Once, twice, a thousand times a girl falls to her knees, defeated. Once, twice, a thousand times she stands up and continues to fight.
One thousand and one times breaks her.
Despairing she speaks to the one to whom she sold her soul. She asks why. She asks how. She yells and she screams and she cries until she can no longer draw breath and is rendered silent.
She receives an answer.
She denies it. It cannot be true.
She receives an answer.
It has to be a lie.
She receives an answer.
It is too much. Looking into those eyes, looking at that smile.
She has never hated anything like this. Not the Witches, not Tomoe Mami at her most self-righteous or at her most pitiful.
She wants to turn her gun on something that cannot defend itself.
She snaps.
The clock stops.
The clock starts.
It dies, a bullet between the eyes in the space between seconds. Another appears. A replacement? She will kill them all.
The city burns.
Countless white bodies litter the ruin, mixed in with humans who did not understand, who got in the way. Everything is painted red.
Everything but her.
Tottering forward, bereft of a goal, dream reduced to a smear on the pavement.
She sees a different color. Something else that has not been stained by the corrupting touch of shattered hopes.
Pink. The one for whom she did not sacrifice everything approaches her. She is asked why. She is asked how.
A trembling arm rises, a gun pointing at the fake. It is scared, but does not flee.
Again it asks her why. Again it asks her how.
Looking at it, she remembers.
Looking at it, she knows what she has to do.
She casts aside her weapon with a wail.
The impostor reaches out to her, a borrowed look of sympathy stealing across the face it has no right to wear.
Fresh tears join the stains that already mar her face.
The sound of gears, and the imitation is alone.
Its outstretched arm drops limply to its side.
It falls to its knees, heedless of the red mire that greedily clings to its skin.
It asks why. It asks how.
Across
A girl wakes up in a hospital. She stares at the ceiling, eyes empty.
She rises slowly, painfully.
Gentle fingers trace the date on the calendar. A flower has been drawn around the number. The sixteenth. A happy day.
The day she will be released.
The day that started her on this path.
The day that will start her on this path forever.