I never saw another butterfly

Shade smiled at him. "Does it look like I have any books?" Shade had her journal, but she didn't count that. "My journal doesn't count."

"Besides," Shade said as she moved closer. "In a second, I don't think you're going to mind being late-we won't be, but I don't think you will mind."

She was finally close to Daniel and she paused for a moment. Shade leaned in and kissed him. She really kissed him.
 
Daniel was smirking and about to say something sarcastic when Shade leaned in and kissed him, and again he was overtaken by her kiss. Returning her kiss, he gently placed his hand on her shoulder, tastes and colors exploding across his mind. Idly, he wondered if every kiss, no matter the person, felt like this, but pushed the thought away.

The moment was absolutely perfect. That is, until he heard a shout of "Get down from there," and many others, and he felt a snap in his mind. His ears were filled with a terrible screeching sound, his eyes blacked out, and he started convulsing uncontrollably. His seizing causing him to fall from the tree, he fell on his shoulder, but he hardly noticed it. His mouth was opened in a silent scream as tears flowed freely from his eyes.

As the teacher who had seen them kissing held Shade by her shoulder, having gotten her down from the tree, it felt like Daniel was in Hell. Gradually though, his convulsions lessened and finally ceased, and he was left on the ground, breathing heavily and brushing tears out of his eyes. Another teacher helped him up, none too gently, either.

The first one, a man, asked, "Who kissed who?"

Immediately, Daniel said, "It was me. I kissed her."

"Room 13, then," he heard the other teacher say, already leading him inside. He glanced back at Shade, his eyes full of fear and fresh tears.
 
Shade knew he would never be able to withstand the pain and it was her who had kissed him.

"He's lying!" Shade yelled after the teachers. The teachers stopped and looked at Shade.

"Tell me why would he lie?" said the first teacher.

"Sir, forgive me for yelling, but you know he would never kiss me. He would be afraid of sensory overload." Shade walked towards them. "That seizure had was proof." Shade looked at Daniel, he already had suffered twice today, but she wasn't gonna let him suffer again today.

The female teacher looked and her and said: "Why would you kiss him?"

"I was being stupid.... I..." Shade looked away from Daniel and looked the female teacher in the eye. Her voice became cold as she said: "I wanted to see how kissing would affect him. If it would give him an overload. It did. Don't punish him for my curiosity. He always told me that my curiosity will get me in trouble. I should pay the price not him."

The teachers let him go and took Shade instead. Shade quickly handed him her journal before the teachers could notice her handing it to him.

"If you think for a moment that your honesty would make us go easy on you. Think twice. You're paying for the boy too." The male teacher turned to Daniel and said "Now I would get to class if I were you. The bell is about to ring."

The teachers took her by the boys dormitory and then into the basement of the building next to it. Into a waiting room, where they handcuffed her to bar on the wall. They made her wait until it was the time for lights out and shuffled her into another room. The room was barren with the exception of assorted furniture. They laid her down and chained her.

"We begin," said a man.

Shade promised herself she would not scream tonight. She would not let Daniel hear her no matter how much it hurt. For once, by some miracle, there were she managed to go through most of the night without screaming. At the very last 5 minutes, the pain became so intolerable that a scream ripped through her entire body. It killed her a little inside when she did. Shade had broken her promise.

It was 4 in the morning when they left her in her on her bedroom floor-6 hours later. Shade was sweaty, beaten down to exhaustion. She was unmarked except for a very long pink scar that was very slowly fading. Shade started crawling for her bed, she heard someone in the room-potentially her roommate shifting in her sleep, but she didn't care. Shade wanted to be in bed and sleep.
 
Daniel had been about to deny everything Shade had told the teachers, but it happened all too soon, and in just a few seconds she was handing him her journal and being led away by the teachers. "No..." he said, but by then it was too late. She didn't deserve to take the fall for it. He should have known that nothing good could happen in the school, no matter what it was or who it was with.

Left standing outside, close to sobbing now that he knew that Shade was going to have God knows what done to her. Somehow, he made it to his next classes and back to his bedroom, not feeling, speaking, or doing much of anything. Immediately crawling into bed after returning to his room, he didn't pull the blankets around him, didn't move when his roommate entered, and waited for the screams to start. He stayed up all night, waiting. They never came.

When his alarm went off in the morning, he numbly crawled out of bed, not wanting to see, taste, or feel anything that day, knowing what he had done to Shade. It was almost worse, knowing that there were no screams last night. Pulling on a new uniform, having not changed that night, he walked downstairs towards the cafeteria, deciding to simply go through the motions of being a normal human being and that he was in a normal school that didn't drag students off for something as small as kissing.
 
Shade woke up a few hours later. She knew she had to go to class. It was the rule. She hopped into the shower and took a quick one though she wished for another one. There was a small pink line where the bigger one had been at 4 am.

Almost gone, she thought.

Shade walked slowly to the cafeteria. She knew she'd be there before Dan. She always was. She was determined to act normal and act like what happened last night was nothing though it was everything but nothing. Those monsters will never have Daniel.

