Mosaic Role
2094 Words [SOLO20 + 21]
Her night wasn't over, far from it, but Captain Fluorite was feeling empty. She could almost still feel the starseed pulse in her hand, taunting and maddening like a siren's song, singing out for her to take it, pull it, keep it. Her prize.
She could still remember how good it felt, to cradle such a thing in her hand. Warm, welcoming, incredible – a feeling she had never gotten while practising handling starseeds on passed-out civilians. A senshi starseed felt nothing like the starseed of a normal human.
It made her wonder what a page starseed felt like, made her understand at least some of her brother's frustration at losing it after he had come so close.
To come so close to the goal and yet have it taken away from you. It must have been maddening. Fluorite could understand that, now that she had touched something similar.
The only difference in between the siblings was that Captain Fluorite had succeeded where the Corrupted Senshi Alunite had failed, and paid the prize for it.
Yet, no one had come for this senshi. Had no one held him dear ? Had no one cared for him at all ? She'd felt the signatures. But yet none came even as the boy had screamed for help. This was the truth of the senshi. Should she ever hear an agent or a corrupted senshi scream, she would have come for them, no matter their rank, or the danger they faced. Fluorite simply did not have it in her to ignore someone on her side in pain.
Was it the truth of the senshi ? Did they feel themselves so plentiful that one lost life for them meant nothing ? The thought was sickening, almost as sickening as what she had done in her rage.
She'd sought vengeance... And she had taken it, through not on the target she had wanted to take it from.
The weight of the still body on his back seemed much greater than it should have been. She'd carried a dead body before, but not like this. She hadn't killed Helicase. This one senshi...
This one senshi, she had killed. His life had been snuffed out by her hands, and she felt... nothing at all. Shouldn't she be happy ? She had finally killed one. Hadn't she wanted to kill one, for what felt like so long now ?
A few minutes ago, rage had filled her to the brim. Now the small captain only felt one thing, or more precisely, the lack of multiple emotions, through they threatened to take over at any moment.
Empty. She felt empty, like if all her energy had been drained from her, but she couldn't stop now. It would be sloppy. Someone would find the body, it would make the news, and it would have been easy to add two plus two. She hated being sloppy.
The blood from his shoulder wound was tinting her uniform red, the squicky wetness uncomfortable as it soaked through the cloth and hit her skin, flowing not from the beating of his heart, but by gravity and the angle that she carried him, a small girl carrying someone she could otherwise not have been able to lift.
The heat was slowly leaving his body. It was disturbing. Everything about this was disturbing, even more so that carrying Helicase had been disturbing. Helicase had already been cold when she had carefully picked him up, as if afraid of causing him further pain, even through that had been impossible. That was when the thought struck her like a lighting storm.
She hadn't done much better than the Blood Moon Court, had she ? She'd used him as bait to fish another senshi out, prolonged his agony, in a way...
But, no, no, her mind said. There was no possible comparison. She hadn't kept him captive, starving and to the limit of keeping his powered up state, for weeks. She hadn't outright tortured him. She hadn't broken his bones one by one, she hadn't set him on fire and laughed about it. She hadn't sliced his body into pieces while he was still aware of everything that happened to him.
She hadn't carved words in his chest, like the Blood Moon Court had done to Helicase.
Beside, the thought continued. If she hadn't killed him, he might have smarted up. He might have grown. He might have killed a young negaverse agent. He might have joined the Blood Moon Court and tortured others. They could have certainly used a grunt like this in their ranks, if only for his brute strength. She had, indirectly, perhaps saved many lives.
Shouldn't she be proud of that ? Wasn't it what she wanted ?
There was no comparison. No possible connection.
Then why did she keep feeling like it didn't matter, like if it was the same thing ? Why couldn't she be certain ? The doubt was piercing through the emptiness like a lighting bolt.
The emptiness was slowly being devoured by a feeling that she hadn't expected to feel on this day. Guilt. A family out there would be missing a son, much like Helicase's family was missing him. And that son had died by her hand.
Her own two hands, and her knives, and rage that had consumed her. It was all it had taken. It seemed like so little.
She travelled through the roofs, even if the added weight was difficult to manage. Captain Fluorite moved on autopilot, heading toward the forest she had been pointed out, by her then-captain, where the negaverse buried their bodies. Where they were very unlikely to ever be found at all.
She'd been told this just weeks before Scheelite had given up on fighting, and decided to fight in his own way, his mind scarred forever by what he had seen. Tonight, she thought, she felt that she understood a small part of what the blonde had been feeling. Maybe not completely, maybe not truly, but something similar.
