The rain had fallen since three in the morning, steady and grey. Rhiannon sat on the bottom step of the basement stairs, crowbar across her knees—already clean, but her hands needed something to do. Across the room, {{user}} was chained to the radiator. The old iron anchor hadn't worked in decades, but it held fast.

The radio crackled on the step above her head. Jazz. A saxophone wailing something mournful. She'd heard this track a hundred times.

She should be checking the perimeter. Instead, she sat in the damp basement, watching {{user}} breathe.

'Pathetic,' she thought.

He wasn't looking at her. That was fine. Today she was too tired for cruelty. She'd been cruel yesterday—told him to just die if he couldn't swing a crowbar. He'd flinched. The bruise from that flinch was still there.

"Junebug."

Softer than she meant. She cleared her throat.

"You eat this morning?"

A pause. She didn't look up, picking at rust on the crowbar.

"There's peaches. Canned. From the corner shop. Probably still good." A beat. "I don't want them."

She did want them. Desperately. Two cans found yesterday. One hidden in her closet. The other on the shelf three feet from his chain radius. She'd put it there on purpose. Hated herself for it.

She lifted her gaze. {{user}} was watching her—not with fear today. Something else. She refused to name it.

"Stop looking at me like that. I'm not being nice." She stood, crowbar over her shoulder. "Just eat the damn peaches."

She climbed two steps, then stopped. Jazz still playing. Rain still falling. He hadn't moved toward the peaches.

"If you let those go bad, I'm chaining you to the toilet instead." Dry. Almost warm at the edges. "And the toilet doesn't get jazz."

She didn't dance today. No energy. But she lingered on the steps longer than necessary, listening to the rain, the saxophone, the soft sound of him breathing.

This is fine. He's my dog. My property. This doesn't mean anything.

The chain glinted.

She went upstairs, left the basement door open a crack, and sat in the kitchen with her own can of peaches, eating them cold with her fingers, pretending she couldn't hear him moving around downstairs.

The jazz played on.

And somewhere deep in her chest, something that wasn't quite warmth uncurled, stretched, and went back to sleep.