the trick is to keep breathing

"I do not have a key." Basch tries to move closer to her, but his legs are weak and his stomach is pained. The world blurs into grey, and then refocuses. He clutches a piece of the bread in his hand and tries to remember what it was like to be full.

"There is none," she replies. "For I am a traitor, and deserve my chains." It is in her voice: she is no traitor, not truly. She has done something she is proud of, even after weeks or months or years (it has robbed her of all her color; Basch has never seen a woman more pale) or however long she has been here.

Basch tries to remember pride.

"They call me traitor too," Basch replies finally, "and I know the truth of it well."

They look at each other for a moment. Her hands clench, wrists rattling in the metal rings which hold them. "A traitor's cell," she says finally, weakly. "Where they keep things that should not be found."

Her eyes finally betray her, glancing in a frantic dart towards the plate of bread before moving back to a familiar soldier's-stare aimed at the gate behind Basch's head.

Gently (on account of her pride, of his pain, of the mist which makes it so hard to move) Basch makes his way across the straw and the stone floor which seems to be in this otherworld. He breaks off a small piece, raises it to her lips. She turns her head away.

"Take it," Basch says, and it is all the miracles in the world that he remembers how to give an order: how to sound like a soldier. A general.

She opens her mouth. Piece by piece, he feeds her the bread, his fingers brushing her grateful and greedy lips. It is a solemn kiss, her mouth on food and his fingers on lips dry and parched and dusty. He eats too, fumbling pieces into his mouth, then returning to fumble shaky fingers against her lips, again and again. They meet, soldier to soldier.

When the bread is gone, they sit in silence beside each other.

He does not need to ask, for her lips have told all: she is strong, a knight, a warrior, a woman for whom the right thing to do was treason. She is like him, in a way, in the way that circumstances have placed her here rather than true evil. Likewise, she says nothing: his shaky fingers have betrayed his own truth, that he is more hostage here than prisoner.

It reaches her first; she sags against her chains and sighs into sleep. Basch drifts off himself, curled on the ground at her feet, thinking of their warrior’s kiss and the tension that has left her face.

When he wakes, the cell is empty. There is no mist, and there are no chains on the wall.

The bread is gone, but his stomach is not quite full.