Chapter Text
The walls were all red.
So was the plush carpet on the floor and the sheets on the bed. Mika was sick of looking at it; in fact, it made him feel ill. He would give anything not to have to look at it ever again. To never be reminded of the feel of metallic blood sliding down his throat.
He supposed that he could move from where he sat, and pace through the rooms the vampires had allocated him; but they were all the same bright, nauseating red, and he felt better when he could sit still.
He closed his eyes.
Breathed in.
Breathed out.
Tried to think.
But whenever he did, the same images came to his mind; of Lord Ferid’s smiling face, of blood and screaming and tears, of the dead-eyed stares of his family as they lay in pools of their own blood.
Yuu-chan’s face as he looked down at Mika’s broken body and wouldn’t listen as Mika pushed him away.
With a gasp, Mika’s eyes snapped open, back on the red but away from his memories, at least. He sat gazed down with unfocused eyes, gasping, trying to calm his erratic breaths. When he felt calm enough, he tried thinking again.
He thought of Yuu.
Yuu, who had always rejected him as a friend, rejected them as family. Yuu, who got into trouble and pissed off vampires and always needed Mika to save him. Yuu, who was fiercely protective over all of them- even Mika. Yuu, who would read the kids bedtime stories. Yuu, who had escaped Sanguinem believing that he’d lost his family.
Yuu, who was out there somewhere with no clue that Mika was alive.
Mika wanted to go and see him. He wanted to get out of this room, out of this palace, out of this city; he wanted to find Yuu, wherever he was in the outside world, and see him again. Wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone anymore, because he was alive, they were together.
But, at the same time… At the same time, he never wanted to see Yuu again. Because then, at least he’d never have to see the horror on his face when he realised how Mika had survived. Wouldn’t have to hear his biting words and harsh rejection when he saw that Mika was now the very thing he hated; the same sort of monster that had imprisoned their family.
Even so, he couldn’t stay here, in a room the colour of blood. He just couldn’t. He had to get out; out of this room, out of this city.
He had to get out, or he’d surely lose his mind.
First plan: pick the locks.
Really, he only needed to pick one; so he chose a door and stuck to it. He found a paperclip in one of the books, and fashioned that into a lockpick. He’d never actually done this before, but he figured it couldn’t be too hard. So he got a chair, dragged it to the door, and sat there as he shoved the wire into the lock and wriggled it around.
He found that lock picking wasn’t actually that easy.
In fact, it was very hard.
In this case, it might have been impossible.
After spending twelve hours trying at that door, he went to the other door, and tried that one, but had no further luck. After a further eight hours, he gave up.
Plan A had failed.
But that didn’t matter, he still had other ideas.
Plan B was simple; when the guards came to fetch him, run away.
They came every week or so, and would take him to wherever the Vampire Queen was; she’d let him drink her blood and then keep him around as long as she wanted. And then, when she was done, the guards would take him back to his rooms.
He didn’t particularly enjoy these visits, but he was quite looking forward to it when the doors opened and the guards appeared; two of them, faceless vampires in long, hooded white cloaks, one on each side of him. They walked out of the room, Mika between them; the first few weeks he’d been here they’d had to grab onto him, but now, seeing that he was willing enough, they let him walk by himself. Which was perhaps a mistake on their part.
As they came to a sharp corner, Mika let his pace slow, ever so slightly. One glance at his guards showed that they hadn’t noticed; everything was going to plan. When they rounded the corner, Mika took several steps back. By the time they noticed that he wasn’t with them, he’d already turned his back and was racing away.
He was free for all of ten seconds. With impossible, inhuman speed, the vampires rounded on him and cornered him, one grabbing him from behind while the other blocked his path.
“H-Hey, put me down!” Mika’s voice was hoarse with disuse but the indignence in his tone was almost definitely audible. The vampire hoisted him over their shoulder and carried on walking the other way, the other one walking behind him. After a while, Mika stopped struggling, and simply hung there, disgruntled. The vampire behind him caught his eye and flashed him an amused smile; her eyes glittered with laughter.
Mika scowled at her. His hair flopped in his eyes and he blew it out of the way, only for it to fall down again. He glared at it, and she let out a tiny giggle.
“Elspeth, quiet,” the vampire holding Mika instructed. The vampire behind him stiffened and went silent, her face stoic; but she still flashed Mika a smile as they approached the throne room.
The doors opened and Mika found himself deposited roughly on the ground. The Vampire Queen had risen from her throne, walking down toward the centre of the room where he’d been dumped.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she asked the vampire that had carried Mika there.
“He tried to escape, my Queen,” the vampire said hastily. The Queen pursed her lips, and gave Mika a side-eyed glance; Mika scowled and looked away. She sighed and nodded.
“Leave us.”
