Warning!

This is a tragic ending to Cinder's story, where although she may have won in a nominal fashion she receives none of the rewards that matter to her. You have been warned, so do not write critical reviews because you are surprised, write them because my story is crap and you have license to mock!

Tragedy

Chapter 1: Lamentations

Cinder...

That was her name, the only name she had known for five years until her already hard life fell apart around her. Few called her that now, even though it was her name, who she was. Instead they addressed her as Her Majesty, Queen Selene of Luna. That wasn't her, that was she was supposed to be in another life, if she hadn't become a exile. A cyborg. A nobody. A cinder.

Cinder...

She had known the truth when she had seen what her aunt had done to her. It had been an image from years before, long before her memory began. In a hidden lab, among instruments designed to sustain life for the too far gone, she had seen what they had done to her. To her for themselves. That is what she had come to know in that moment, but refused to fully grasp until recently.

Cinder...

She had seen what remained of the child she had been. Scarred, limbless, broken, dying. So charred that she barely recognizable as human. No, not even human, inhuman. Lunar. Monster.

Cinder...

They had taken drastic measures to save her. First they had brought her to Earth, a nearly impossible task. They had put her in a suspended animation chamber, an illegal technology. Then they waited for her to grow, like fungus in a Petri dish, until she was strong enough, until there was enough of her.

Cinder...

Yes, like fungus, alive but unaware. There had been no childhood for her, there had barely been an infancy. She had slept for eight years. No, sleep was too light a word, the word was coma, all but brain dead. So brain dead that machines had to 'think' for her, stimulating what was left of her mind for the day she would awaken.

Cinder...

Finally she had been strong enough, big enough, for them to work on her. They had restored her lost limbs, but were not really her limbs. They were not flesh and blood, warm to the touch, but cold metal. Now she was even less 'human' than before, she had become a cyborg. That alone made her second class, tolerated only as long as she brought something to the table. Even that was better treatment than she would have received on Luna, there it was better to die than be so 'ugly.' Who could ever love something so hideous, so patched up that it was an outcast in both heaven and earth.

Cinder...

Even there they hadn't stopped. No, she must earn her keep, be worthy of the unasked effort save her life. She would be a guinea pig. The test subject for a dangerous procedure to implant a revolutionary technology, a defense against lunar glamour, in her spine. It could have killed her or left her paralyzed, but that was a risk they had to take. If it could work on her it would work on every lunar, and turn the tide in a war that hadn't yet started.

Cinder...

The only thing they left untouched, was her reproductive system. Her uterus and ovaries were the closest she got to who she was meant to be, the closest she could get be 'human.' Not that anyone would be willingly to complete her, not unless you could find a guy turned on by wires and bolts. No, any offspring would be out of political necessity, a union without personal meaning, to safe guard someone else's future.

Cinder...

She could barely remember it, waking up. Clueless as to where she came from, what she could do, who she was meant to be. She had no idea that the odds were already stacked against her. It would be a hard life even if she didn't know it yet. All she had know at the time was that a new 'father' was taking her to her new 'family.'

Cinder...

Now she could understand him, why he had done it, she was no threat, not really. She was an outsider, few would get close enough to befriend her, inside and outside the family. He must have known the likely reaction his wife and daughters would have, bringing a cyborg home. Had his wife known at the time the girl was lunar, she probably would have fainted. Can you imagine the reaction if the girl's identity had been known?

Yes, with her powers nullified, she could neither attract the wrong attention or threaten his family's freedom. Powerless, she would have to depend on him, and he would be free to observe her and see how well his invention worked.

Cinder...

Except, even that half kindness would be denied her. Soon after they arrived 'home' her 'father' became ill with the lunar plague. Funny isn't? The girl he had help save and pacify, for the purpose of perpetuating his invention, had killed him without trying and by so doing almost caused his technology to be lost forever.

Cinder...

