The world was moving too fast, and no matter what Fallon did, it would not slow down.

Her fingertips twitched over slick countertops. She had already wiped every inch three times over, even polishing the silver basin of the kitchen sink until her knuckles were raw and red. She spent two and a half hours painstakingly emptying everything from the fridge and then scrubbing the insides. She pulled out shelves and stacked them neatly on the counter. The cleaning mixture held so much bleach that it made her eyes and throat burn. After the first hour, Fallon stopped to go find gloves and a cleaning mask.

On her knees, the teenage girl used a toothbrush attached to a yardstick to scrub the dusty patches beneath the refrigerator. She had tried to move it at first, but the heft of it was too much. She settled instead for this much more complicated solution and then spent double the time polishing the chrome doors until she could see her reflection in it. But Fallon didn’t want to see her own reflection. She couldn’t stand the sight of herself.

Turning briskly to the counter, Fallon had organized every bottle, jar, and package of food in her house according to size, shape, and expiration. Every cabinet was emptied of its contents and then refilled. She took all of the clean dishes and then convinced herself that they simply were not clean enough. It took three hours to rewash every utensil. Fallon used a white cloth to wipe down the individual prongs of every fork.

When the kitchen was too clean and then too double cleaned for her to go on, Fallon headed to her bathroom. Her toilet was pristine and bleached daily. She took the lid of the back and scrubbed each tiny gadget with a clean sponge, going so far as to wipe the metal brackets with a special polish. When that was done, she moved on to her bathtub. The shower curtain had been purchased two months ago, but Fallon couldn’t stand to keep it there. It held dirt, she was certain, even if she couldn’t see it. Fallon pulled it from the hanging hooks and then stuffed it into the garbage. She kept a spare in her linen closet.

The spare had a crease in it from being folded. She spread it out over the banister of the stairway and steamed it until the paintings on the walls fogged up from the humidity. That was no problem. Fallon turned to polish and shine the glass and frames next. Returning to the bathroom, she hung the new curtain and took careful aim to space out the hooks at even intervals along the pole. Fallon turned toward the large bathroom mirror. She stared at herself for a moment and then quickly exited, leaving the surface without as much as a wipe of a lint cloth.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Fallon spent the entire day reorganizing everything: the bed, the vanity, the dresser, the nightstand, the lighting and drapes, the knick-knacks, even the direction that her rugs pointed. Every piece of clothing was steamed again and then replaced. She unpacked and repacked all of her Tupper ware containers full of various odds and ends. It was as if her entire life was being strewn across her floor, reordered, and then forced back into the same tight, restrictive boxes that she built her life on.

Sweat clung to her neck. Her eyes were bright red from exposure to bleach. Her knuckles had begun to bleed after drying and cracking again many times over. Fallon stopped then, standing in the center of a perfectly vacuumed room with a perfectly organized closet and a perfectly coordinated bedroom set. Everything was so perfect – always perfect. She went to the bathroom and showered, scouring the places that were sore and ignoring the screaming pain when she worked them too hard. The hot water couldn’t get hot enough. She turned it higher and higher until her knees shook from dehydration.

When she stepped out, Fallon wrapped herself in a plush white robe and returned to her bedroom. She sat at her vanity and brushed out the long waves of cinnamon hair that she had been born with – hair like her father’s. They had the exact same shade. When she was a child, Fallon would crawl into his lap and try to drape her hair over his. “We’re just the same!” she would say, burrowing into his chest. He always smelled like ink and cigars, and the scent brought back memories of love and happiness. The last time she had seen her father, he had been crying and curling her mother to his chest. His arms shook as he swore to never breathe a word about her identity to anyone. He said he understood she would kill them if he did. Ares could be very convincing, even when it killed her inside to terrify her parents into believing she was capable of such a crime.

The brush fell from her hands and clattered against the carpet of her bedroom. Fallon stared at it for a moment and then crouched slowly to pick it up. A fiber from the carpet lingered in the thick bristles. She pinched it between two painted nails and pulled it free. A flash of memory split her skull. It was the same movement she used to carefully pull her torch from the chest of the civilian in the alleyway. Maybe if she hadn’t yanked it free so hastily, the woman would not have bled out so quickly.

One hand squeezed on the brush’s handle. Fallon went back to her hair. The cinnamon color looked redder to her then, almost crimson. The wetness thickened. Long beads of red poured down the slick strands, crossing her forehead in thin trails and dripping onto the carpet. Fallon slammed the brush down and buried her face in her hands. “Go away,” she whispered to the empty room. “One useless person, now dead. One useless person.” It was easier to say “person” than “civilian.”

Fallon peeked through her fingers at the mirror. The dripping blood was gone. She picked her brush back up. A leaking breath escaped past her lips. Any horror could be conquered with enough focus. The accidental death of a civilian was not something Fallon or Ares would ever be proud of, but if she allowed herself to suffer under the weight of it, then it would distract her from her purpose. The death of the civilian did not matter. Objectively, it had no bearing on the war.

