"Guh! Au-auugh!!"

Bella's screams are wet, guttural... and muted. Her precious collar bites into her throat as sharply as a dagger, squeezing every attempt at language until it dies and slides back down her throat or dribbles out her mouth as spittle. Her toes strain desperately against the cold floor until they feel like they're about to break under her weight.

But every time they slip or get too tired, she sinks and the chain digs into her chest to crush what little air she's stolen back out of her. This is death. This feeling of being squeezed until the wine in her stomach is forced back up her throat in place of air and her heart slamming like a fist inside her chest until her vision grows dark around the edges, what else could it be but death? She sputters and chokes as her panicked body tries to spit and swallow at the same time, until she finally finds her feet again and lifts herself high enough to rest. 

Bella snarls. Bella heaves. Bella does not cry. But she thrashes in her bindings like a lunatic beast. Her leash rattles as if taunting her while it crushes her breasts in ways that send white-hot bursts of pain across her vision and bites into her skin in ways that might take days or even weeks to fade. If they fade. If they don't kill her now, kill her, now, ggghk, nnnnnf!

The pain can't stop her desperate lunging. The Nemean's trap has no hold on her heart while it beats so fast that the rush of blood drowns out every thought except the desire to be free, to breathe and move and stay alive just one, three, ten minutes more. Bella pounds her head against the wall and snarls through the pain as she wrenches an arm free. It flops weakly back down to her side, but she grits her teeth and drags it higher. Her fingers find the links of chain closest to her collar.

She freezes. Her eyes squeeze themselves shut against her will as her trembling fingers trace the metal that binds her to the Empire. Her fingers pray to each link, though she can't think of a god to name or a favor to ask. The worship is enough. Her weak and fluttering touch is all she has to give. Her eyes snap open. They are wet. Her hand clenches into a fist, and where her claws meet the chain they rip through it as easily as carving meat for dinner. 

Bella flops to the floor with an undignified thud, surrounded by dull and broken links of chain scattered in lumps and little coils all around her. No thought. No prayer. No feeling anywhere at all. For the moment, all she does is breathe, so ragged and exhausted and desperate. It's an act that swallows her entire being and drowns her in the cosmos of her own will to live. Time passes, meaningless. 

She's on her feet again, with no memory of trying to stand. Her shoulders still rise and fall with the exaggerated motion of the weary. She reaches up with her good arm and wrenches the limp one in merciless silence until the shoulder finally pops back into alignment with a crunch and a pop that don't belong to her. That can't.

Her breathing finally quiets to a simple, forceful push in and out her nose. It's the only sound as far as her ears can hear. The only sensations on her body are the phantom serpents of pain still squishing her flat and the brushing of her disheveled, torn, and ruined dress. A strange tingle she can't explain spreads across the small of her back, right where the Nemean held her. It's warm. She shivers.

Bella's expression is unreadable, even if there were someone around to read it. Her eyes watch the shattered remnants of her leash with an intensity that would gives full phalanxes pause. She lifts a hand and lazily tears her collar in half before flinging it to the ground in disgust. Behind her, her tail twitches. 

And all that's left is the watching, the endless staring at the torn or broken bits of what had been, of what was, and what might have been.

Alone.