[ parhelion ]
Three sets of skinny legs dangle over an examination table. Three sets of hands stay folded neatly despite the unrepressed tremble marking each set of fingers. Three pairs of wide, terrified eyes stare at the closed door as they wait. They breathe together, in unison and the eldest grips the youngest with what is supposed to be strength. But it does not work as she intends and the youngest bites a shaking lip and shuts her eyes tight.
“What is taking so long?” The middle one asks. “Where is Mother?”
“I do not know,” the elder one sighs. Something is wrong, but she cannot let it show, not while little Falere grips her with small and sweaty palms. Rila leans backward, meeting Mirala’s eyes with knowing. It happened too quickly. Her face was hot and a sickly red dripped from her hands. She was strong, stronger than the doctors who tried to hold her. Stronger than the ones who took Rila and Falere away.
And Mother. She turned away. Her eyes were dead and she turned away.
//
She stood in the cold night, barely a scrap of silk around her waist and chest. Her skin was flushed and the glass she held in her hand bore her fingerprints in red. There was a dead man in her tub. A simpering fool she had met just hours before, an unlucky sort who resembled a man she had not seen in months. She had hardly listened to him when he spoke, barely met his eyes. They were not the eyes she had been seeking, nor his hands the ones she had been dreaming of.
It would be easier if he forgot about her, moved on and lived his fleeting human life. It would be less of a risk if he simply put her out of his mind.
But he was stubborn, just as she.
“ ████ ,” she mused, “Foolish man, you will see what I am. You will see and you will leave, just as the rest before you.” She finished her drink and returned to the warmth of her suite.
The room was quiet, dark, the only light a simple green flash from the corner of her terminal. A message that could wait until morning, one she had no energy or desire to even look upon, such was her depression.
She sat on the fine leather couch, reclining in the darkness of the room, allowing it to seep into her, to overwhelm and cover her senses. She shut her eyes, the same pitch waiting. His face comes to the forefront, taunting her childish, foolhardy desires.
A monster can never be a lover. A predator feeds, it does not fulfill. These are truths she knows, wears proudly and embodies. Only he brings parts of her out, the long forgotten bits that should have stayed locked behind the malicious void that dwells under her skin. She should have killed him the day she met him -- better to have never known what position he has put her in.
She opens her eyes, resigning that she has a task at hand. A filthy prospect, disposing of a body, but one she knows as second nature. They will never find him, they will never miss him and they will never know of her involvement. The Keepers on the Citadel were efficient and thorough and blessed to never speak or signal. She wondered briefly why she had never come to the station before.
“Hello?” A voice calls out, a familiar one she thinks must simply be a dream. “Mira?” A name only three alive are permitted to use and her body goes rigid.
She can hear him moving through the dark. She can hear him hanging up his coat, removing his boots and hear the sound of his fingers mussing his hair. She can hear him looking for her, each room a little glance for the figure she strikes. Still, she does not move, not an inch. She stands between her prey and love, both with similar faces, both cursed to know her. One a weakness, the other a shadow of, a replacement for the feeling and rush she still does not fully understand.
“Mira,” he calls again, closer now, no more than ten feet from the shadow in which she stands. The body, she thinks and her heart thrums louder, a pounding and mortal thing she can feel pulsing along her neck. “Must be asleep,” he mutters in the dark.
“No,” she answers, revealing herself. “I am here, ████.” It is an overwhelming thing to look upon his smile, to see the new and tired lines etched along his face. He is so painfully human, so fragile and she could snap him into pieces on a moment’s whim.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs against her skin, hands finding clavicle and shoulder, fingers explorative and curious. Months, she thinks, it has been months and still it feels as though he never left. He is not a creature of fairness.
“Yes,” she answers when his teeth nick her neck and hands travel to waist and leg. She is the one who draws the little suffragettes to her, but never him. Never ████ , no -- he is the one that pulls her to him, the only one to do so and she doubts there will ever be another.
“What’s wrong?” He asks between sweet kisses. “Are you mad?”
“Nothing, my love.” She answers, mouth seeking his and they grapple for dominance against a wall. “No, my love. You have been gone,” another nip and their teeth clink together. “So long.” She is becoming breathless and the sated beast has a renewed interest.