The vampire nodded and turned to leave, hurrying to the doors where the other vampire was waiting. She caught Mika’s eye, and mouthed good luck ; and then she was gone, the doors separating her from view.
“Mikaela.” The Queen knelt down and placed a finger beneath Mika’s chin, tilting his head toward her. He begrudgingly looked into her eyes, which were hard and cold and the same suffocating red as everything else in this place.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Silence. “You couldn’t have honestly thought it would work as an escape attempt. So why did you do it? To see how far you could get?” Mika didn’t reply. She sighed, removing her finger and letting his head fall down so that he was looking at the red carpet beneath them. Then, to his surprise, she sat down beside him, crossing her legs and resting her head on her hand.
Mika stared at her in confusion. She stared back blankly. After a moment, he looked away, cheeks burning.
“You’re an interesting one, aren’t you, Mikaela?” she asked. She looked sad for a moment, but then smiled. It wasn’t a particularly nice smile; it was too sweet, and the look in her eyes was not unlike that of a cat eyeing the mouse it was about to toy with. “I simply cannot wait to see what you’ll do next.”
Plan B was a failure, and so it was time to move onto Plan C.
This required waiting until the next time he was allowed out of the room. But he wasn’t left with nothing to do; no, now he needed to find some kind of weapon. The closest thing in any of the rooms were the fire irons, which were heavy and blunt and not ideal. But it was the only thing he had.
So he began to practice.
Granted, he hadn’t had any fighting experience before; not of this type, anyway. Sure, he could throw a punch, but there was a very large step between that and using weapons such as a sword. Or a fire iron.
But he practiced, and by the time the guards came, he felt prepared enough. Or, at least, he did, until they opened the door.
Because this time, there were four of them.
It seemed that they had learned from his previous escape attempt, and surrounded him on all sides as they marched him down the halls. Mika wasn’t giving up, though; he just had to take a minute to reassess the situation.
When he felt assured enough, he pulled the iron out from where he’d hidden it in his trouser leg, and jabbed it in the back of the vampire in front of him. The vampire made a choking sound as the air was knocked from his lungs and Mika knocked him forward, alerting the other vampires. One of the vampires at his side made a grab for the weapon, their fingers latching onto it; panicking, Mika used the force of the vampire’s grip to lift himself up on the iron and plant his feet in the vampire’s stomach, knocking them backwards and forcing them to let go.
He realised pretty soon that he hadn’t thought that through, as he ended up flat on his back, whacking his head on the floor with the iron falling from his hand. Looking over him were the two other vampires, his regular guards; the one that had carried him the week before, with a customary disgusted expression and ashen hair, and the other one, the girl with the purple hair.
The girl flashed him a look that was half amused, half pitiful; her companion simply scowled. “You two, get up,” he barked at the other vampires, grabbing the iron from the floor and snapping it in two. “You still have a job to do.”
Krul was… kind of annoyed at Mika. But when Mika promised he wouldn’t do it again (and it seemed she could sense his truthfulness, because he was being genuine) she let it go, and sent him back to his room without another word.
Mika turned to Plan D, checking for secret passages. Or any other way out. But it was no use; there was nothing to be found. So he resigned himself to his last resort, which he knew before even trying would fail. Even so, he tried, battering the door with his fists, shoving all his weight against it, as if he could somehow make it open.
Him, with his tiny, fragile, twelve-year-old body.
Soon, desperation took hold of him, and he began to claw at the wood, tearing off his nails and leaving his fingers as bloody stumps. He began to sob and scream, throwing himself at the door, dislocating his shoulder and snapping his wrist in the process. Twisting his ankle. Breaking his skin so that he was soon covered in blood, shaking and screaming and sobbing, a shivering mess.
“Let me out!” he begged. “Please! You have to let me out, you have to! I’ll die in here! Get me out!” His words became blurred, slurring together, and it wasn’t long before his pleas were a stream of nonsensical sludge. Exhausted, he collapsed in the corner, shaking and sobbing, unable to see clearly or think straight. Curling up into a ball, he pressed his head into his bloody arms, and rocked back and forth there until he lulled himself into a state that wasn’t sleep but rather a mockery of it.
Mika awoke stiff and aching, his wounds healed but his skin and hair and clothes still caked with blood. His face remained marred with the stains of tears that had fallen there. He sat there for a long while, staring blankly into space.
That was it, then. All his escape attempts had been for nothing. He was never going to get out of this room. Out of Sanguinem. He would never see the sun again.
Never see Yuu again.
That thought hurt more than anything, and it took him a moment to remember how to breathe when it hit. When he recovered, he found that he felt nothing. Emptiness. Resignation.
He couldn’t spend an eternity here. Even if he couldn’t get out and see Yuu again, he couldn’t stay here, either. He would be leaving Sanguinem tonight, one way or another.