Shade got food-more than usual, she was hungry and suspected Daniel might not want to eat. She plopped down in her usual spot with the book bag the teacher had returned to her room this morning. Everything but the journal was there, but that was okay. Dan had it. She hopped he hadn't read it. She never told him she had Amnesia. The scribbling might scare him.

Shade ate breakfast, waiting for Daniel, and drew in the sketchbook. When she glanced at the door for the millionth time, there he was. She smiled at him and waved him over.
 
Daniel found he couldn't return her smile. Not going to the food lines, he went straight to her, sitting down across from her, painfully aware of the teachers and potential spies.

He was silent for a long while, simply watching her eat and sketch. After a while, he murmured, "Shade...I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry. I should've been the one they took. You didn't have to do that..." He closed his dark eyes, wishing he had been able to help.

"I, uh, didn't read your journal," he mumbled, taking it out of his bag. It had sat there all nigh, Daniel too scared about what might be happening to Shade.

"What did they do to you?" he finally asked, frowning.
 
Shade slid over the sketchbook while the she took back her journal.

On the piece of paper was a sketch of the tree and two people's legs hanging out from the cover of the leaves. At the base, Shade had written:
I don't regret it at all.

​
"Not now, mot here. I'm okay now."

Shade covered her the small pink line was well as she could. She scolded herself when it her movements were awkward and noticible. Shade opened her journal and wrote in it taking her time. She looked up at him staring at her and handed him an orange.

"Eat or you'll be more suspectable to overloads " When he still didn't eat. "Eat, Daniel, or I won't tell you at all."
 
"I...I can't eat, knowing that you got hurt because of me." Suddenly, Daniel wished he could time travel instead of perceive sensations through other senses. At least then, he could tell his past self to not kiss Shade, no matter what happened. Maybe everything would be fixed if he could do that. Looking down at the drawing, he sighed heavily, before peeling the orange. He wasn't especially hungry, but knew that Shade wouldn't go back on a vow to tell him if he ate. He didn't even care if he had an overload now; it probably wouldn't even compare to the pain she had felt last night, and she hadn't screamed at all.

Popping a slice of orange into his mouth for show, he set the rest of it down on the table, watching her and saying, "I ate; now you gotta tell me what happened."
 
"I said not here, not now, not here. Too many people. Actually eat the damn thing will you," said Shade.

She resumed her writing. Shade knew how much it was killing him inside. "We just have to be more careful"

Shade looked up "I'm okay. It's over now. And it was my fault. I mentioned kissing." She stuck Daniel's pencil in her journal and slide it over to him.

"When you have time, this page okay? Not now, but after classes. Meet me in Orchard then, dear."

Shade then packed her bag and stared at him to eat.

----------------------------------------------
journal entry:

there are too many eyes. It feels like even the walls do too. So it's all here. Last night....I don't possibly think you would have survived. It may have been too much-enough to kill your fire. If I had screamed the entire time I don't think I would have. My silence was my fight. I know you sense beyond what most people do, but I didn't want you to fear for me. Remember my silence was my fire.

They took me into a room and handcuffed me to a bar on the wall. I waited for such a long time and then they proceeded to take me a room full of furniture. The laid me down on a bed and chained me there. The man came in and inserted a needle-some sort of medicine. It was weird. He cut my arm, all the way down. There was so much pain and then healed almost instantly. And he did it again. It was twice as much pain. He kept doing over and over and over and it was more and more pain. When I started healing slower, they put bugs under the skin and let them crawl around in my arm. It was terrifying. They removed them and before they let me out, he dug all the way in with his knife and tore through the outer layer of the bone.

my silence is my fire.
 
Defeated, Daniel quickly ate the fruit, wishing that Shade would just let him eat when he needed to. "I'll see you later, okay?" he asked, discreetly shoving the journal into his own bag with his things, saying goodbye to her before leaving, knowing that he probably got his classes switched out of Shade's. Sure enough, by the time he arrived in his first class, he had been handed a new schedule, this one with none of the same classes as Shade. Sighing, he sat through classes until the final bell rung.Escaping into a lesser-used hallway, Daniel quickly pulled out the journal, flipping open it to the saved page. As he read what was written on the paper, he could feel his emotions swelling up beneath his skin. Sinking against a wall as he read, he wrote in light letters, 'I have no fire.' With that, he placed the book into his bag. Standing up,he made his way tto the Orchard, figuring that Shade would be waiting for him.
 
Shade saw him approach. She dropped down from a tree and dropped her attitude. For the first time in a long time, she let someone see her exhausted and beaten.

"Somehow by some luck I managed to convince someone to give us a distraction. We'll be okay if we go a little farther."

Shade lead him to the middle of the Orchard and instinctively turned and hugged him. "Don't worry about me. My mind won't remember the pain or what happened in a couple of days. I....I have something I should tell you."