His death had been a near disaster for Earth and a certain disaster for her. His wife, depending on the riches the device would have brought, took her loss out on the cyborg girl, now her ward, her so called 'step-daughter.' Nothing would be hers now, she was a slave with no one to protect her. She did make some friends; Peony, the younger daughter with a heart of gold, and Iko, a defective android not worth the sum of her parts. Pathetic really, Peony liked to identify with the pitiful and Iko had no one else, they were stuck together.

Cinder...

Pathetic or not, they were all she had, and because of her Peony lost her life and Iko nearly so. Everyone she cared about, she would hurt. Not that that was anything special, tons of people she could care less about or didn't even know were hurt by her. It was because of what she was, the lost lunar princess. It's just that those she cared about are the ones that matter, at least to her. And what of him, the one she had cared most for, even he was hurt by her.

Cinder...

She hastened his hard decisions before he was ready, helping his enemy back him into a corner. First she was foolish enough to be seen at the rally, exposing the existence of fugitive lunars on Earth. Then she had thrown caution out the window in effort to attend the ball, and exposed her identity to the queen. Then she had given the queen the provocation to unleash her wild dogs with the great escape from prison. That last one almost proved to be Kai's death sentence, effectively giving the queen his life and kingdom. In all regards she was a plague.

Cinder...

Yes, a plague alright. Not hard considering her family, her people. After all, this mess was a long time in the making. A long dynasty of parasitic tyrants, ruling not by responsible popular consent, but by controlling everyone's mind with selfish desire. By what right did they rule, the right of a freak accident of nature. By a lucky role of the genetic dice, they could strip all but a few of their free will and did so without care. The rising tension and mistrust between Earth and Luna had been their fault. However the war had been Levana and Cinder's doing. Levana had staged it all, but Cinder had played her part.

Cinder...

Yes, she had played her part like a chess piece. No matter what she did, she remained someone else's pawn, their slave. That's why she is still alive. Had Levana been a little more amicable ruler and neighbor, would anyone really had done so much to save a charred corpse?

No, they didn't do it altruistically, they did it to save their own skins. She was to be their ultimate weapon, the one who could beat Levana at her own game. Once all was said and done, could she leave it all and live her life as she wanted? Would she be free?

No, she was too valuable a tool. A puppet queen. She was young, naive, physically broken; completely unprepared to rule. Better, she didn't even want to rule. She needed them to take care of her business, and they were only too happy to comply as long as she did as they said. Through her subjugation, all of Luna was pacified. They would never let her go as long as she was useful. She was not a person to them, only a thing with a convenient use. Things that lost their use, no matter how important, could be replace without a second thought if need be. As a former mechanic she had done her share of that.

Cinder...

How she longed to be human, to be loved as human, by humans. That was something she had never known. Not really. There had been Linh Garan, her adoptive father, with his kind smile. But if she had realized anything this past year, it was never love, only compassion at best. Like a scientist feeling sorry for a lab rat he is experimenting on.

Then there had been Peony, sweet Peony, she was lovely in every way. Could she had loved Cinder? She had been kind to Cinder and spoken against her mother's cruel treatment. She had wanted to join Cinder, running away from home, before she had died. Cinder swallowed hard to keep the guilt down. Perhaps she did, but Cinder would never know. What Cinder did know was that, Peony was like her father, compassionate, only with a streak of rebelliousness.

Then there was Kai, a boy she had met in such a casual and ordinary way. A boy who had shown some interest and 'asked her to the dance' so to speak. Could he have loved her? He seemed like the best candidate, crossing the social divide between them, even if he had thought that divide only included just her commoner status, maybe.

No, Cinder shook her head, that couldn't be it. She knew better than that. Kai's life was filled with the big problems that affected an entire planet, so it was a relief to spend some time with a mundane issue like flirting with a common girl as an ordinary boy. Except she wasn't common, and that was far worse.

She'd suspected for a while, that any real interest he was developing in her was due to her emerging gift. After all, it was after Dr. Erland had disabled the implants in her spine that Kai began to show interest beyond a client and his mechanic. An interest based on a double lie, the hidden cybernetics and lunar glamour.

