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It was a strange feeling, dying.

Selena felt her body slowly growing unresponsive, from her toes to her fingers to her very lungs-- and she knew. She knew, in this out of body way, that her life was being snuffed out. So many times, Selena had escaped from the aim of a sniper, only to reach out a pale wrist in front of a slavering viper, venom dripping down the clean curve of teeth before they sank in to the giving flesh. An arrow rained down and pinned itself to her arm, blood sluggishly welling up around it, its very presence bending the reality around it.

She presumed it would be just as strange without time being diverted by some act of unnatural beings-- or maybe, death was always like this? With everything so distorted? With time bending around you in a möbius strip?

Staring up into the night sky, it was hard for Selena to tell if it was raining black, or if it was just her tears still welling up into plain green eyes. Before she had been taken on by the hunters, Selena had loved the rain.

It meant time spent indoors, away from where strange things lurked, sharing secrets with Stacy-before-she-was-C, who in turn slipped her hand to clasp her twin sister's, confiding in Selena-before-she-fractured-into-three. Together they were different, but complete.

Stacy Von Petra, even as a child, had been vivacious and alive, with Selena being careful and quiet. She was rude to authority figures who had not earned her trust, where Stacy was just rude to them in general for being boring.

They were different in so many ways, but it was Stacy who had cradled Selena as she wept after the nightmares had taken a turn for the worse. It was Stacy who had helped her with Math, even if she was almost as bad as Selena at it. It was Stacy had given her advice for boys and girls alike, her wisdom crass but infinitely helpful in 'bagging the cute ones.'

But the lack of self identity had started to grate against Selena's mind as the years inched by, egged on by comments on how cute they were together, reminiscing mothers who had longed for twins to dress up together. Days when teachers assumed they were one and the same because they looked one and the same.

So the younger ventured into woods and sat there, in the damp peat moss in a rotting forest, far off the beaten trail, and remained until the wild had come alive around her. She sat and she thought, at fourteen at three in the morning way past curfew-- meditating as intensely as a freshly adolescent girl can, craving acceptance but wanting to be different for the sake of it overwriting every desire she had.

The results were an irate Selena cutting her hair over the sink, snipping away flaxen locks, wavy and long. Black hair dye was purchased, as well as a straightener. Screaming was done until she had a new wardrobe, dark and punky and wild in a different way than Stacy's glitter and glam.

Distinguishing the differences between them did nothing to ease the churning in her belly. Her own being felt wrong in so many ways, and the flashes of the horrifying did nothing but remind her that both of them, together, were different in their own special way.

As school resumed in freshman year, with everything new and different in high school, she saw Stacy's eyes go from lowercase to capital, watched her dip her toes into the pool that was partying. It seems that Selena Francesca Melissa wasn't the only one who had gotten more and more obsessed with the idea of being cool. Stacy had turned into Stacie had turned into C-- and Selena started becoming less and less expressive.

More and more it felt like they both had to pull the rugs out from under each other just to feel alive. She'd disappear for days at a time, into the forest or into the city, sneaking into dive bars with fake IDs just to be in the dark at 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

C would drink until she was ill, or sleep with people Selena only dreamed about. She would have fun, kick back and relax, and it came to her with such ease that Selena couldn't help but resent her for being so at peace with herself.

The yelling from half-concerned parents got to be tiresome; the both of them had long since learned how to tune it out. One loner, antisocial and spiteful-- the other, carefree and a partyholic-- both out of control in different ways.

Velda had come to collect Selena in the forest on a weekday, confronting her in the drizzling rain with red galoshes and a yellow rain slick and an umbrella that had ducks.

It was three months after the two of them turned 16. She was armed with quiet words and soft smiles and a promise of a fix for the shadows, if Selena would just come with her, please--

There was not enough time. Selena was partying she had left a hastily jotted note to the family, and a special one for Stacy hidden inside the secret panel of their toy chest where they collected trinkets and things before they were too old for it to be cool.

We’re bound to live another way, like some underpaid runaways.

Most hunters abandoned their lives when they took on the mantle, shedding the memories like a snake shed its skin. Contrary to popular belief-- not all at once. The more general pieces faded, of acquaintances and immaterial things flecking away more like aged paint-- slowly.

Slowly they discarded the rest. The wounds healing over time, closing up and leaving a scar, but closed nonetheless.

But Selena had, in a rush, in a month, pushed everything away on instinct. How do you discard a piece of yourself? It’s an understatement to say that it was nigh impossible to cut out a piece of her living heart. She slapped a bandage on it and called it healed, fracturing her being into three easy bite sized chunks because it was easier than being someone she was actually familiar with.

Herself.