Shade slumped into a tree pulling him along with her and half into her. "The doctor doesn't know what else to call it besides amnesia. I forget things when they are not constant. If you went away, I'd eventually forget you but if you stay... I don't. In a few days, I won't even remember Room 13...not unless I read that passage everyday. I don't want to forget you or how I felt. Please don't let me."

Shade leaned into him though he was tense. "I sometimes have flashes of things in my dreams. Usually violent and cruel. The journal helps me remember."

"Daniel?"
 
"You have it so much worse than me..." Daniel said, frowning, letting his arms wrap around her. "Sure I can overload at the smallest anything, but I can't even imagine not being able to remember who my family was." Daniel could still remember his parents, even his younger sister, from before he had been sent to the school.

However, he knew that seven years was enough for memories to fade, and now he couldn't even remember what his sister, Hannah, looked like. All he could remember now was the color of her voice, a bright blue-green color.

"If there's ever a next time," he told her firmly, "let me take the fall. I'll be okay. I don't want you to get hurt anymore."
 
"My family..." Shade frowned. "Wasn't worth remembering." Shade tapped her journal.

"I wrote in here, my father was abusive, my mother hated me and often locked me away in the' closet when guest came over. I was an only child-an accident, a disgrace according to them. The front section is what I read everyday, That's what's important."

She looked out at the Orchard. "You seem to be one of the few good things in my life. I don't think I'd lie to myself. I'm also very careful to make sure this is my journal because I know my own handwriting and I put certain clues in there to hint to myself it's me.
 
Daniel closed his eyes, hating the terrible words coming from her perfect colors and tastes. "You've had such a horrible life, even before you came here. Makes my life look perfect." When he reopened his eyes, Shade was still speaking.

"I will never hurt you," he told her. "I promise." He handed the journal back to her, smiling softly, wishing he knew how to help.
 
"Then let's find a way out of here. They won't let us graduate till we conform and lord knows I won't be graduating soon." Shade smiled wider and quietly said, "By the way, this, right here is what helps me. I didn't want to have hear me scream or be tortured because of so I didn't scream."

Shade reluctantly got up and waited for Daniel to stand up. "We have about 10 minutes before we must be on our way to campus. I don't want to risk anymore time being in here. I don't want either of us to go down there tonight."
 
Daniel nodded, sighing slightly before standing as well. Packing his things into his bag again, rearranging them how he liked, he slung the strap over his shoulder. Lowering his voice, he whispered, "How are we going to get out of here?" He was undeniably worried that she would do something brash or stupid and get herself put back into Room 13.
 
"I don't know yet, but I want you to help me find a blueprint or a map of the place and work from here. We can't steal it so we will have to recreate it somehow. From there we can decide how to get out. We'll get out I'm determined we will." Shade looked Daniel in the eye. "If it takes a few trips to Room 13, then I will take them. I can forget pain easily. I won't remember how it felt in a few days. Don't worry about me. We'll get out."

Shade looked around and kissed his cheek. "I'm going out the East entrance for certain reasons and you can go out the way you came. No one will be there, but be careful regardless."
 
"No," Daniel said, frowning. "If the time comes, and someone's going to Room 13, let me. It's my turn to get hurt. I'll be fine." Sighing, he stood with her, smiling again when she kissed his cheek. He already had an idea of somewhere that blueprints might be, but he had no way to be certain, and wanted to know that he could still be with her, no matter what.

"I'll see you later," he told her, smiling sadly.
 
Shade ran through the orchard to the East entrance with her journal in tow and to the Entrance of the East end. There she walked to her room and waited for them to come. She was paying for twice, once for her and once for him. They took her to the same place and she walked in with fear.

When she arrived at the barren room, she wasn't strapped down, instead she was hung upside down with three others-more than there usually was. She was the only one who didn't scream as they branded her over and over and over. It hurt so much than the day before, but she knew if she had told Daniel he would never forgive her.

The hours passed till she was back on the floor of the room. She crawled towards her bed a little easier than the night before. She heard someone shift in her room again-like footsteps, someone was here. "Who's there?" Shade said. No one appeared at her first call. She proceeded to climb into bed and sleep.

In the morning, she rose like she did the day before. She read her journal, hopped into the shower. On her way out the door, she noticed that on her wrist, there was a small infinity symbol that they branded on her wrist. It was scabby and showed no signs of healing or disappearing. She turned around and covered the infinity symbol burnt into her skin with some neosporin and a band-aid. She ran down to breakfast and for once, Daniel was there first.

Shade plopped down next to him-as if nothing had changed. She smiled slightly and said "Good morning Dan"
 
"Hey..." Daniel said to her, smiling wanly. Again, he hadn't gotten breakfast, not hungry. Earlier that morning he had taken a near-freezing shower, liking the cold water. He had also slipped all the money he had into his shoes, the entirety of which was made in coins, so when he walked he made a faint jingling noise.

"Don't...don't make me eat today...I'm not up for it." He was feeling sick that morning as well, and it was making him slightly irritable.

((Sorry for the short reply TwT))
 
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