Moon
When she woke, she was broken.
She was numb.
She was a monster.
"Who are you?" The woman asked.
She didn't want to answer. But she did. When someone asked her, she answered. When someone ordered, she obeyed. She was a puppet, dancing to a rhythm that didn't exist. She was a helpless doll, obeying her master.
"I am Moonwatcher," she replied. And she remembered her mother. She remembered the moonlight. She remembered her room. She remembered safety.
She remembered her father dying on the ground. How the light left his eyes. How he fell to the floor and never got up again. How death had tore something inside her, how she was afraid.
"Moonwatcher, let me help you."
Everything lapped together, and the colors flashed. What was this? No, it wasn't anything.
She was numb. She was a puppet. She couldn't feel anything. She couldn't see anything. Except death. Except blood. Except Darkstalker, and his orders, and the killing. And the assassinations. And her torture, her pain.
"Let me help you get out of there."
Was it happiness? Anger? It couldn't be. Hope? No. She was numb. She was empty. She was broken. Broken things stayed broken. Always.
"I don't need help," she replied. And then a flash— a flash of blue. A beautiful spark. And it swallowed her, and she was afraid of it, more than anything. "This is my home."
Hope.
Her mind danced, but not in a good way. She finally opened her eyes. She was afraid to see. She was afraid to feel. She was afraid of everyone, of everything. What was this woman hiding? This beautiful, elderly woman with soft white hair and kind eyes?
Lies. That was what she was hiding.
Moon tried to struggle, but there was nothing holding her there. She screamed, but no sound came out. She could just stare into the women's eyes, horrified.
"Yes, you do. This is not your home. I can help you." The woman gave her a smile. And it was so beautiful. Oh, so beautiful. It seemed like it was the only beautiful thing in the room, in her world. And it brought tears to her eyes.
"Who are you?" She whispered. She kept staring at the smile. She could feel her tears streaming down her face. She couldn't turn her eyes away. It reminded her of something. A boy. Rain. Tapes. Stories. Hate.
Lies.
Her tears didn't have any remorse or regret. They were empty, just like her.
"Why are you here?" She asked numbly.
The woman smiled. "Hm. In this building, I can't tell you. In this room? I'm your therapist."
"Why are you here?" She repeated.
The woman shrugged. "My, my. You won't take the nice answer, won't you? I'm here to report every little thing you say in here to Darkstalker."
"Can I say anything here?" She asked.
The woman nodded. "Yes."
~
"And once the water starts to rise and heaven's out of sight, she'll want the Devil on her team"
-all good girls go to hell
~
Darkstalker
"Darkstalker. Your father is a good man."
"He is the heart of the family."
"He's just cold, that's all. You need to break the ice."
The cold man, with the icy blue eyes. Always in a suit, taking Whiteout to business trips, decorating her like a toy when he wanted, putting her carelessly in a box when he didn't.
Arctic.
He was a different man in the pictures. He was holding her, his mother. Smiling like she had brightened up his whole world, just barely touching her, holding her like she would break.
His father was in that picture.
Arctic was not.
"He gave up everything just for me. For us," Mother always said. "We need to be grateful. He loves you, he loves all of us, he just doesn't like to show it.
...Did he, now?
She would never tell him the full story. And he will never know, not then, not now.
He knew for a fact Arctic hated him. He reminded him of something, maybe something in his old life— but he hated him. And it was obvious.
He would just listen as Mother and Arctic fought endlessly in his room. At first he cried, doing anything, wanting them to stop. He wanted to talk to someone, but nobody was there. Ever.
It took a few years for the tears to stop. He calmly listened to music when the fights happened. He calmly did his homework when they smashed furniture. He led Whiteout to his room when she cried and let her paint there.
The fights continued. They never ended. Just one small spark was all it took. The screams, the shouts, the smashed furniture, et cetera, et cetera.
And then Arctic would go away to another business trip without a word. Mother would cry for a few days and get thinner and stopped talking to them, pretending they didn't exist. Then Arctic would return with an expensive present for Mother, a new pretty dress on Whiteout, and nothing for him.
I hate this place.
And he did. He hated the big house, he hated Arctic, he hated everything. He hated that he seemed invisible.
He wanted to be seen.
He wouldn't be seen for many years. It was just a day after the other, his black-and-white, colorless family, the expensive presents and the shouts and the screams and Whiteout's all-seeing eyes that gave at least a little life to everything.
He knew he could be more. And he knew he was meant for more.
It seemed like he was in a cage, trapped. But he knew better than to scream. He would bide his time, wait for the perfect moment.
For the perfect person.
And then she came. She was a grade lower than him, but he knew she was the one. She was everything he had imagined all his life.
The perfect person.
They were soulmates.
And she recognized him, too. And they immediately liked each other. They had a routine: after his class finished, he walked slowly to her class, talking to the girls that always took an interest to him, opening the class door in a lazy way, and there she would be, looking up to him with an eyebrow raised.
They are made for each other.
Her black hair, her eyes. She wasn't pretty but she was beautiful. She was what he wanted, what he had always wanted.
They talked about a lot of things. They talked about the present and what they were planning to do in the future and how much potential they had. They were haughty and arrogant. But that was what they needed to survive, believing they were better than others, living off the fact that they were made for more.
One of the subjects came up was death.
"Death and murder is one of the most powerful things in the world," he said once. That was the first time he allowed himself to go unleashed, so show her who he really was, what the world had made him into. "Humans cannot create life alone. But they can destroy it."
The girl looked at him and smiled sadly. "Yes."
He knew his eyes were shining, and his heart was thumping. Things flashed before his eyes— his broken sister, Arctic, his empty mother, the whispers of the neighbors, the tears on the sheets— and he spoke. "Death. I want to control it. It gives a person so much power, so much control."
The girl reached out and held his hand. They had done it before, because they had no one telling them they shouldn't. But every time she did it, something tingled inside him, calming his endless hellfire, his anger, his bloodlust. "Maybe destroying a person destroys who you are."
He snorted. "You sound like one of my teachers."
"I'm serious, Darkstalker. You're have so much potential— endless potential. I don't want you to spend it the wrong way."
That was also the first time Darkstalker stared at her and saw who she really was.
She was a girl. Not a woman, not an angel. But a girl. A small girl in a big world with just an idea of how if worked.
Clearsight.
And to his surprise, the hellfire didn't break loose. He was calm. The waves calmed down and stopped roaring. He stopped thinking about his father's cold glare and his mother's empty eyes.
Clearsight.
He just held her hand, and something dropped down his cheek.
It was a tear.
Clearsight.
She stared at him in surprise, but she let him cry. She was the gentle hand in his fire. She was the hope, the beauty of the things he never knew was there.
That was the first time he tasted happiness.
And that was also the first time he felt a rising color in his black-and-white life.
The tears kept spilling and he just stared at her.
Clearsight.
He had done it.
He had given her the power to break him forever.
By that tear, by letting her control his emotions, by letting her calm him down, by taking shelter in her field of happiness and beauty.
And he never regretted it.
That was, before they came.