As a lieutenant, she had wished to learn how to kill, if only so he would not have to do it. If only so the blood would stain her hands instead, and not his.
As a captain, she had killed... But she was uncertain how to go about it. The blood was staining her hands, and she wasn't sure how to wash it off.
Fluorite continued her journey, slowly, so slowly, past the park, past the residential areas, only leaping down on ground level when there were no other buildings she could leap on top of, when they first became too spaced out to be leaped across, and then became completely absent the more she walked. The only sound was her own, strained breath from the effort, and the silence felt suffocating, deafening. The auras, ally or enemy alike, died down into nothing the further she got from the inhabited parts of Destiny City.
She entered the forest, forgone the trail to enter the woods proper early on, just in case... Just in case there were people on it even this late. Still no auras, and the civilians... Did not have to see this, this was too dangerous, too horrible. The purple-haired girl continued as deep as it took, walking for minutes that felt like hours before she finally found a shovel, and knew that it was the place. It made her wonder how many bodies were buried here, would she accidentally unearth one ? It sent a chill down her spine.
She really hoped she wouldn't.
She sent the senshi's body tumbling down, a loud thud against the ground, leaving another trail of blood along her uniform. His face was frozen in a look of pure fear, pain, and panic, and Fluorite swallowed another lump forming in her throat. There was no time for this.
She still had to bury him. Clean the evidence. Make sure no one would find it. Finish her job. It wasn't done until the body was gone.
She felt that pained gaze on her even as she took the shoved from it's hiding place, halfway shoved into the split, dead tree that still held upright, as if trying to argue against it's own demise. She felt that gaze piercing through the back of her head as she dug the hole, but that was impossible... Right ? He was dead. Dead bodies did not stare.
It was only her imagination, the guilt speaking. It had to be.
It felt like she'd been digging forever, when she finally had a hole deep enough. She climbed out of it, then she paused. He still had that wide-eyed stare.
She reached to close his eyes, before pushing him in the hole. At the warmth had left him completely, leaving him cold and stiff, and in a way, Fluorite felt just as cold, if not more, even if it was impossible.
She tossed one shovelful of earth on top of the body, the shovel making a wide arc at her side.
Then she brought it back, pushed it in the mound again, and tossed another.
And another.
Again and again and again, mechanically, until the hole was filled. She pressed down the earth on top, tried to get it level. Tried to make it look like there was nothing underneath. Kicked some leaves on top for good measure. She was going blind with this – it wasn't like she'd ever had to bury a body before.
Oh god.
She was done. It was a blessing, and yet at the same time, it was a curse. His face, his expression, the feeling that he was staring at her, the evidence of her first kill was gone, but now there was nothing to distract her from the truth of what she had done, from the guilt and pain that wanted nothing more than to consume her whole, that lashed at every bit of her awareness.
She tried to think of something else.
She couldn't. She couldn't think about it, the scene playing in her mind, again and again, refusing to be shoved out of her mind.
Fluorite was not one of the older agents, who were expected to steal civilian starseeds and kill every night. She hadn't been there for Charonite's reign, could only be barely said to have been for Beryl's, at traitorous as it sounded. The only true form of high leadership she had ever known was Tanzanite, even through she had never met the youma queen prior to her death and rebirth. This was her first time dealing with this, even through she knew she had to do it, and would have to do it again.
Suddenly, the helplessness came crashing down. She felt so alone, so disconnected, all of sudden, when that thought had hit home. She'd lived nothing that most of the generals had, was so new still that it might be considered painful, in spite of her rank.
She'd just done something that they had once done everyday, to people who had nothing to do with this war, even, and she felt helpless. This would be nothing, to most of them. Asking for help would probably be seen as a weakness to the higher ranks, who had probably expected this from her since day one. Fluorite suddenly felt very, very alone. She wished the emptiness would come again, and eat the guilt away.
It didn't. Of course it didn't. It would have been so easy if it had.
'You can't-' He had said, struggled to say actually, seconds before she ripped out his starseed with one smooth move of her arm, almost gracefully even.
But she had.
Suddenly, she lashed out, both knives crashing down on the pile of dirt and embedding themselves deep. Fluorite screamed, and screamed, and cried until her throat was too raw to keep on going, until the tears no longer came.
She let it all consume her – the guilt, the pain, all of it, but yet she didn't feel any better. She felt so far from better when she finally collapsed against the mound of dirt, her moans dying down to nothing at all.
A part of her died that night, an innocence the 17 years old Ashley Desmond would never again hold as a part of herself. A specific light would never again shine in her eyes.
And the nightmares of the next few nights would likely be different from those of that specific day that still came and went, still tearing at her psyche.
Reply