So she went through her initial training not using the same name twice before settling on the three people she liked best. Selena was cold and cool and collected. Francesca was hard and cruel, a short temper and inconsiderate. Melissa was a grinning pale imitation of her twin.

It was a rickety bridge, the first month, and it only got worse. It got worse because her missing piece stumbled in a month after, in the class below her. Selena, by that point, was on her way to intermediate and Stacy had stayed a beginner for twice as long as she had.

They weren't even roomed together, and barely talked beyond a pained wave before Selena fled. Every time.

Eventually, C stopped coming after Selena, and the poorly bandaged wound did nothing but fester...because C?

C had found another.

Mark was her spitting image. Tall and blond, laughing green eyes, zero ******** given. He laughed more than he spoke, had problems with personal space, drank mimosas at midnight and drank screwdrivers for breakfast when it suited him. He rolled his eyes at FEAR based hunters--

and he ...He practically was C in a male body. She came up to them one day-- in black boots, fishnets and a sleeveless coat, a swishing skirt and dulldulldull in comparison to the two of them, bright like stars--

"You look like twins."

A weak smile. Rare but it was time to be Melissa as much as possible, offering her hand to Mark in a peace offering, an invisible olive branch extended that only C could see, if she chose to.

Slowly, she rebuilded herself.

Mark and C easily jumped into the twin role-- making up extravagant stories of the things they'd seen and done together, using different aliases that Selena, who was a girl of three faces, had no problem playing along with.

No one ever guessed that she and C were twins anymore, and it wasn't as though Velda would really remember long enough to share with the class--

Their stories built all the way through graduation, and in the pictures afterwards, there were more of Mark and C than there were of Selena and anyone.

She was fine with that. The younger had left her twin behind with little more than a cryptic notice of abandonment, and had left her alone with the demons before she was rescued. In a sea of strange faces and people and concepts, another had taken her place.

So she had moved on, or done something like it. There was another who was even brighter than C, a bustling life force that would make the busiest of bees jealous.

Em had slept with the vast majority of any city's population, was recruited from a strip club, and had made out with Hardy-Henry-Howard-Who-Knows more times than Selena could even count.

She envied her, at first. For the curving lines of her chest to her a**, for her ability to speak and be spoken to with such ease. With Em, there were no stilting pauses, no unease as she steamrolled any conversation with winks and stepping into Selena's bubble--

Over time, she had come to adore it. Over time, she had come to love it. But her eyes weren't the only ones trained longingly on Em's fantastic a** when she left the room, nor was she the only person to confess that her being in love with life was something TO be loved.

Not that Selena really knew how to pursue anything for the sake of her own happiness, but it was an added deterrence to see the pangs of longing in the identical green eyes that belonged to her twin.

Kind of funny that the only thing they shared was a love for a woman who had died to save them.

A rattling cough drew the Life hunter from her distant reverie. It was so clear, now, that Selena had been such a terrible twin. A terrible sister, a terrible friend.

Arrows continued to rain down through the fog, and the pain had blossomed across her skin like watercolour on paper, seeping into the cracks of mind and body alike.

Perhaps more hunters would have reminisced on their life after recruiting. On their accomplishments, but everything just seemed to pale in comparison to the dawning realization that she had failed her family.

The wracking shivers and the slowing of her heart did not seem to be anything close to the sorrow that infiltrated every fiber of her being. She had failed to protect her sister, failed to be there when confronted with a new life. Failure was a familiar but ever unpleasant taste on her tongue.

But at least there had been Velda. Beginner hunters were like a herd of cats, wild and untamed. Some of them anxious, others panicked to the point of sickness. They were the technological geniuses, supposedly, or at least got access to the work done by some. The most of them got no special weapon that bonded to their being, nothing to push them to be stronger.

They got dead things, and while C had given names to Selena's guns, they were not even close to alive.

Runic hunters were weaker than the rest, and she felt, sometimes, like their accomplishments were overlooked by the other clans because of it.

But there was Velda, and with Velda was her tether to the real world, Henry-Before-Howard. She had coaxed so many of them into joining, so strong and yet--

Despite being a mother figure, Selena wanted desperately to shield Velda from her own duties.

She understood, now, dying on the fractured roof, why Velda had sounded so grim. In her last moment she put together the fact that the explosions were not a freak terrorist accident, but part of a plan. A plan put together by their leader, who had sacrificed them for a greater good.

Selena hoped it was worth it. To be reduced to nothing but a cog in a machine.

Selena Francesca Melissa Von Petra had outlived her usefulness as a cog, slowing down to a crawl, and then entirely. She would be removed from the roster and replaced by another, newer, shinier cog, ready to take her place without wittingly doing so. The sands of time would pass, new hunters would arrive, and old ones would die.

In time, she would be forgotten entirely.


She wasn't that memorable to begin with.