bleeding all over them. She's got blood on her mouth, too, a tooth missing, and the old scar on her upper lip is throbbing. She does not mind it; she sinks her teeth in it and bites, listens to the slow rhythm of the guard's breath, the low chuckle that escapes his throat at her sneer.

"he was a good man. a decent man. You could count on him to make things right. He saw reason." the guard won't take a hint, won't go away, and Vi snorts, does not ask what reason means to people like him whose whole life has been a smooth trail, does not even wanna know. Her eyes are on the ceiling and her hand is bleeding on the bed and she digs her nails into her torn palm, blood gushing from the wound and sinks them deeper, her teeth snagging her lower lip.

She hears the fizz and flicker of the fluorescent lamp overhead, feels the sweat that is trickling down her back and soaking the waistband of her trousers; she can smell the hot blood spouting between her nails, the ripe heat of the air that's drenching her cell, the reek of her bed.

“What happened to you?” the enforcer asks, holds onto the bars of her cell door. “I mean—fuck, you were a cute kid, a good kid. Vander was proud of you.” and she can't stand the shape of her father's name in his mouth, she wants to tear it from his tongue, does not wanna hear it, not from someone like him, another asshole criminal in a fancy suit, biting off more than he can chew, thinking that he somehow knows anything about them, just because he didn't kill her people, didn't shoot them dead, didn't drag Vander away into a cell like they had done to her; he still came for them like the mouth of a gun held to their head, still pushed them deeper into the cold dark mouth of their death, stripped them off their freedom, their choice, him and his asshole friends, every last one of them.

How fucking pathetic, to think that she will give a fuck about what he has to say about her, or Vander or what he thinks be knows about them.

Vi opens her eyes, watches the ripple of the fluorescent light overhead, like the shimmer of heat, like water. Her hand curls into a fist, blood leaking through her fingers, hot and thick in her palm. Her sheets are crimson next to her thigh, they stick to her gloves. Under the top bunk, someone has scratched be well in tiny handwriting. She blinks at it.

She says, finally, “you've no idea what you're talking about.”

ii.

Perhaps she should have tattooed a chemical hazard label right across her mouth: this woman is highly reactive, warning; contents under pressure, will explode right into your face if pushed the wrong way.

She's got one ear scarred from where she launched herself at some asshole cutting in line in the chow hall, and got his teeth in her face. He had gotten her fist in his throat and her nails in his left eye, and she had been sent to solitary confinement for a month.

She's got a bruise twice the size of her hand on her left thigh, another sprawling black and purple across her lower back.

She doesn't remember the last time she's eaten more than soupy, green slop and dry bread.

She doesn’t remember what it is like to feel the sun; all that she knows is the soreness of touch and the pain of every breath, blood on her hands and broken bones. Her fists fly when someone touches her food, shoves her out of their way, sneers at her; she picks fights with every last one of them, every last little bitch they haul off whatever little hole Silco's got them working in and stuff them in her block; she's got thunder in her blood and she is angry, she is furious, years of being shoved into cold, dark places have left her dark and cold herself, her body scarred and bruised; every bone, every surface of flesh, aches.

Her senses are simultaneously numbed as well as in overdrive; she's got a warning in her mouth and her eyes are sharp like the blunt edge of her knuckles, a fist through a drywall.

They throw her in solitary at the drop of a hat, for the slightest reason; it's like she's got eyes stuck on her back 24/7 and she can't throw them off, they are a hand around her throat, choking the air out of her: she breathes the wrong way, does not show up at work, stares at a guard a little too long, a little too hard, and it's over; they steal her meals, stall her in the maintenance room until she's missed dinner, or outdoors time, and the dark, deep anger inside of her flares up and explodes; she's always one step away from flying off the handle, but takes the taunting anyway, takes the beatings and the sneers and the laughter, because she's got to, won't bend for them, won't fold herself into something smaller. She gives as much and as violent as she gets; she's on her way to the chow hall, once, when a guard forcefully steps in her way and sneers, blows his cigarette smoke in her face, patting her down, a sudden inspection, but she's done nothing, she's worked all day at their maintenance room, and she's hungry, she's fucking starving, and he is in her way, his hands on her waist, on her thigh; her fist flies before her mind registers what it's doing, and it's her knuckles, hard and bloodied, smashing through his teeth, a feral, crippling blow to his throat, and he is howling in pain, reeling back in shocked agony, blood gushing down his chin; "fuck you!" Her entire body heaves as long, shrill, dark screams pour out of her throat, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!" and she now uses one hand to grab onto his shirt, her other hand curled into a hard fist that plunges into his face over and over again. She heaves forward once more and topples over him as they crash onto the floor with her on top of him, and her fist is a dark, black blur in his face. "fuck you!" her hand is numb and aching, scarlet with blood, "fuck you!" her eyes are blurry and heat consumes her. Her whole body is shaking, her other hand furiously clutching at his throat as she lands blow after blow into his face, and then, there are hands on her shoulders, grabbing at her, a foot in her side, kicking out viciously and she screams, like a wild, feral animal, she bucks against them, growling and shoving at them as they drag her down the halls and push her into some cold dark cell. Her cheek smacks the wet floor. She moans, feels the hard sharp edge of a boot in her side, and a dark rivulet, meaty and viscous, slips from her mouth. There are hands and boots all over her and her body is burning with the pain of them, her head is spinning and she cries out, a long, shrill, deafening wail of pure, hot rage, swimming on her elbows on the wet tiles, dragging herself to the corner. She hears the steel door be slammed shut with a clang.