“I have nothing to feel guilty about,” Fallon whispered at her reflection. She straightened up, tilted her chin. “I have nothing to feel guilty about. It was a regrettable incident.” Her voice gained strength. “A regrettable incident that we must move past now.” The words were speech-like; who were they for?

The brush dragged through a snarl. Fallon worked her way around her hair until every wave had been brushed straight. She set the brush back down on the vanity, tapped one nail against the silver handle. Her eyes flashed to the mirror. “We cannot be bogged down by the conventions of a human life – because we are more than our human lives. We are creatures from outer space, and our duty is to our allies and comrades, above all else. The death of a civilian is always a regrettable incident, but we must push past that and learn to recognize it for what it truly is: meaningless in the grand scheme. We will mourn the death of Rota and Permiska and Alixa because they were key players who actively worked to preserve our lives. Civilians are just buckets of energy for the Negaverse to either drain or corrupt to use against us. I did not kill a civilian; I killed a youma or Negaverse agent yet to be born.” The final words rang with certainty.

Rising from the vanity, Fallon crossed to her desk and flipped open a pad of paper. She quickly wrote down the words that she had just uttered to herself. Pieces of future speeches littered the journal, ideas and ideologies that she could whip out at any time to justify her actions. Before she could defend herself to the Blood Moon Court, she needed to believe the words herself. Once she had accepted the fact that her accidental killing of a civilian life was not a matter on consequence, then she would be able to convince everyone else too. Fallon was sure of it.

Still, her fingers trembled as they clutched the pen. “It is inconsequential,” she said again to the emptiness. Fallon would say it until it sounded true to her.

Three jars full of glass marbles were stacked on a suspended shelf on the wall beside her. It had been two months since she had felt compelled to arrange them. Staring at the muted colors now, Fallon became aware of the nagging tug at the back of her brain that said: this isn’t right, something is off, this must be fixed. Whenever Fallon arranged her marbles, she never knew what the final product would look like. She simply placed marbles one by one until the feeling dissipated.

When she was younger, her mother would take a photograph of each finished arrangement and then pass them off to the girl’s psychiatrist. Her former doctor thought that by studying the pattern in her marbles they might be able to better understand Fallon’s issues. After two years of studying the photographs, the doctor determined that there was no pattern at all. But it never stopped Fallon from insisting that there was a right order, and that it was up to her to determine what exactly that looked like. After eighteen years, she was still trying.

The sun had risen and set over the course of Fallon’s self-therapy. It had been a full day since the night with Birhan Isat and the dead civilian. Fallon had no idea what Birhan planned to do with that knowledge. It was too soon for her to deal with it herself, let alone to decide whether or not to approach the Court with it. It would be better to hear it from her, she knew that, but a small part of Fallon hoped that Birhan would just let it be. The Court had too much going on to waste breath discussing Ares’ actions against a civilian, didn’t they? In any case, she was not prepared for the sort of questions they might have.

The woman jumped out at her, and Fallon reacted the way that any warrior would. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t.

Outside of her bedroom window, Fallon watched the sun creep toward the horizon. Devi was probably somewhere in the house, likely upstairs in her own wing. The condo had been built with a mother-in-law suite. Fallon had just chosen to repurpose it as a comrade-at-arms suite. If Devi had approached her during her cleaning frenzy, Fallon had been too distracted to notice her. Did Devi know? It was another series of questioning that Fallon did not want to endure.

Her cellphone sat on the desk beside her. Fallon dropped her eyes to it. Loneliness was the path of the warrior; the only lover could be the love of victory. That night, Fallon could not handle the weight of her own thoughts. She picked up her phone and quickly texted Eilian. It was vague, curt, just a request that she come over. Fallon was not big on texting at all. Eilian would know that something was up by that fact alone.

Slipping free of the robe, Fallon stood naked in front of the full-length mirror beside her dresser. Scars and bruises stained her dark skin, all at various stages of healing. Her body was a battlefield that told the story of her secret life. Fallon stared at herself, remembering the moment when her mother had accidentally seen the same damage. It was the night when Iva was lost to her, the night when she told her mother the truth about who she was and was rejected for it. It confirmed every fear Fallon had ever had. She hoped to be loved unconditionally; instead, she was met with fear and rejection.

Fallon didn’t have a mother now, or a father. She had no civilian ties that mattered to her. At some point, she had stopped being Fallon Iva Novette-Naim and had merely become Ares: the Ares that wears a fuku and the one that doesn’t. For the first time, Fallon stared at herself and did not see a girl raised in France who rode horses and loved cross-stitching. She didn’t see the girl who loved ballroom dancing and wanted to open her own restaurant. She didn’t see a person who loved to throw parties and entertain friends. Whoever that person was, it was not who stood before the mirror now.

When Fallon looked in the mirror now, all she saw was Ares reflecting back.