Chapter Text
The room is small.
You’ve been in small rooms before. This is fine. You'll be fine. It's really not that big of a deal.
But it’s not the same. You’re small. You’re already in a box, trapped. They’ve blinded you and bound you and now they’ve put you in a second box to put you away, have you away from them, lock you up and-
Okay, reassess the situation.
The room is perfectly fine. You can move around it. There’s the wonderful lamp! It’s misshapen and funky and will despawn in 127 hours, 12 minutes, and 01 seconds. Ragatha made it for you. People make things for people they care about, so she must care about you. You had to ask for it, but it still counts for something, that she had made it anyway. Right? And you’re not trapped. You walk to the door, twist the doorknob, and remind yourself of that fact.
You could leave.
They’re not watching you.
They’re trusting you.
They’re trusting you.
You can’t break that trust. It's so new and fragile and you don't know what they'd do next. And you want them to trust you. You'd beg them on your hands and knees if you thought it'd work.
8 hours. That's nothing! And you have work to do anyway, you need to-
You can’t. They’ve trapped you, box in a box. There’s a vague sense, a distant hum of the rest of you just out of reach. You stretch, but you can’t get to it. Any work that needs to be done, it will not be done by you. All of it lies in Kinger's hands.
8 hours.
The room is small. You curl up next to the lamp. You’re in a room, not The Box. Why does it feel so much the same?
You curl up and curl up and pull yourself tighter. You don’t want to be here. You want to be elsewhere, not trapped, not mostly blind and deaf and almost mute.
You curl up, shaking with emotions that wrack your frame, too powerful for what you are right now, too all-consuming.
You sink down, letting go as your form gives out.
And now you are a small thing in a small box. Where maybe you’ve always been.