Every day was Halloween when you were the monster.
The darkness was your home, either in the half-gloom of your opulent rooms in the rock-walled Citadel or in the noisy city streets, cut through with simmering orange lamppost light. Cinnabar was more comfortable in the darkness, after a year of living in it. Had it really been a year already? It was October... It was hard to remember the exact date, but it felt like a year.
Truthfully, it felt like forever. She almost couldn't remember what it had been like not to be like this. To pay rent and work a case. To stroke a cat on her lap while she watched TV and ate sushi she'd picked up on her way home. To be human for more than three hours of a day, with nothing but human thoughts in her head. Such a weak and insulated child she had been, a year ago. She had changed so much she didn't recognize herself any more when she caught her dark reflection in the glass wall of the Bank she paced by while out hunting. For the most part, she was pleased with what she saw. She was stronger than she had ever been, her weaknesses tempered by experience and some small bit of wisdom.
The times she came closest to remembering were the Friday nights she played at being Ariel again and visited the man that had only known her as a true human for such a short time. She liked what she was now, but Friday nights she sometimes found herself regretting, just for a little bit, that he hadn't gotten more time. Not that she wanted to go back... or could go back. But three hours was such a short time. There were a lot of things you could do in three hours, but when you really thought about it... it wasn't much. Wasn't enough. Call her greedy, but she wanted more. More of his dark, heated eyes and his smirking mouth and that playboy charm. More time to explore that depth she'd suddenly found yawning under her feet that echoed the emptiness inside of her.
A bunch and pull of muscles sent her in a effortless arc up off the street to the peak of the roof and there she paused, feet together, to survey the night sky with its stars hidden by the light from below.
The rest of the hours of the week, that emptiness inside her held no sting. She wasn't human any more, to let the human concerns she'd once valued so highly affect her. But for those three hours... she felt it again, because he felt it too. Maybe it was his humanity calling to the part of her she'd lost that echoed back at him. It was... just a little worrying. She knew she shouldn't get so attached. She knew she needed to forget who she had been, because nothing of Ariel was part of what Cinnabar was, and trying to recapture those bits was more detriment than help. By rights, she should leave and never look back, but the thought of that made her ache so badly she never even considered it an option. She could justify it as loneliness, maybe. It wasn't like she had 'friends'. Certainly no one she felt any inclination to bare her twisted and warped soul to. Everyone needed someone, even monsters, she supposed.
But then the question became: why didn't she just bring him home? She had the power now. Press her fingers through flesh and bone to touch his soul and she wouldn't have to hide from him any more. She could see him every night, every day. No more hiding. No more lying. No more time limit. That question was tougher. She didn't like the idea of doing it, despite all the logic that said it was the proper course to take. She didn't like the idea of changing him, even if the actual change to the part that was him wouldn't be all that much. He'd still change and maybe she worried if he did, he wouldn't be the Kam she could admit to being addicted to. She didn't want to lose whatever tenuous... thing this was. Three hours every Friday night were enclosed in a bubble balanced on the point of a nail. The slightest puff of air and the bubble would fall, or break, and it would be gone. It would be as bad as simply never going back.
Her red eyes dropped from the sky and she began to pace the roof, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her General's coat. The coat she had earned through planning and effort and the blood of a woman and her traitor son. Her boots made sharp sounds as she walked, snapping against the stone and cement. They were the only boots she ever really wore any more... Monsters didn't need closets full of clothes when they could just summon their clothing from the ether, pressed and clean.
There wasn't even anyone she could talk about this problem with, if she were even inclined to put these feelings into words. Went right back to the 'no real friends' problem. Stroud came the closest, but she would be the last person Cin would ever admit any of this too. Maybe there was warning in that feeling that the thoughts were too traitorous to share with someone so pure and perfect of purpose. Not only would she not understand, it was entirely possible she'd read things in it Cin didn't want to be read. This was all going to have to stay in the privacy of her head, where it would be safe, and she would deal with it as she dealt with everything, as she had dealt with everything since the day she'd walked into the clinic. Alone.
At least until Friday night, for a precious few hours when she almost wasn't a monster.
Cinnabar gathered herself, dropping her hands out of her pockets, and leaped for the next roof top, breaking into a run that deepened her breathing and set her heart to beating faster.
Word count: 1029
