Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven,
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven,
So wild that every casual thought of that and this vanished.
The Cold Heaven – William Butler Yeats
Cold.
That's all she could feel – all she had ever known. The numbing ever-present cold and the darkness that accompanied it. Even when she was allowed out of the chains, she was never allowed to see. Her doctor was the only warmth she knew – and even that was just the human temperature of his hands as they pushed her down, examined her, looking for her value, and inevitably, continuously, finding none.
She was a failed experiment, a surplus of money and space. Her two companions, always silent, but always constant were of more value – so she was told. They were better than her, more useful. She was nothing and they were everything.
They said it, and she grew to know it, deep in her frozen bones.
Every day could be her last, any minute they could decide to kill her, dispose of the waste of resources. It just made her eager to please. When they let her out, she would do as they said, do whatever they asked, whatever was ordained. Because the only things she had were the cold and her life.
In a way, it was easy to be taken by them. Them, with their righteousness and self-proclaimed heroism, rescuing her from a hell that was her life. They were blinding in their light. All she knew how to do was obey – and so she did. She went willingly, she surrendered to their new doctors, their new questions, because she couldn't go back to the dark. Couldn't go back to being alone with her own mind and failures.
It took years to learn that she could be more. That she was allowed to want the light and the warmth of light. She supposed she should have seen the false sense of security she had adopted. Of course it was always too late for such reflection.