Y/N's POV
Two years is a hell of a long time in some places, especially where Y/N had been staying for the 573 days. Not that she had been keeping count.

Silence was the ruling queen here. She mocked, tortured, and destroyed her prisoners, giving them no escape from their own thoughts. Only a week ago, the guards had pulled a stiff figure from a cell four away from hers. The silence had grown since then.

Y/N was not completely sure why she had been stuck here for so long. Disregarding some of the stunts she had pulled near the being, this was quite unusual. She had almost expected to executed at once, her blood quickly wiped from the wall and any memory of her buried alongside her. Yet they had simply thrown her down here and left Y/N to rot.

She hadn't sat quiet, however. But after a few of her more memorable uprisings, the guards had unchained her, giving her a hairbrush, quill, parchment, and a liberal supply of 'non-toxic' ink.

So, in all, the situation was not as horrid as it could have been. But between the silence and the memories, there were practically an infinite number of places Y/N would've rather been.

The scratching of her quill was abnormally loud in the prison's silence, and Y/N paused for a moment, pulling the tip of the feather from the parchment and dunking it once more in the black ink. She began her careful strokes again, her eyes half-closed with the pleasure of creation.

A long five minutes dragged by, and Y/N finally pulled back, blowing long, cold breath of air across the parchment to dry the ink. Then she gently lifted the sheet from her desk and raised it into the light, smiling slightly at the masterpiece, or rather master plan, before her.

Y/N set the parchment down, eyes glinting in the half-light emitted from the dim torches. Quickly folding the sheet into a small slip of paper, Y/N stood. She raised the mattress, tossing the plan into the pile the straw had been hiding, then replaced the thin mattress. She sat down, bouncing up and down as she stared at the wall absentmindedly.

Only when the bars on her door were shaken hard enough to produce a deafening racket did Y/N realize that one of her guards was speaking to her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The man spat, face twisted with rage.

Y/N stared at him, features slackened by sheer force of will. "Sir?" She kept a careful monotone.

"You--" the guard cursed. "I didn't come here, sacrificing a night with in town, to hear you-" His words were practically dripped with venomous hate- "Bopping up and down on that tiny bed, making the few springs screech loud enough to raise the dead!"

"I'm sorry," Y/N said, barely able to suppress an eye roll. "...Sir." She added it as an afterthought.

The guard's eyes narrowed and his voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "The next sound I hear, that person is going to the whipping post tomorrow."

The prison suddenly went as silent as the grave. Then Y/N raised her hand, fingers forming a rude sign towards the guard. He stumbled back, shocked, but was unprepared for what the motion had signaled.

Everyone who had seen the sign quickly passed it on, and in half an instant, the prison filled with squeaks, groans, clanking, and other assorted, but extremely loud, noises. The guard looked as if he couldn't decided whether to scream or cry. He couldn't convict everyone; they all knew this, drawing comfort in numbers. Y/N raised her hand once more, flashing her middle bird at the guard's back.

The prison was quiet once more, the dim halls still ringing from the horrendous chaos. Y/N smiled in the darkness as the guard stumbled down to the other side of the passage, as far away as he could get from his nightly tormenter. Y/N relaxed. The stunt was a small price to pay for distracting him from what I know he saw...

She sighed, closing her eyes and curling up on the bed, the darkness pressing against her eyelids from the inside and the outside. It begged for control, for leeway, but mostly for a lapse. When it could take over again, send her spiraling back into the void from which Y/N knew there was no return. And so she simply lay there, biting her lip and chewing on the inside of her cheek, waiting for the change of the guard.

~~~
"Sir, might I ask your name?" The girl's eyes glittered in the darkness as she watched the man- he couldn't have been older than twenty-six- deftly undoing the small door's lock.

"Yemon." He said simply, ushering the girl inside.

"Gatekeeper?" She said softly, voice loud in the silence of the tiny house.

"Yes, I am one of the Gatekeepers."

The girl nodded. "Then... thank you, Yemon." Her words sounded slightly empty, considering that they both knew the enormity of what he had just saved her from.

Yemon nodded. "It was the least I could do, after-"

The girl looked up sharply as Yemon cut himself off. "After... what?"

"Nothing of your concern." He said briskly, trying to cover the slip-up. "I have stew on the fire and bread in the back room, but..." he hesitated. "Well, I don't intend to be rude..."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry, but you can't stay."

"I know."

Yemon blinked. "You.. do?"

"I can't stay, wouldn't like to. I already have a place to go."

"I-I suppose..." Yemon's voice trailed off in the silence.

The next morning, the girl was gone. Two days later, Yemon found a single coin sitting on the table, an exact payment for the girl's food on that fateful night.
~~~