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Would that he were a werewolf. Or a vampire. Or anything remotely more interesting than painfully intense claustrophobia.

Demanding she deluminate her wand might have seemed counterintuitive; he knew that people in these situations often killed for even a flicker of light to see their surroundings. But every time his brothers shoved him into some tight, dark space, they threw in a nasty little nub of a candle, spelled to never extinguish. The first few times, Axe thought everything, the candle, the trick, to be a misguided sense of fraternal bonding. A test, to make sure he was worthy of being their brother. If he experienced trauma, it was Axe's fault. It was not long before he realized he could not be more mistaken. It was no act of kindness, and they knew exactly what they did. The light was an agonizing cruelty, reinforcing with shadowy sadism the small space he was in. In the dark, he could forget how close together the walls were. If he could forget the walls, he could forget how trapped he was. He wouldn't know how trapped he was.

He was amazed that even amidst this gut-wrenching fear, he was still able to feel the prickles of annoyance from his companion. How were they supposed to concentrate on his breakdown if she was too busy having one of her own? Scowling, Axe found the tight constriction on his lungs eased with every swell of his irritation and redoubled his efforts, grunting a response that was neither affirmation nor denial to her frankly insipid question. Did a grown man who was all right normally fall to the floor in the foetal position after shouting to turn off the lights?

Raising his head with his eyes still closed, unsteady fingers pressing the bridge of his nose, he strove for patience. Until he remembered that he was trapped in a four foot by four foot space with an insipid question asker whom he actually found it very soothing to be irritated by, and then felt perfectly justified in his behavior.

"Votre bâton—" He hissed in impatience and tried again, "your wand. Can you—" here he gestured violently in an up-and-down fashion before realizing she couldn't see him and then slammed the wall behind him with his fist, trying to remember what the words were, "make it move?"