"Alright! Get Out!"
The loud yell forced another freeze into Gretel, as the loud words, from an unknown voice boomed loudly around her, stealing away her breath and inflicting upon her a harsh slap to her sanity.
It took Green_One placing a hand on her own to help her return back to the world as thoughts of whether she had done something wrong or had violated some sort of code of conduct and committed some grievous and traitorous error, consumed her and left her empty with little else.
The weight of the warm hand steadied her, and she found that she had needed to stare it for a few long, long seconds to even understand and full see that it was with her.
He was with her.
She hadn't done anything wrong.
He did not leave her like the rest.
Slowly, taking in a deep shuddering breath to steady herself, Gretel turned around to see the guards much closer to where they were before.
No longer were they standing at the door, manning thei
Gretel had to stop and stare when she saw what awaited for her in the food hall.The same grey mush that she had been forced to consume for breakfast laid there on the tables as if there was nothing else that the facility could offer her, or more likely, was willing to offer her, considering that she was just a prisoner from Gryaz doing free labour for them, because they were incapable and unwilling to do the work themselves.Green_One yanked her along and brought her properly into the room with the rest of them to not hold up the line, as soon as his arm had straightened up, him walking in front of her and leading her to her meal.She let go of his hand and walked over to her own table, attempting to sit down while making the least amount of noise possible, cringing internally at the screeching sounds and the painful squeaking of the structure.Ducking her head down to eat her food, Gretel hesitated to even try and pick up her spoon, the metal shiny and
The hour of free time afterwards solidified the idea of her being in a prison, and that Gryaz would definitely never let her come back.After all, why would a place so hostile to those who had broken its own laws, putting them away in tiny compartments to stew for a while, hoping that they would simply die off with the inadequate food, inadequate space, inadequate healthcare, and inadequate funding that the people were to be exposed to.Gryaz didn't care about its own prisoners, so why would it care about another nation's prisoners, especially an enemy nation's prisoners?But then again, hypocrisy was the life blood of the system that they all lived under.She had no idea of what was on offer, what she could so, and more importantly, where she should go.Surely there had to be at least some sort of tiered system of activities with some more desirable and others less so, but Gretel had no idea of what was available to her and all the others.
"Your choices of entertainment for your one free hour, away from your work, are as follows," another stated at the front of the room.He stood in front of Gretel and the rest of all the others from Gryaz, who were still all sitting down and clueless and aimless, not knowing what was being expected from them and what they should be doing for the Empire that had kidnapped them and was using them as free labour."There is a library, you may use your shared office space as a common room, you may use the computers offered for your work service to play games that will be locked when the allotted hour for free time is complete, you may also play music from a list of certified songs and genres..."Gretel stopped listening as soon as she heard the word 'library' knowing immediately where she would be going to try and have some alone time, in complete isolation, away from everybody else, even if there was still a camera on her.Safety in numbers was certainly a val
Gretel, following behind the incarnation of madness in front of her, walked as slowly as and far as she was possibly willing to go to get away from the guard who was currently responsible for her, regretting each and every thought of rebellion that had occurred to her mind and wanting to almost fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness at her recent spike in anger spells and her mood swings.She wanted to leave.She wanted to go home.She wanted to get out of here.She needed to calm down.breathe inone two three four fivebreathe outone two three four fiveShe wanted to leave.She wanted to go home.She wanted to get out of here.She needed to calm down.breathe inone two three four fivebreathe outone two three four&nbs
Gretel remained in Yolanda's arms, even after she stopped crying, happy to stay there and stay warm.Silver looked away the entire time, sitting at his computer watching the screen without moving away from it, acting as if he wanted to look cool, calm, and unaffected but was in fact still quite awkward around the fact that Gretel had burst into tears and had received hugs,He hadn't moved the entire time, the computer still not turned on and the selection of sound stickers to listen to music privately, still remained untouched and undisturbed.He was just sitting there without doing anything, staring at a wall as if it was the most interesting thing in the world with his stiff shoulders and posture, actively looking in the opposite direction of Gretel and Yolanda."You sure you don't want to join the hug," Yolanda called out again, this time without any of the sarcasm of before, her voice perfectly sincere and polite, injected also with a layer of worry a
The quiet around them soon took over as Gretel stayed silent to avoid embarrassing herself further while trying to figure out how her question had caused so much laughter.It did not make any sense to her at all how her exclamation of anger at how Yolanda was insulting her and selling her out was something so hilarious and worthy of Yolanda's reaction.Silver did not look like the type to begin speaking first and making the first move, and Gretel guessed that, under ordinary circumstances, he would be very stoic and direct without much of an appetite to instigate conversations about leisure or particularly engage with others on a personal level.And Yolanda was even worse.She sat there with her eyes closed completely serenely as if she didn't have a single care in the world, waiting for either Gretel or Silver to make a move, as if she were a schoolteacher waiting for two toddlers to make up after a petty argument or something other.She sat there
Everything about Yolanda seemed subtly wrong and there was something uncomfortable about how she constantly flickered between emotions and personalities as if she was simply substituting the people that she had simply met previously in her life in front of her actual person as it fit the situation and rise and fall in conversation.Gretel knew that Yolanda was borderline sociopathic and probably a psychopath with her master manipulation and use and control of herself, tugging Gretel and Silver in all sorts of directions, pulling answers out of them and having them dance to a tune that she alone was orchestrating, the two of them simply puppets on strings for her, but at the same time, what she was doing to them, how she was using them felt inexplicably kind.Gretel felt, deep down, that Yolanda, despite how uncomfortable that she was making Gretel and Silver feel with her flirting, her touching, and her general quickly changing attitude, she was preparing them somehow.
Gretel felt her face turn downwards, her eyes looking down at the grey of her trousers as she tried to work through the guilt of her reaction and attitude about Yolanda, after hearing about the circumstances of her life.No wonder she was so good at flitting between all her personalities, moulding and fitting herself for each and every situation that she was forced to deal with, either by her own hands, or again her will.A finger reached to Gretel's jaw and tilted her head upwards to face the other woman in question."Don't you dare pity me. I read your article, even if that one guy you met didn't. I don't need your pity. I need you to grow up and accept that there are bad things in the world and that all you can do is stick to your principles and do what you can to get through them, and that even if you abandoned your morals, at least your still alive," Yolanda called out, her voice demanding and strong.She brought her face closer to Gretel's own again