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Everything had gone dark- like someone turning off the lights, only it had been that Lady Arabella slamming something heavy onto his skull.
Waking up had been the worst part.. tasting copper before opening his eyes, feeling the rough texture of the rope before being greeted by complete and utter darkness, left to his own devices and imagination, left to try and figure out how long he’d been out.
He’d assumed he was dead, honestly- he had felt light-headed and woozy and all-together high. Looking back he know it had been the injury combined with whatever cocktail of drugs Nigel had found amusing to pump him full of, but at the time he had well and truly thought he was dead. And, well- another hour or two of that and he probably would have been dead.
He had been thankful for Nigel coming in- still was, in a sickening sense. For a short while he became his entire world- everything he did was only because Nigel allowed it to happen, because Nigel said so, and even just because Nigel was there. He had thought of him as a savior, a god in that state- Stockholm Syndrome was a hell of a thing after all, especially when he’d been high out of his mind and dealing with severe blood loss and unable to tell how long he’d been out of it, and even after that first day of hazy agreements and complicated contracts, after he had sobered up and tried to argue and fight back like his uncle would’ve done, it was the same result- turning back to Nigel and his orders.
At some point Nigel had told him he could wander the house, but every time he tried to wander, he found himself back in the basement, sitting in the same chair he had first woken up in.
At first he blamed Nigel and Lady Arabella; of course he had, It was the most logical solution. Until they left him alone and he again found himself in that same room, in the same chair, even holding up rope as if considering how he should keep himself confined.
Even thinking about it now, years later, he felt sick to his stomach, the memory of that dark room and the phantom itch of that rope making his skin crawl and blood run cold.
But what burned in his mind most of all was that damned door, mahogany with delicate floral cravings and gold leaf embellishments and a dented door handle, dark brown stains at the bottom. The amount of times he’d find himself dreaming of that door, of what had happened in that room, of how many times he’d found himself in front of it or in front of similar doors, of the sound of a door handle turning and clicking shut and leaving him again to the darkness.
Of course he remembered. It wasn’t even painful some days- sometimes those memories were pleasant, like helping Arabella choose the floral arrangements for the tables in the ballroom, or a maid helping him cook, or Nigel reading to him, or having tea with one of Nigel’s many associates. Thinking back on it, he knew that Nigel had fully planned on him forgetting himself and on keeping him around, and sometimes he wished that he had just let it happen.
Sometimes. Other times he knew exactly what he had gone through and hated Nigel and his entire posh lifestyle and group with a passion. Sometimes he dreamed of smashing Arabella’s skull in, or serving up a cocktail of pure poison to the Oxford gentlemen Nigel hosted, of strangling Nigel with the rope he himself had so often held in that house.
Because he remembered, in the end, everything that had happened to him.