A/N: I was bored and felt a bit stuck in my multi-chaps, so I decided to find some writing prompts on LJ. This is part of the "50 ficlets" challenge and I have written quite a few out of order, but I am OCD enough to want to post them in order. Lazy on the updates here, okay guys?
Things used to be so simple.
Black and white.
Right and wrong.
Good and evil.
Life and death.
A choice that she could make without thinking, a choice on pure instinct and adrenaline, her mind clear of all the feelings that got in the way. It was easier, not caring. Not hurting. Keeping her to herself and running before anyone could touch her. But he had. He had caught up and found all her vulnerabilities, turning them inside out, made her wear her heart on her sleeve for the first time in her life.
He had told her that he loved her. A temptation, calling her, holding her in a chain of smoke that she could not quite grasp, nor free herself from. So she had caved, given into the weakness she vowed she never would, believed she never could.
She had said it back. Against her fear, against every part of her telling her not to, her nerves electric and tense, waiting for the heartbreak she knew was inevitable but pretended it wasn't for the sake of the last lingering parts of sanity left.
And yet it was he who had lost his- the one whom she had tried so hard not to lean against but ended up doing so, the one who knew what she needed before she did. The one who had won her heart with the simplest gesture of all- being there when she least expected it, almost as if he could sense her moods and anxieties, wants and fears and desires all mixed into one.
But he had failed.
They both had.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way, damn it! Her armor enhancement had been no accident- her protective shell was both physical and mental, and no one could get past it.
In theory.
But also in theory, she was the heartless one. The uncaring one. The Bitch with a capital B. More so than Tex, but Tex had an excuse of sorts. She had gotten her damned AI; she had run off to create God knows what kind of mayhem in her wake.
Oh how South envied her- unattached, free to come and go as pleased, no stupid brother to tag along, to be considered as one with.
Though they were far from one, and both of them knew that. Rather, they were an uneven three, with Theta always along for the ride whether South liked it or not.
She should have thought of it before Maine did. That drunken, idiot man-whore shouldn't have been the first to figure out that little secret; how to kill flawlessly and how to steal what was thought beyond the realm of ethics- the AI themselves, forever holding part of the mind of its former host, of gaining all the glory that she had so dreamed of.
Maybe because it was unattainable, forbidden, so wrong and yet so much more than she could ever ask for. She had seen the destruction; she had been the one who found Wash covered in blood, the life flickering out of his haunted blue eyes, wrists slit and body slackened.
The first time she had let the vulnerability show to anyone other than him and York, the first time she had cried without hiding it, the first time she had truly felt just as broken as he had become.
Dirt, sweat, tears- salty, pink, metallic, shaking. Bitterness in her mouth- bitterness of love, of loss, of anger and everything between. A bitterness she wasn't allowed to feel.
Bitter wouldn't win the war, now would it?
How many times had she been told that, how many times had she been lectured and forced to take it without protest, leaving her seething, burning inside out until all was darkness.
Black and white.
Goodness and light.
Truth and consequence.
Was it truly good, or truly evil?
With the bullet in his back, her words calm and collected, she knew it was neither. It was the cold steel grey of indifference that was the true lapse of everything she had once known.