A/N: Warning: implied drowning.

Cinder stares at the water pooling around her feet.

Even though she's standing in the middle of the room, she can't escape the liquid seeping in through the walls. She doesn't want to think about why this room was originally designed but there's not a lot else to ponder, except how long she can hold her breath.

She tries banging on all the walls, prying open the door, disabling the security and whatever else she can think of. The water has reached as high as her knees by the time she decides she can't do anything and retreats to the centre of the room, folding her arms.

She stands there for longer than she should and she knows she should keep moving to avoid getting too cold but she doesn't feel like doing anything active, other than actively worrying.

It's completely unexpected when she hears the shrill sound of a mobile ringing, of her mobile ringing.

"Wait, what?" she asks aloud, patting her pockets.

Sure enough, her mobile is ringing inside her hoodie pocket.

"Oh, thank the stars," she breathes into the phone as she answers it.

"Where exactly are you?" Thorne asks immediately. "Actually, it doesn't matter, we can find out ourselves. Well, Cress can..."

"Thorne, I can't swim," Cinder says, barely hearing what he's saying.

"Swim? Why do you need to know how to swim?" he asks.

"I can't unlock the door from the inside," she carries on.

"Cinder? Cinder, calm down!" she hears Scarlet yell.

Closing her eyes, she wades through the water – that's now reached halfway up her thighs- until she reaches a wall, leaning against it and exhaling slowly. "I'm calm."

"What happened?"

"Levana."

She can hear Winter start to explain who Levana is in the background and she's only half surprised that they're all together.

"Okay, look, Cinder, just stay there, I can figure out where you are." Cress sounds like she's halfway to doing just that already.

Cinder laughs to herself as she looks around. "It's not like I can go anywhere."

She has to stuff the phone back into her pocket as something thuds against the door, only for it to turn transparent a moment later. She hadn't even realised that the door was just tinted glass and not metal.

"That's not good." She hears Kai announce quietly.

"Gee, thanks, I hadn't realised," Cinder mutters back, her voice shaky.

She regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth but Kai smiles at her, his mouth quirking into a smile.

"I didn't think that such people existed who kept their sarcasm even in times of great peril."

Cinder laughs at his tone, walking over to the glass door.

"Are you okay?" she asks, her voice barely loud enough to be classed as a whisper.

Kai nods. "I'm not the one who's stood in a rather large puddle."

"Puddle?" Cinder echoes.

"A rather large puddle," Kai corrects.

Cinder shakes her head, leaning her forehead on the glass. "You're so strange,"

"That's why you love me," Kai whispers back.

"I know."

Kai lets his forehead touch his glass too, and for a moment she's back at home with Kai and they're both just having a lazy day, curled up on the sofa together, and there's no room that's slowly filling with water, and then Kai jerks backwards, his eyes widening.

"I've got to go, I'm sorry, I love you!" Kai smiles at her before pressing something that makes the glass darken enough to look like metal once again.

It's not even three seconds later when it clears again but this time she's faced with four men who look extremely surprised but not even remotely concerned to see her standing in what is definitely more alarming than a rather large puddle.

Cinder curses as they run on without sparing her another glance, knowing that they're probably looking for Kai, who's found himself the bad habit of escaping from people only to be caught again once he finds her.

They do leave the glass clear, though, so she can't say there's no such thing as a silver lining.

Even if she doesn't want a lining and she certainly doesn't want it to be silver. Perhaps if it was a foam lining, she could break it and leave the room so that she doesn't have to try her hand at swimming in the water that's now well above her waist.

There's nothing else for her to do other than listen to the strangely calm flow of water.

That is, until Thorne whacks his head on the glass, swears, fixes his hair, winks at himself, and grins.

She's never been so relieved to see someone being so vain.

She also realises that Kai was right: they are a family even without having the same blood run through their veins.

"In need of my expert skills once again?"

Cinder glares at him.

"Alright, alright. Well, you're in deep... water... so float off the attitude, deal?" Thorne smirks.

If she didn't know that terrible humour was his way to avoid panicking, she would have cursed him to the worst place on earth and back. But she does know, so she smirks back.

"Deal."

"Cress, start talking, if you will," he mutters.

"What did you do, take speech therapy with Kai as your teacher?" Cinder asks.

"What did I say about the sarcasm?" Thorne asks as he starts pressing buttons on Cress' command.

Cinder shrugs. "You didn't say anything about the sarcasm,"

Thorne makes a face, realising his mistake.

"Anyway, you can't say anything! You put your phone in your pocket," Thorne accuses.

"What else was I meant to do?" Cinder asks.

"Not put it in your pocket?" Thorne suggests, "You know, so that it doesn't get water all over it and shut down."

"Oh..." Cinder winces, pulling her dead phone out of her pocket.

She pries open the back and pulls out the battery so that it can't spark and send an electric current through the water, even though Cress had assured her that such a thing wouldn't necessarily happen.

She accidentally drops it when she realises that the water's reached her chin.

"Um, Thorne, care to hurry along a little?" Cinder asks, trying to keep her voice calm.

But it's hard to stay calm when there's an alarm blaring inside her head, warning her that Kai's about to get married and that she might drown, and that she can't decide which one of those scenarios is worse.

Thorne looks up, surprisingly panicked for someone who's usually so flippant, and mumbles something under his breath, probably asking Cress how to open the door.

Cinder starts kicking her feet, trying not to slip under the water but weighed down by her choice of clothing. She sucks in as much air as she can before purposely going back under the water, letting the cool liquid rush over her head, as she wriggles out of the hoodie, shoving it away from her as she kicks back up and gasps.

"Cinder?" Thorne asks.

She keeps kicking with her feet, nodding at him. "What?"

"Hold on," he replies, a strained smile flickering on his face.

"To what?" she tries to reply but her head slips under the water just as she goes to, and all that comes out is a stream of bubbles.

She gasps, pushing with her arms and trying to stay above the water. Her legs start to ache and her hair comes loose, becoming heavier and heavier until she can barely keep her eyes open.

Her vision greys and she can't tell if she's near the ceiling or the floor, her brain screaming at her to find oxygen but her lungs protesting that they don't know to extract it from the water.

She stops struggling, letting her eyes flutter shut.

She sighs with the last of her breath.

And then the water overtakes her senses.

She can smell the water, she can see the water, she can hear the water, she can taste the water, she can feel the water and she can start to become part of the water, but she can't breathe the water.

She starts falling, sinking, drowning.

I got 4k reads on FFN and has almost seven hundred views on here? * stumbles around in attempt to regain calm and accidentally pokes myself with the pencil in my hair *Okay so this is about 500 words short of 2k, I'm sorry, but I've literally only had two hours where I'm in the vicinity of a device to write on! I'll make it up to y'all tomorrow!  Hope you enjoyed and see you tomorrow!