She lays on the freezing floor curled up in a ball and screams, clutches at the tiles furtively, her throat raw and gutted, making clogged snorkeling noises.

She passes out.

It’s an image that she has replayed a thousand times in her mind — a glimpse into her safe haven, a recollection that invokes a cosmic sensation of solitude and mental quiet. Though they seek to break her: in mind, in body, and in spirit, when her mind is at its wit’s end, she thinks of her, of that moment just before dawn, Powder and herself sitting on that rooftop, watching the lights of the city blink like fireflies and laughing; her little sister's hand in hers; Vander, a warm, soft shadow at their backs, and she is well.

She can do anything.

Take care of Powder. Protect the family.

She gasps awake, her heartbeat shattered in her throat.

She sways on her feet and, groans, slapping her hand around in search of the bed. She can't find it, and she blinks furiously, eyes straining against the darkness that's swallowing her up. There's no bed in the cell, and she slumps against the wall, a pathetic, pained little whimper spilling from her lips.

She's no longer herself, she is anger trapped in tissue-paper skin, netted between bones like gunpowder— balanced on the precipice between death and the silent vastness of her guilt.

I can't. I can't... I couldn't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,

she answers him in her head, and passes out again.

This time, no one comes for her, the both of them dead and gone; even the ghosts that haunt her dreams abandon her, she's well and truly all alone.

iii.

She sits on the edge of her bed and peers at herself in the cracked mirror, her hands on her ear, needle piercing into the shell of it, splitting it open. Her cellmate stands at her back, looks down at her, says, "let me do it" and Vi shoves her hand away, says "I'll do it."

Blood trickles down her wrist and she can feel the sharp ache of the hole she is puncturing open. She can feel her cellmate's breath against the back of her neck, and when she feels her hands on her now, carefully sliding the earring through the fresh piercing, Vi does not flinch away. She pours alcohol over her ear and Vi hisses through her teeth and bangs her fist against the wall, and that earns her strange laughter from her, a flick in her cheek. "there. pretty." she says, and Vi snorts, meets her eyes in the mirror. "lets do your nose." she says and when she reaches for the needle, Vi lets her pry it from her hand.

iv.

Something about her feels wrong as she makes her way from her cell to the gym down at rec like she’s more storm than woman, a danger-zone high-risk disaster area, full of sharp bone slabs and a dark snarl on her lips, rough calloused hands swathed up in wraps soaked through with blood. Her lower lip is split but it’s healed over, congealed dark blood in the corner of it.

She takes her anger out to the walls and the punching bags; but she does not stop there; she takes it out to anyone bold enough to get on her bad side, give her a look she does not like, sound a little too condescending for her liking when answering a question she's asked or demanding that they return something they've taken or she believes they've taken from her; she takes it out on the assholes at chow hall that cut in line, to the prick that steals Zeri's smokes, and the guard that gets too handsy with Janna.

She doesn't mind the solitary anymore; if anything, she almost welcomes it. Whatever they throw at her, she takes and gives back twice as much.

The next time a guard gets all up in her face, she does not hesitate.

She swings at them with everything that she's got.

The only time she finds herself actively pouring every last ounce of willpower she's got in her to behave and stay out of trouble is when she starts working on her tats. She doesn't wanna fuck this one up, doesn't wanna have to spend half a month in solitary, tattoos half finished, or worse, ruined in her hurry to get them done before they throw her equipment out.

