<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Charles Donovan</span> </div><br/>"You ever been in a Russian prison, boyo?"<br/><br/>The guard didn't budge an inch, most of his face obscured by the heavy black helmet over his skull and the bars over the laughably small window set into the cell door.  Just the faint glimmer of an eye, the edge of a cheekbone, the slope of a nose.  The man hadn't blinked in over five minutes, placing him firmly in the same category of stolid indifference as a Queen's Guardsman and storefront mannequins.  He also hadn't spoken once since Donovan had been thrown into the cell, at least not when he was within earshot.  The total lack of human contact would have been enough to drive most men completely up a wall within the first week, let alone a month.<br/><br/>Then again, Charles was not most men.<br/><br/>"It's a bit less comfortable than all this, I'd say," he drawled, resting on his rusty metal bed in a tangle of athletic limbs and wrinkled bedsheets.  His wily face was drawn up into an iconic smirk, as though he found everything about his current situation to be both terribly amusing yet wholly predictable.  "You know, I quite like the American Justice System.  So long as you ain't sneaking bombs in your undies at airports you don't even have to worry about a lick of professional torture.  I'd say this is a welcome break, all things considered.  And a lot less wet."<br/><br/><em>Lungs struggling, burning, heaving against his battered ribcage in an exercise of desperate futility.  Eyes staring at the rusty bottom of a bucket, indistinct beneath a haze of swimming bubbles and churning foam.  There's a roaring in his ears that he can't quite concentrate on, a horrible noise of water and rage-filled bleating from the man standing in front of him.  Anger for anger's sake, it tears into his ears until they bleed.  He can feel the fingers digging into his shoulders, his back, the hair at the nape of his neck.  Twisting, taking all the fight out of him with stern grips that turn his muscle to jelly.  His body struggles against his will, yearning for air, and all he can think about is the fact that he'd rather they left his face in that bucket for just a few seconds longer...  </em><br/><br/>Donovan laughed, hopping to his feet in one fluid movement and padding over to the door.  "You know, that Warden of yours seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to keep me in here.  I suppose with my record they have to be a bit trickier with accommodations, eh?  It's a shame how<em>small town</em>this place is though.  It reeks of suburbs and old-style management.  Kind of like a bulldog guarding a safe, but all its teeth've been yanked out.  Plenty of bark but not enough bite, y'see?"<br/><br/>The guard didn't answer, but he didn't need to.  Charles had become quite adept at amusing himself over the years, and he didn't mind one-sided conversations in the slightest.  A good thing too, because he would have otherwise been bored to tears.  About the only thing that had surprised him so far was that he hadn't just been thrown in Solitary, instead of this single cell off in some dank hallway.  That wouldn't last for long.  Either he'd be thrown into a pit, or with the other meat.  All in due time.