As Free as a Caged Bird

A bucket of ice cold water is what rudely awakens me. I sputter loudly, spitting the dirty water from my mouth and try to wipe off my nose and eyes on my shirt sleeve. I'm unpleasantly surprised to find that my tee and jeans are no longer on my body. After I take a few seconds to look over my freezing naked body, my eyes slowly slide up. There is a pair of thick black boots three feet from me. Covering the boots is a pair of black pants, and then a black jacket that is buttoned up all the way to his neck. Covering his eyes, and blocking out the features of half his face, is a man with dirty blonde hair sticking out from underneath the backwards cap he wears.

"I see you're finally awake," he says in a rough voice. I try to pinpoint just where I've heard it before, but the cold of the room makes me shiver and my body starts to feel numb. "Cold?" he asks sarcastically, before squatting down to my eye level. "Good," he snarls. His hand roughly grabbing the back of my head and pulls at my hair. I groan from the pain, but bite back anything else. I've had worse happen to me.

"Where is it?" he demands, his fist gripping tighter and tighter in my hair. He pulls, and I know a large chunk has just been pulled. I groan again, squeezing my eyes shut as I push back the pain now throbbing through my scalp. "Answer me, damnnit!" he yells, pulling my hair once again. I wince, pulling my head back to free it from his hand. "Where is it!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I hiss, and it earns me a quick slap across the face. My lip stings from the fresh split in the skin. My tongue slides across my lip, and I cringe at the taste of my blood. The metallic iron make me sick to my stomach.

"Don't play coy with me, bitch! I'm what's keeping you alive at the moment. Now tell me where the fucking headquarters of Avenged Sevenfold is!"

My eyes widen slightly. I was briefed on what to do if this moment ever happened, by Brian just days after he claimed me his. Because of my status as one of the Seven's personal girls, I was a target for kidnapping and torture. Plenty of small time gangs were trying to get the upper hand of the Sevenfold Gang, and Brian told me that I was now a target since I had been labeled his. Taking a deep breath, I try to calm the nerves that have become frenzied by this short event.

I look up at the man. He's taken off his sunglasses. I can see the dark blue eyes that stare at me. I'll need to remember this.

"I need to make a phone call," I tell him, and take another deep breath. He glares.

"Don't start playing games with me, bitc-"

"I need to make a fucking phone call," I growl at him, rising myself up on my knees as high as I can. While I wished it had never come to this, I would really like to keep living on with my life. His dark blue eyes glare at me before he stands and nods his head at another man standing off to the side. My hands are cut free from the thick, itchy rope that dug into my wrists, and a cell phone is produced. He shoves into my hands.

There's a gun put to my head. I have a staring contest with the man holding the gun after I dial the numbers that I have more engraved in my mind than my birthday. I press the phone to my ear and let it ring. On the fourth ring, he picks up.

"Hello?" I take a deep breath and look at all the men in the room. Most of them have features that I can make out, along with the matching tattoos that slowly connect as a pattern in my head. A few seconds pass. "Hello?" he says again, and this time, I start to speak.

"Hotel. Echo. Lima. Papa." I say quickly, before standing up, grabbing at the barrel of the gun pressed to my head and twisting it out of my direction. A bullet goes through the chamber and the heat burns my hand, but I simply bite back the pain. I have much bigger things to worry about than a burned hand. "Blonde. Blue eyes. Scar on left cheek. Teardrop. Basement." I take a deep breath and dodge more hands that reach out for me. "Dragon. Green. Left arms. Red eyes." And then, there's a strong, unforgiving hand that grabs at my ankle and pulls me down to the ground. I catch myself with my hand but the phone falls away. I scream when I feel him tug, and there's a crack from the bone breaking.

"BRIAN!"

The phone is crushed by a large black boot. The man with the dark blue eyes is pulling me up by my hair. I wince and scratch at his hands, trying to free me from him.

"Fucking bitch, I'm going to enjoy carving off you skin," he spits in my face. I cringe back, hot tears spilling down my cheeks from the pain. My body is on fire from the pain and the cold in the room.