She's been given a sketchbook and a pen at one of the art classes this Piltie (that Vi vehemently thinks fancies herself some sort of noble saviour) holds every week down at the rec, and although she does not actively participate, sometimes she'll sit and silently watch them work with a snarling smirk draped across her lips, chugging coffee (she's put too much milk in it and it's burnt but she chugs it all down anyway) and when Noble Lady who fancies herself a saviour of poor misguided souls looks her way, tries to catch her eye, Vi pretends she does not see it. She's been staying up at night in her bed, scribbling away in it until she passes out, pen in hand, sketchbook sprawled open next to her pillow. When she runs out of pages, she scowls and doesn't say anything, but she doesn't take her sketchbook down at the rec anymore. She shoves her hands into her pockets or chugs down black coffee, standing against the wall, pretending she's not there for the class.

Somehow, a brand new sketchbook shows up on her bed. She does not question it, won't look a horse in the mouth.

She's got so much art in her that she doodles on her hands until it spills up her wrists and on her kneecaps with their little goosebumps, ink splashing onto her neck and arms and even her back, the part of it that she can reach.

Something's snapping in her mind, synapses flashing, and for the first time in years, she feels alive, she's crackling with it, the fire, the want, the exhilaration.

She gets down to work: makes a tattoo machine from the motor of a portable record player she steals from rec. The barrel for the needle is made from a hollowed out pen. She scoops the plastic out and fills the tube with sooty, thick ink she's made out of burnt plastic, makes the outer case of the pen shorter by cutting it in half. A sharpened guitar string from Zeri's old guitar is what she uses as a needle, shoves it through the barrel and connects it to the motor.

She sets to work. For days, she sits in her little cell and plunges the needle through her skin, feels its sweet, sharp kiss as she moves it along her arms.

When Zeri silently comes to sit next to her on the floor and eyes her doodles in her sketchbook, Vi gives her a strange look. Zeri offers to do the parts of her back she cannot reach, and Vi tells her to fuck off.

Later, when their cell block's dark and quite and there's only an hour of light left before they're forced back into their cells to sleep, she slips into Zeri's cell and leans against the doorframe, watches her bury her nose deeper into her book, sprawled across her bed.

She says, "Sooo..." and strange, sly bashfulness pauses on her lips, frothing at the corners of her heart-shaped mouth, tugging gently at the seam of her lips. "You still wanna help, little one?"

She does.

vi.

She remembers this one time when she was 9. Powder had been sick, burning with a fever that had been refusing to abate for days, and she had helplessly sat on the floor by her bed and had sellotaped her entire hand for some unholy reason, probably because she had been going fucking stir crazy with worry and guilt that she could not make this right, she could not punch the hurt away and Pow had been whimpering in her sleep, calling for their mother and Vi, mother and Vi, and Vi could have never given her mother but she had sat there curled up close to her and whispered that she was there, she wasn't going anywhere, she was never going to leave her, it would be okay.

She had sat fuming in her helplessness, had sellotaped her hand from her elbow right down to her fingers, and then, she had just knelt there, at the side of Powder's bed, sobbing because she had been terrified that she would never get out of it, she couldn't move her hand, couldn't even lift her fingers enough to touch Powder, and she had sat there and sobbed into her little sister's sheets until Vander had come in to find her crying and had had to cut her out with scissors, and to this day she could still remember him patting her head, telling her that it was going to be okay. "Why'd you trap yourself?" he had laughed, ruffling her hair.

Vi hadn't given him an answer.

It comes back to her one morning as she stares at her ruined cell after a sudden inspection (she had been the only one in the whole cell block to be marked for it, then again, she had kind of been expecting it after beating those assholes up with the barbell and her fists down at the courtyard during mandatory exercise; she had come to know now it was common procedure after a malfeasance— huh, what a ridiculous fucking word to use to say that she's beaten some dick's face into a bloody pulp), her whole life scattered along the floor: her wraps, her pencils, the few clothes she's got, an empty can of beer that she has been using to spill the ink she makes out of burnt plastic cups she steals from the chow hall to draw.

She cries over her torn sketchbook with a laugh in her throat, alone in her cell.

vii.

Pink, they keep calling her.

Pink, they sneer it at her like it's her name.

Pink, and Kid, and 516, sometimes just "five o' six" or "five sixteen!" like she's some dusty file shelved away in their cabinet that they suddenly need to spread open and read through, nothing more than the color of her hair, a number, an age.

She's pretending to sweep the floor when it happens, a chore she's never willing to do. The constant flicker of the lightbulb overhead is pissing her off, and she lifts the broom and taps it hard, shaking it back and forth. The buzzing stops.

Someone howls into the silence, a bloodcurdling, dark shriek of terror.

