Additional One-Shots

The Girl of Two Minds [Painless] [*S*]

A/N: Alright, so this is a spoiler beyond spoilers. Well, not as much of a spoiler as a one-shot I considered posting, but pretty close. This is a short double-scene about a character who will be revealed in the second book, Sightless. I’ve just been having so much fun building her, thought, that I thought I’d share the fun with you guys a little bit. Hope you enjoy your first glimpse of her- as short a glimpse as it is. I didn’t have a storyline in mind when writing this, it was more just a snapshot of what was going on. Which is why you might feel like you were just dropped in the middle of something. Some of you might be able to guess who she is if you play very, very close attention, but I think only one person has a really decent shot at guessing, and for once it’s not Momochan~

 

Her current life consisted three simple, distinct, ruling words which in turn created her schedule.

They were how she told time. A flawed method that at the best was off by months, at the worst, several years. Even at her age, she understood this. Yet, she had no other method, so it was through this she decided to tell time.

The first was the simplest and easiest to handle- survival. Survival meant simple actions such as eating or sleeping. Things she could handle with ease. After-all, it took little effort to shove bread in ones mouth. Sleeping was more difficult with the nightmares, but over time she’d learned to live with them. She rarely even noticed them anymore, or at least, she couldn’t remember the events that they portrayed. The people, the time that her memory shoved to the front when she closed her eyes no longer mattered to the child.

Which lead to the second word- emotion. Or, perhaps more accurately, one could describe the state left by the word as emotionless. It was useless to focus on matters of emotion, she knew. It only created problems, and as such she’d discarded them shortly after arriving in her current home. It was how she ignored the nightmares or the actions required of her. She could dip her hand in the blood of another person, yet when she closed her eyes, they were gone. She no longer concerned herself with matters of guilt or pleasure, they were unneeded. Useless.

The final word was the most important- obedience. It was what created the first words. She survived because she was obedient. She became emotionless in order to be obedient. She trained her body to the edges of death, simply in order to be obedient. To follow their orders- to keep from being subjected to the testing. She’d long since managed to escape the needles and chemicals- she was more useful as a pawn than as a drugged doll.

By her estimate, these words had been her focus for three years, perhaps four. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed between the life that her nightmares attempted to remind her of and the first time she clamped onto her rules. Perhaps a year, give or take. She never quite understood why she paid attention to how much time had passed- why it seemed so important to her- but there was a simple feeling that she got from it. That if she didn’t pay attention to it, then she would forever lose whatever it was that she needed to return to one day. That if she stopped paying attention to how much time had passed, she’d forget that there was something waiting for her. What, she wasn’t certain. That had been lost when she pushed everything else away.

It wasn’t impossible for her to recall, she mused. However, it would only cause complications. She’d locked away those things along with her emotions, what if recalling one recalled the other? She had no need for both. The emotions would break her rules. If she broke her rules, she’d be useless. If she was useless, she’d go back to being a lab experiment. She’d be exactly like her.

She was done with being an experiment.

Her eyes absently flickered over the locked doors lining the hall she traversed, her thoughts turning to a more important task. Nevermind the past, she had a need to select a figure for the present. They were to visit the next hideout and ensure that it hadn’t been touched since it’d last been used. Staying in one place was dangerous- an unnecessary danger when they had multiple possible residences. Eventually, she paused outside of a door, her eyes slowly sweeping over it’s scorched surface to the blackened lock that laid between her and the figure leaning against the door on the other side.