The Earthly Queen: The Woman of Worlds Apart

Chapter 14: (Caine)

I fumble around the bathroom like a fool.

I am so frustrated with the Earthling way of doing things. Honestly, how do underdeveloped people have enough time in their days to do anything?

It takes me a moment to figure out how everything in the bathroom works. They don't have hygienic cleansers. They have a highly inefficient plumbing system that quite literally pours water over them wasting so many precious gallons just to get rid of some filth. It's pathetic.

I strip my clothes and toss them aside and climb in the porcelain tub.

I let the water pour over me and I will admit that the feeling of the warm water caressing my body is a little freeing, a little calming. I feel some of my tension start to recede. Some.

I know Eris didn't mean to do it but her shocked reaction to my scars and her questioning me about them has dredged up a cosmic oceans worth of bad memories I've spent the better part of six years trying to repress. And here they are, staring me in the face again.

I brace myself against the shower wall and let the water run down my back. I give the tile in front of me a thousand-yard stare.

I can almost see it flicker before me to a dank and unpleasant place, the cramped and dingy and cold room I spent my youth in. An uncaring and soul killing place that lead me to being trained as a warrior in the Legion.

Oh, the Legion. The only place I have ever been able to call home. The only beneficial part of my life. How I miss it. Even after what it did to me... what I made it do to me.

I can sometimes feel my wings still there. I can still sometimes feel the bony stubs throbbing.

I remember my entire crew lined up at the edge of the room, forced to watch so they'd remember their place. Some looked at me with pity in their eyes, hating that this has happened to me, their friend and companion. Others looked at me with cold eyes, not caring what happens to me and despising me for disgracing the Legion - as they rightfully should've.

There were no painkillers administered. Pain was the point.

I remember having to remove my shirt in front of everyone. I was scrawnier then, immature and bright and full of life. That boy would die on that table with his wings.

The clamps were so tight they cut off the circulation to my fingers. The metal table would never warm with body heat, it would remain icy to the point of inducing chills.

I remember my overseeing commander, Talkina Reighff, approach, oversized cutters in hand. She was just doing her duty. She chose - rightfully so - the Legion over me. I can't fault her for that. I would have done just the same.

Still, it didn't keep her from crying just as hard as myself while going through with it. They had to drag her off as she'd passed out directly afterwards.

There was one person who wasn't formal. She was casual, funny, considering her status. She was howling and cackling like an animal as I writhed in pain and roared for blood. I could never suffer enough in her eyes. After what I did to her husband it's no wonder.

I still remember the taste of his blood in my mouth and the feel of spongy flesh under my nails and the shrieks of horror from anyone in the room when it happened including my partner who triggered it in the first place.

I'm not sure but i am suddenly sitting in the tub as my legs have given out with my face pressed against the tile sobbing like an infant.

I bite down on my wrist and my sharpened incisors dig into my skin and the familiar taste of my own blood fills my mouth. Stop it, stop it, stop it! I command myself. This is no way to behave under any circumstance. You act like this, the enemy knows you're weak and it reflects badly on the unit and your side as a whole.