"He'll find you!" I yell, kicking out my good foot, hoping to do some damage. "He'll find you and make you regret kidnapping me! He'll make you wish for death!"

"Shut the fuck up!" He drops me, and my head cracks against the floor. I don't move, the fear of making the pain worse keeps me from moving. I watch as his boots walk away. I stare at the wall ten feet in front of me. I don't fight when someone grabs my good ankle and starts to drag me across the room. I wince at the chills from the cold floor, but don't fight back.

I was on the call long enough for him to trace where I was. I gave him the best description I could. The man pulls me into a small, dark room, and leaves me there. I fall in and out of consciousness. My only entertainment is watching the shadows from the crack under the door. I can't hear the voices. My head still pounds from the pain of being cracked against the tile floor.

I'm not sure of how much time went by.

It could have been an hour, or a day, or even a week. My body made no demand for food. I simply laid there in the floor of the small room, staring at the shadows that were made. My eyes close, and for once, I don't fear that they make never open again . . .



My ears have finally stopped ringing, and I can hear shouts and shuffling of boots. There's a loud gunshot close to the door, and I groan at the sound.

"Where is she!" I can hear Brian yell in fury, and a small smirk graces my lips. I watch the shadows. The man groans in pain before he screams. "I asked you a fucking question! Now answer me! Where the fuck is she?" There's no answer, just another scream. And then another gunshot.

"Look everywhere! We are not leaving this building until we find her!"

"But Syn." I recognize Jimmy's voice. They're close to door. I try to reach up for the door handle, but come to realize that there is no handle. The wall is bare of anything. I'm in a cell of four walls, a cold floor, and a ceiling. I'm in a hidden room, and with the way Brian is acting so frantic, they'll never find me. "What if she's-"

"I said we're gonna find her no matter what, Rev," he snarls, but I hear his voice crack just there at the end. He's thinking about finding me dead; bloodied; carved into different body parts with my eyes staring up at him with endless pain. I watch his boots disappear out of the visual field given by the crack underneath the secret wall, and can hear Jimmy sigh.

For hours, I watch as feet go back and forth from the main room. I can't feel my body, and my voice has left me when I need it most. My body has given up, but my spirit still has some fight left in it.

For hours, they walked right past the wall with no thought that I could possibly be behind it. And then, the foot steps become less and less. I'm rolled from my side onto my stomach and gotten a good three inches from where I was laying, but the wall is still over a foot away. As I reach out, my shoulder screams, and I can only get out silent sobs. My arm drops to the floor, and suddenly, the foot steps stop walking.

"What is it-" I hear Jimmy start to ask, but Brian rudely shushes him. His feet step closer to the wall. I smile, a a bit of hope builds up in my chest.

"I heard something," he says. His feet are just in front of the crack. I lift my arm and drop it back to the floor. The sound is a bit louder. I hear him knocking on the wall, looking for any signs that it's hollow. Suddenly, my face breaks out in a grin. I'm in more physical pain than ever before, but at the thought of getting to live another day, I turn into a very optimistic person. His knocks make an echo bounce off the walls. Then, just barely, I hear him say softly, "Come on, baby, if that's you just make one more sound. Just one more," he pleads, and I gladly do just that.

My voice is harsh and cold and cracks worse than a broken vinyl record, but I can clearly say, "Brian."

Suddenly, his fist goes flying through the sheet-rock, creating a nice sized hole. He does it again, before using the purely adrenaline strength to rip his way through the wall. I shield my face from the flying particles and bits of wall.

"Oh god, Becca," I hear him over the sound of the wall being pummeled. Soon, I hear his boots being used to make the hole bigger, and then, his feet are right in front of my face. "Baby, baby look at me," he says softly, shaking my shoulders as he kneels at my side. I groan at the soreness that creeps up my neck, but turn my head to look up at him. For a moment, I swear he's an angel from the way the light behind him accents the contours of his cheekbones. He sees my eyes and does a quick check of my body with is eyes. "What hurts? What did they do to you? I heard you scream over the phone and... and..." He chokes, not able to finish. I smile softly at him.

