The Darker Side of Me

...Kindness?

I wake up slowly, like surfacing from a deep pool. Why is it soft? And warm? And where is the pain? My confusion turns to hatred as I remember, and I sit up as quickly as I can intending to find and attack the commander immediately. Black spots encroach on the edge of my vision and I fall back into the pillow. Pillow?

His bed. I'm in the commander's bed. I frantically touch my body, an old memory beginning to surface, but I'm still fully clothed.

"What the hell are you doing?" I say angrily, confused once more. This is a kindness. Something must be coming after. I remember the fake sympathy of the center, how they fooled me into thinking someone was helping me escape, then the torture that immediately followed. The assurances that no one loved me or even cared, and how I believed them in the end and realized that no one was going to help me, not now or ever. I had to remake myself to survive.

"I gave you a tonic to assist in your recovery," the commander says impassively from where he watches in a chair by the door. "It fully healed your wounds and meant that you were unconscious for less than an hour."

"But- but why here? Why am I not on the floor?"

He doesn't give me a reason, not that I expected him to. Either he doesn't know himself, or his plan is too convoluted for me to understand, because I can't figure it out.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" he demands.

I slide out of his bed and onto the floor. I can't get lower than that, and it means that he can't take any more dignity away from me. I think for a moment. He had been so angry. Though he uses the Sound regularly enough, he normally refrains from hitting me. If I could guess, I think he finds it dishonorable. But something had shaken him so much that he lost control... I'm not sure I've seen him lose control that badly until today.

"I think," I say, "That you didn't do nearly as well without me."

Teague stands up and slams his fist into the wall, but admits to nothing.

"I think that you might even have lost a man. Who was it? The weakling?" I ask, some of my old confidence beginning to return. The Commander turns to face me, jaw clenched. Are those tears in his eyes? He blinks and they're gone. I must have imagined them.

"He was not weak," he says sternly. "Cadet Jackson showed great promise." Teague takes a deep breath and looks directly into my eyes, as dominating and detached as ever. "Despite your bad behavior, you too still show promise. You pulled yourself together in the last few days. I have decided that you will still join the main attack."

"Yeah, cause if I don't, you'll lose just as bad as you did on this mission," I taunt. He stands there as stoic as ever, the taunt bouncing off of him like they so often do. I sigh inwardly. Whatever weakness I thought I had imagined was long gone. I'll just have to kill him in the confusion of the upcoming battle, before he can finish whatever he started when he put me in his bed to lull me into a false sense of security. He turns to leave, probably to go speak to his grieving men. He looks over his shoulder just before he exits.

"Soldier," he says. I stop pulling at the scabs on my knuckles and look up in amused disbelief, smirking. He's never addressed me like that before. His expression darkens.

"If you kill anyone other than a rebel, I will personally see to your immediate execution."

I smile and turn back to my hands, watching the blood well up. Just as well he's the only non-rebel I plan to kill. Just as well I don't care about dying, so long as I can take him out first. Slowly, deliberately, I lift my hand to my mouth and collect the blood with my tongue. I grin at the commander with blood stained teeth.

"Sure."

His face tightens, and he shuts the door behind him.