Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
When Sana closed her eyes, the smell of burning wood and skin could only remind her of one thing: the sound of a baby crying. This was familiar to her, as it wasn't the first time she'd been inside a burning house. The only thing unfamiliar in this situation was hope. Hope that she would be found and saved.
At this point, she couldn't move; struggling against the chains that bound her to a metal pipe had already proven futile, but she couldn't help but pull away from the hot metal burning her back. The thick smoke filling in the closed, small room where she was was already making her slowly lose her consciousness, as if it were a vignette darkening the screen, ending the last scene of a movie. But she couldn't give up now, not without discovering who was after her and her family.
At some point, interrupting the turbulence in her head, she began to hear loud knocks on the bedroom door, as if someone were kicking it. The noises soon synchronized with screams, someone calling her name. But she could no longer discern what was real, as she could see her mother in the corner of the room, holding a baby in her arms, who was screaming with his small, strong lungs while the woman laughed—perhaps at Sana, who was about to be engulfed in flames. Soon, the insistent punches and kicks broke down the door, and the figure she most expected to see at that moment materialized in front of her. This made her certain that it wasn't real, no one had really found her, and no one was entering that room to save her.
But she let herself cry, let herself smile with relief anyway, grateful that at least her last dream would be a good one.
"I love you so much," she said through her tears, trying to keep her eyes, burning from the smoke, open to see her wife, who was also trying to break the chains that were burning her arms with pliers. If she were real at this moment, Sana would have been worried she'd burn her hands as she tried to pull the hot metal off of her, but instead, another worry flooded her. "Will you forgive me?" she asked hoarsely, barely audible, before a violent sob overtook her. "Oh, please, I hope you forgive me," she begged through sobs and coughs, the last thing she could manage to do before being swallowed by the warm, strangely hopeful darkness.