He quickly takes off the warm black jacket he wears and wraps my naked body in it, before picking me up in his arms; one arm holding the back of my knees and the other wrapped under my back.

"I hit my head," I harshly whisper as he walks from the hidden room and into the main part of the building I was brought to when kidnapped. "I think my ankle is broken, I heard it crack." I take a few deep breaths, my body growing warmer and warmer from the jacket he wrapped me in. "And the douchebag hit me, so my cheek hurts."

"But you're alive," he whispers to me just as we get outside and to one of the large black SUVs that he must of brought with him. Jimmy is walking right behind us with a phone pressed to his ear as he relays the extent of the damage done to me to someone at the mansion. Brian opens the back door of the SUV and climbs into the trunk. The back-passenger seats are put down. He lays me on a pile of blankets and starts to pull off his clothes.

"What are you doing?" I mumble, my eyes following the flow of his tattoos that I missed tracing as I laid against his chest.

"Gotta keep you warm, Becca," he answers, now down into his boxers before pulling the blankets over the both of us. His body makes sparks fly all around my heart. With his arms wrapped around my freezing body, I rest my head on his chest and sigh softly. The pain eases as blood begins to circulate correctly in my body. The pale, dead tone to my skin becomes flushed pink from heat. I feel the car lurch forward as we drive away.

"When I got the phone call," he starts, telling the story into my limp, blonde hair, "I didn't know what to think. I could hear something in the background, but then I heard your voice say the code words, and my heart broke from just the thought that I may never get to hold you again. You did so good, baby," he whispers to me, and his arms tighten just a bit.

"I learned from the best," I try to joke, and I can hear him chuckle silently. And then, gradually, the chuckles turn into sobs. My heart breaks. I never thought I would see this man cry.

"I was so scared," he confesses to me. I know he would never say this unless it was Jimmy that was the one driving the SUV, and from the way the radio music turns up just a bit more, my thoughts are proven true. Brian begins to slowly stroke my hair. I curl up closer to his body. "We got there, and after hours of looking everywhere, we couldn't find you. No hair. No prints. No blood. I should have been happy that there was no evidence that you had been harmed, but it wasn't good enough. I had to have you back in my arms, Becca. I had to have you back with me."

"Told my self I would never go back," I tell him, and he winces slightly, knowing how stubborn I am once I've made up my mind. "But I think..." I begin, and have to swallow down the burn in the back of my throat. "But I think that I belong there more than I do in the normal life."

His tense back muscles relax under my fingers, and I hear a sigh of relief leave his lips. Those lips then press soft kisses on my hair, my temple, and slowly down my cheek.

"But," I say, making his lips pause at the corner of my mouth. "No more of that 'I'm not ready to be a father', shit, and pushing me away if I get a pregnancy scare, okay? I don't want to get pregnant anymore than you want to be a dad. We'll just keep the sex to a minimum and be more careful and-"

His lips stop my words, which surprise me, but I gladly accept the kiss and slowly start to return it. After a few moments, he pulls away and presses his forehead to mine. With half-lidded eyes, I look into his deep brown ones. There's a smile in them.

"That was Syn," he says softly, pecking my lips. "This is Brian saying, whenever you're ready, I'm ready." I smile.

"Yeah? Well I won't be ready anytime soon so don't get your hopes up-" I gasp in surprise when his hand slips between my legs. My ankle throbs, and so does my head, but the feel of his fingers touching me the way they used to makes my toes curl and my fingers fist in his hair. "Fucking hell."

"Hey! No having sex in the back of my car!" Jimmy yells from the front, but I hear the laugh in his voice.

"Shut up, Rev," we both say, smiling at each other before his finger presses into me.

"Oh fuck, Brian..." I whisper softly, and he chuckles deeply into my ear.

"I'm so glad to have you back, Becca. I was nothing without you."