The block is flooded with enforcers, and she stands in the hallway in numb confusion, and gasps when they drag a dead girl from a cell.

She can hear the wet, slick noises her body makes when they drag her out into the hallway, blood streaking the floor like a ribbon tied to her throat.

Someone tries to pump the life back into her heart, but she doesn't come back.

Vi watches the red ribbon of blood around her throat, blinking hard.

They ask for her name, and no one gives it to them, but they keep asking. The air ripples, filled with the metallic stench of death. A fly buzzes around her ear.

There's a rough, hard hand on her shoulder, and she's shoved back, spit splattering against her cheek, and she's shaken out of her daze. She growls out "I don't know." teeth snapping.

"two ninety." someone calls the girl on the floor. She's two ninety to them. "She's dead." She's two ninety to everyone. She doesn't know her name... She never asked.

"hey, grab her legs. Help me pick her up" one of the wardens says to the other.

"Hey! Hey! Five sixteen! clean up the mess!" They bark in her ear, and as she watches her broom swirl the last of the girl's blood on the floor, something inside of her snaps.

She's got a fucking name.

The next time she walks down that hallway, she stops to stare at the floor, the fading crimson stain that has soaked through the tiles, won't ever be completely scrubbed off as though some part of the world is refusing to forget her.

Her name had been Alys.

Vi's name's tattooed on her left cheek.

viii.

“you can be so nice when you want to.” her hands are on Vi's lap, they are sitting in her bed, in her cell, and Vi is painting her nails with delicate strokes of the brush. Her teeth have left bright marks on her lips from the searing tangibility of her concentration. Her patience astounds the other girl, she's never seen Vi hold still for more than ten seconds at a time, yet here she is, brush in hand, lips pinched; the detail is so miniscule and there are small red marks on her skin where Vi has pinched her for fidgeting. Vi's eyebrows have long since been furrowed into harsh lines, so drawn, she's cocooned herself with her thoughts. Her voice is absent when she responds, noticeably lacking in any interest.

"Hey! You gonna let me do this, Miss Chatty, or not?" Vi taps her leg once. “Keep still.” Is all she says.

There’s a fleeting smile in her eyes.

ix.

"hey" she smirks her way to where this massive dude is standing, broom in hand, sweeping the floor. He doesn't recognise her, that much she can immediately tell by the way his eyes (dark, cold eyes, eyes with teeth) sweep over her like she's something he needs to scrub clean too, and sudden, furious anger swells up like a flood in her throat. She swallows.

"I didn't know they locked up little kids."

Her cheek spasms.

"funny. They don't."

He just stares at her meaningfully, like she's some kind of a joke, and laughs. Sharklike, his missing teeth feel like they make the bark harsh.

"you gonna give me what I want, or we gonna have to add another missing tooth to your fucking collection?" Vi growls, easy, smooth anger in her voice.

He blinks, his eyes empty and on her, like the barrel of a gun held to her teeth.

She's been his shadow, sleek, unassuming, watching him for days now; he's got answers and she will not walk away from him without them.

He pats his thigh, and Vi knows what he's got stashed away there, has watched him use it on another dude at mesh, unblinkingly chewing down her dry bread as her eyes trailed after his every little move like a hook, sinking into the prey.

"I know what you're in for. I know who you and your little friend work for. So." Easy way or hard way, goes unsaid, she cracks her fingers hard, violently rolls her left shoulder into a slow shrug. "Where's my fucking sister?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about." A shrug, more laughter. Rotten, yellow teeth.

"bet you fucking do."

"Don’t let ugly words touch those sweet lips baby, I’ll wipe your mouth clean."

Her fists clench, her mouth twitching spasmodically, "and I'll color you purple." she plunges forward, follows her anger like a fishing line. She cuts out safety and speeds towards the ocean of her fury.

When they drag her away from him, she's laughing, her hands are numb and aching, crimson with blood.

"I got all I wanted." She hisses in triumph, and they have to rip her off of him, but she doesn't struggle when they haul her off, clawing at her back, shove her back into her cell block. Her laughter spills like gasoline through the hallways, waking everyone up, even the air is thrumming with it, sharp and hot.

That night, before she sleeps, she adds the spiked knuckles she's stolen from him in the collection, under her bed.

"fifty-two..." she whispers, and tosses the t-shirt that she was wearing the day they had brought her here, back over the weapons, shielding them from view. They'll be fucking gone next time they toss her cell, but for now, no one's gonna get their hands on them.

Her head feels lighter when she lays her body down on her bed.

She stares at the tally marks on her wall until she falls asleep.

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