Chapter Text
The room was dark. Whoever had fallen asleep in the room the night before had had the courtesy to take them back to their room and draw the curtains. Celine rubbed her eyes, lazily looking at the grey-faced clock on the bedside table. Its frowning face told her that it was 4AM. She had no idea when she’d fallen asleep, but decided that she felt rested enough anyway. Sleep wasn’t really a comforting experience now anyway. Not after what had happened.
Sleeping was now a source of fear, and not comfort. At least, to her. Damien never seemed to worry about it. She always called him naïve for it, but she had to admit, nothing bad had happened after they had both slept. Yet. She eased herself off the bed, running a hand through messy hair, stumbling clumsily in the gloomy room, not caring enough about seeing it to turn on the lights. Half-light was what she was used to, it was her life. She would hate to break that rule now.
Her nightdress was thin and light; she felt the cool air on the backs of her legs, and across her shoulders. She pushed open the door, and jumped at the sound of it opening and hitting the wall adjacent. She didn’t know when she’d become so strong, it had been so effortless and yet the sound echoed like thunder in her ears.
“Damien?” She called out softly, not wanting to disturb her brother if he was still resting, as she suspected. She peered into his room, the dark blue curtains pulled closed, lights off. When she looked at the bed behind the geometric screen, she could almost make out the outline of her sleeping brother. Or at least, that’s what it looked like in the half light. She walked out, closing the door behind her, softly this time.
The apartment was silent. Of course it would be at this hour, but the two other residents didn’t keep regular sleeping hours either, so for Celine to be walking through the quiet, with the knowledge that she truly was the only one awake… It was strange, even if it was pleasant.
She’d made her way to the bathroom, and flicked on the light, and took out a white towel from the cupboard. Once she stood up again, she caught her reflection, and felt her heart stop again. She stared at the face in the mirror, and moved experimentally, to check whether she was still controlling it. When she raised her right hand, it would raise its left. It was a mirror, after all, of course it would show… it would show the truth of the present, and not the remnants of her past.
The man’s face stared out of the mirror, dark circles under his eyes, only exaggerated by the eye makeup messily smudged around them, the eyes themselves more like soulless pits, like staring out of the window of a spacecraft into the vast nothingness of space, meeting her gaze with a look of disgust that she knew was only a projection of her own. She rose her hand, shuddered as she watched it raise his, and touched her face. Surely enough, she felt the hair under her fingers, as he touched his beard, eyebrows furrowed, mouth set in a tight line, thinly veiled anger brewing under the trembling of his shoulders.
“The definition of madness…”She whispered, in an attempt to keep her voice soft, to stop the pitiful wish for tears from overtaking her. “Is repeating the same exercise over and over again, and expecting a different outcome.”
She was surprised that she wasn’t mad. Yes, she may have been on the way there, especially considering what she’d been through, what she now had to live with but.. she wasn’t mad. Not yet. She knew if she still had her own appearance, her own body, that she had remained in her proper place, she would have been locked up and lobotomised years earlier. A hysterical laugh bubbled up from her throat, hoarse and low, and what could she do but laugh? She’d survived, despite the odds.
He was right. Life is for the living, and she sure as hell was going to live.
Not for herself, not for Damien, although she knew he needed her, but to spite that bastard. She couldn’t let him win. She couldn’t. Never, never never. Her eyes stung, and her lungs protested their sudden overuse. She wiped the tears away from her eyes, black tracks falling off her face and staining the ceramic that was supporting her left hand. Spite. It was one of her most powerful emotions.
Anger, spite, the need for revenge, the need to right all he’d done wrong, the hatred for him, he who had brought pain to herself and so many others; it was what had given birth to her current existence, the demon in the mirror and its broken, battered body. It had been little more than a corpse, that they had spent valuable energy to reanimate, and would need an exuberant amount of energy to move in the beginning, but now? It was effortless. Now they wielded the pain like a sword, and used their talents to their advantage. They didn’t even need to lift a finger to get people to do their bidding.
“...well this is one way to start the morning,” the man in the mirror spoke, as he stood up straight, looking at the tears on his face with the confusion of an amnesiac.
She sighed and turned her back from the mirror. Damien moved their hands to wipe the tears off of their shared face. The hysteria began to wear off as Damien cleaned up the mess she’d made.
“Took you long enough to wake up,”she murmured. “I’m sorry that I… lost control like that.”
“It’s not your fault; we all have our moments. It’s understandable that you’d feel… distress over our situation,” Although they spoke with the same voice, his sounded far different to hers, low and calming, whilst hers was a mimicry of her old voice, with renewed malice.
“Still… This is somewhat embarrassing. I should be used to this by now. It’s pitiful that I just break down without anyone else around. How the hell did I live before if being alone is this,” she choked on a sob. “-this disastrous for me?”
“I’m sorry.” It was the only thing he could say. He hugged his arms around himself. He felt powerless, unable to comfort his sister. They stood in shared silence for a while, bathed in artificial light. Eventually the day would begin, but for now… for now they needed the quiet.