xtremeroswellia

Title: Do Not Go Gentle (Prologue/13)
Author: X_tremeroswellian
Fandom: Jericho
Pairing: Eventual Jake/Heather
Rated: PG-13 for violence and language
Genre: Angst, drama, romance
Author’s Note: This is an alternate universe version of “Casus Belli.” Some of the dialogue is from the episode. The rest is mine.

Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen | The Conclusion

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas

Do Not Go Gentle (Prologue)

Everything was dark.

The interrogation room--if that’s even where she was, was now completely silent. More silent than any night at a house in Jericho.

To not know when someone was going to return, to dish out more punishment--more bruises and cuts--was enough to induce an anticipatory panic attack for most.

But not for one who had spent hours and hours lying in the pitch black of night not knowing for sure whether she’d live to see morning.

Her childhood had conditioned her to steel herself against the terror that others would find paralyzing. For her it was more like an out-of-body experience, a person simply watching a slow-motion scene from years ago, only instead of her mother’s body being battered, she was watching it happen to her own.

She could no longer feel her arms, though she remembered they’d handcuffed them behind her to the chair. The blood on her pale face had long since dried. But the most maddening thing of all was that her nose itched and she had no way to scratch it.

Somewhere in the distance she heard a soft murmur.

Keep quiet, baby, the familiar voice whispered. Don’t make a sound.

Heather Lisinski shut her eyes tightly as she heard the approaching footsteps.

Hush.