This is my first attempt at an original hetship fic (GASP!!). Strangely, the idea for it struck me whilst I was brushing my teeth. Hehe. Anyjoe…enjoy, I hope.

“Even the Damned Deserve to Love”

Part One

I liked the slow drip of the moss-laden water on the cold stone floor. It was so soothing. I could almost feel the water sliding down the patch of green crawling up the walls. That was the best relief I could get.

Now, it didn’t help one bit. Sweat descended from my troubled forehead and mixed with the lingering blood on my mouth. I tried to bleed myself earlier to get attention, and maybe, to get out. All they did was throw a shred of raggedy cloth through the rusty bars of my cell.

I looked at the rag. It was soaked in blood.

I remembered the bloody sheets I found my father tangled in when I woke one morning, merely weeks before. My reaction was only of shock when I first saw him. Then I suddenly felt sick. He was still alive, slowly dying.

That made it worse. I remember wanting to die with him because nobody else would be left after he was gone. And I knew he was going to die. Part of me had given up.

He was telling me in his wavering breath that a knife had pierced his side in his sleep, and when he opened his eyes, the young man clutching it was still shaking after he stabbed him.

And my father knew him. He said his name was Philip and that he was an occasional hired hand. In drowned stutters, he said that Philip was saying he was sorry and didn’t want to do it.

I swore repeatedly. I was standing, on my knees, up again, then on the floor grasping at the roots of my hair. When I looked at the mass of red sheets once more, it had stopped moving. I screamed and cried into a nearby pillow hysterically. I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye, I love you, good morning—it was still early in the morning. I didn’t say anything at all. I just wept until there was nothing left to cry. I was furious that I didn’t know my father’s murderer. I had never seen him.