Kaden's vixen

(Content warning) 

Flashback- 6 years after the kidnapping 

Ms. Bee seems to be on a rampage. Something happened earlier in the week that set her off. Creeping quietly down the stairs, the boy tries to figure out what happened. The manor is a closed system though, all access to the internet, phone lines, and even local TV stations have been blocked. He isn't sure how they did it, but everything is old school. His classes and some movies are on DVDs, while the rest of the house is filled with books. In between his lessons with Ms. Lee (the old coot was still around), he sits and reads and is mostly left alone. At twelve, he has grown into a gangly child, tall for his age, with long, uncoordinated limbs he is yet to grow into. He has also grown into an excellent mood detector, courtesy of Ms. Bee. His terror of the green-eyed woman has grown over the years into a living thing. She has never snapped at him like Ms. Lee, but her mercurial moods made her exhausting and anxiety-inducing to be around. He had gotten better at figuring out if it would be a safe day with her, or if he was in for some embarrassing, borderline harmful punishment just for breathing wrongly. 

Her punishments ranged from running till he passed out, having to sit in freezing cold water till he turned blue, or her favorite and most terrifying: serving as a human ash tray for her. Those painful memories try to cripple him, but he shakes it off. Cerise is back, and he wants to see her. 

Cerise was another piece of the puzzle. At first, he thought she was a fellow kidnapped child like him. However, there were long spells when he did not see her. When she came back, she was always glad to see him, and eager to tell him she missed him. However, she never answered his questions about where she'd been, what she had been doing, or if she could help him leave. After each conversation, he would be angry and refuse to talk to her. However, she always sneaked him some chocolate she brought back, and life at the manor was too lonely to turn up his nose at the one person who did not mean him harm. He might have been jealous that she seemed more special than him, but she wasn't treated any better than he was. The only difference was that her scars were on her back, hidden away from prying eyes. 

Now on the landing, he looks around, and seeing no one, slips into the library on the second floor. Like him, Cerise loves books and like him, can always be found in the library if she's free. 

Sneaking behind her silently, he places his palms over her eyes, whispering at the same time "BOO!" 

Her shriek is loud enough to wake the dead, and he slams his hand over her mouth to silence her. 

"Shhh..., Cer, do you want Ms. Lee to come in here." 

Finally able to see her unknown assailant, Cerise slams her mouth shut and glares at him. 

"Really? This is how you choose to greet me? By scaring me half to death? Well, I guess I'll keep my chocolates to myself." 

Eyes wide, yet still grinning, the boy slings his arm across her shoulders and smirks, "Nah, you love me too much to do that. And I've got a lot to gist you about..." 

Drawn in by the prospect of gossip, Cerise relinquishes the chocolates, and they spend the afternoon giggling over Ms. Lee and her "friendship" with one of the guards, as well as the boy's antics to disrupt the manor. 

Worried, Cerise asks if he still has plans to escape. His answer is cut short by a calm voice saying, "Baby, after everything I've done for you, you still want to leave? It looks like I've allowed you too many freedoms." A loud smack to the cheek sets his sight reeling, and he can barely hear Cerise screaming for him over the pounding of his heart, and the roaring of the blood in his veins. 

He is dragged kicking and biting to his room by a burly guard and thrown on the carpeted floor. The guard leaves, and he is face to face with Ms. Bee. Before he can open his mouth, she literally flies off the handle again and starts smacking and kicking him ferociously. He curls up into a ball with his hands over his head, trying to protect himself. Throughout the attack, she is screaming about how ungrateful he is, how she took him to help him, to save him, and how dare he think of leaving her. He can't leave! He belongs to her! 

Scared he is actually going to die now, because she isn't stopping (why isn't she stopping?), he makes one last dich effort to save himself and weakly pushes her away. Surprisingly, his weak attempt works, and she is shoved away a bit forcefully. They are both stunned for a moment, and he flops in relief at the cessation of the blows. His relief is short-lived however, because she calls for the guards to come in, in a shaky voice. 

He is thrown into the cage, which is a terrible thing for his gangly, twelve-year-old body. He is in too much pain to care though, and he groggily wonders, again, like he has wondered all these years, why Ms. Bee is so fixated on him, and if she kidnapped him for another reason apart from boredom. She had always been a little unhinged, and he had good reason to fear her, but the crazy woman who attacked him just now was full of rage, yet he saw a sliver of a new emotion in her eyes for the first time: fear. Even as his eyes close and he succumbs to unconsciousness to escape his painful reality, he holds onto that one thought with all his might: Ms. Bee is scared of him. He needed to remember that; he needed to...remember...