Black Storm - Red Queen Fan Fiction

Chapter 12 - The Mirror part V

Mare POV

(this one is quite long, but if you make it to the end, you'll be rewarded)

I drifted between dreaming and awakening. I didn't want to wake up, I longed to linger in the memories I found in sleep. Memories about the notch, and my friends, when they were still with me. Shade who had always watched my back; Farley who desired to fight as much as I did. Kilorn who remembered who I had been; the Newbloods who trusted me; and Cal. Cal who loved me, didn't he? He had held me, but he hadn't seen who I was, he had left me out in the cold. No, he hadn't wanted that. I had been the one to push him away. But - how could I have trusted him? I hadn't dared to open my heart and yet I had hoped that he would, nonetheless - see me. As I was. As he had done before, on the first time we had met. But it wasn't as easy as that, never. Love would get you nowhere. Love was as untrustworthy as anything, and still I yearned for it, had wanted to believe in our group, in the Scarlet Guard because I wished they were better than the alternative - to do nothing.

A hand caressed my arm. I wanted to pretend I was still dreaming, but I knew better. Sleep was gone and this had to be her hand. The hand of my gaoler, the murderer. I jerked awake. Griffey was sitting crossed-legged on the floor in front of my bed, looking concerned, as if she cared about me.

"Don't touch me."

She swayed her gaze over me, but she removed her hand, the one with the claw tattoo. I wondered what that was about, as she didn't need her limbs to damage and kill, her mind alone was like a deadly disease.

"Do you want some water? Or food?" she asked.

I said nothing and turned away from her, drawing my legs to my chest.

"Water, it is," she said despite my silence, and rose to get a bottle that she offered to me. As I ignored her, she put it on my bed. "You need it," she insisted.

I took the bottle, without looking at her.

She sighed and sat down on the floor again. "They did your hair quite well," she remarked after a while. "It becomes you."

I clenched my fists, nails pushing into my palms. Of course, I knew about my hair. I felt the cold scrape my neck. They had cut its gray ends off, so it barely reached to my chin now. But it wasn't my hair alone. Even half-unconcious I had noticed the work of the skin healers erasing my scars and turning the ragged brand on my chest into a piece of calligraphy. I would have sceamed, if that had served a point.

Maven really wanted to make a doll out of me. Imprisoning me wasn't enough, numbing, feeding and presenting me around wasn't enough. He had my body shaped as he preferred me to be. How long until he grew interested in other, even more invasive tactics?

"I shouldn't have said that." Griffey admitted. "It is your hair, and you had no say in the matter. How could you like it?"

I snorted. "Stop pretending to be nice. You don't give a damn about me. He beckons, and you jump. Even if he commands you to kill, you don't bother yourself with a conscience. Monster." I glared at her. She twitched, just a little bit.

She breathed in and out before she answered. "You don't even know what he has written on that rag."

"So you claim Maven has made a show of it? That you haven't killed anyone?"

"I claim that you have no idea what goes on in this cesspool. You barely know..."

"What?" I retorted.

She shook her head. "You're pitiful, Mare Barrow. Don't think I've didn't notice. I don't mean this -" she gestured at my cage "- I mean what has become of you, don't you know? You're a girl made of shards. A ghost at most, a sack of empty bones. One moment you threaten to tear apart the Whitefire, and the next, you petrify into a sculpture. You're unable to move, as if you're afraid of shattering if you did and revealed yourself."