Cinder...

Cinder had always tried, often unsuccessfully, to disguise her broken body. For five years all she had were clothes with which to do it. An imperfect solution. The gloves were the best example, they often caused suspicion as she wore them everywhere. But with them she had maintained that facade of normality, an average human girl, more or less.

But she wasn't a normal human girl, though she pretended to be. She was cyborg, 36.28% machine, and she had seen Kai's reaction to her body, though he didn't know it was her. He had flinched! He was disgusted by so deformed a creature. That, she now recognized, waswhen I really chose to hide my true nature from him, at least as much as I knew. And what she hadn't known only disgusted him further.

Oh how she remembered his words, 'You're even more painful to look at than she is.' Full they were of hurt to her ears. Their entire relationship, the image she had crafted for him, had collapsed and he rejected her. He had thrown her to the wolves to save his kingdom. To his credit, he had done it ever so gently, but still he sold her out for peace. She deserved it though, founding everything about her on lies and putting him in the position. What was he to do?

But, she asked herself, what if he had known the whole truth, who I really was? What if he had known she was the lost lunar heiress? Would he have protected her, even before Queen Levana? She let that stew in her head for what seemed an eternity, with a dozen voices all clamoring for her attention, each with its own point of view, its own side of the story. Finally, out of the chaos, she came to a conclusion. Yes, he would have protected her, but not in the way that mattered most to her.

Yes, he would have protected her because she could save his kingdom, even the world, from Levana. She was again a tool, more precisely a weapon, against the power mad Lunar Queen. That is why he would have saved her, if he'd known back then. After all, that is what happened eventually, when all the leaders of Earth had found out.

They had swooped in and protected her from Levana, shielding her with all their military might. She had at the beginning, if only for a fleeting moment, felt like they cared about what happened to her. Especially Kai, when she found out he championed her sanctuary from Luna. That illusion passed quickly, Kai never saw her, except over a port screen, and the rest of Earth's noble leaders made it plain to her why they were taking such a risk saving her hide. She was an investment, and like an investment they expected a profitable return. She was to become their slave in exchange for her life and comfort. She had agreed.

Why, why had she done that? Couldn't she have seen that they would only use her? She, of course had seen that, but she had done it for him. Kai. If he could she how she was willing to sacrifice her freedom to save the Earth, perhaps he would see her the way she had always imagined, hoped he would. She had hoped that he would forgive her, seek her out, and they'd live happy together until the end of their days.

As expected, the war was fought. Painful sacrifices made, the Enemy vanquished, and she, Cinder had been crowned Queen Selene in all the mock glory of a puppet monarch. She reigned as she promised, seen but not heard, the head but not the brain. She had done everything required of her, should she not be happy?

She should, but he never came and she was left with the aching cold of loneliness. She was surrounded by the trappings of power, in a palace built to surpass Versailles, and servants around the clock. Despite that, all they were just trappings. The spacious mirrors purposefully placed on every surface to weaken her, to show her true face to all. And the servants, all unfriendly, unfeeling androids placed to inform their true masters of her every action. They would never see her beyond the prosthetics, beyond her glamour. And neither would he. She admitted to herself.

They had every reason not to see her as someone good. She had crossed this train of thought so often, but she couldn't escape it, for it flowed through her very veins and made her poison at conception. Her family from the beginning to the present earned no one's trust, they simply took it. She saw why. It was so easy to strip a person's will until nothing, but an obedient husk, remained.

When she had first witnessed it used, by Queen Levana at the protest, it had frightened her. Soon after she learned that it was only a matter of time before she would command it as well. She practically swore never to use glamour herself if she could help it. Then came her escape and she had used that power, lightly at first but with ever increasing frequency and force. Then she had taken a life with that power, exchanged an innocent for her own. The worst part was that she had acted on instinct, no conscious thought had passed through her mind until the deed was done.

Upon later reflection she had realized that it hadn't been the first time she'd seen it. Memory returned her to the ball, the gun tearing away from her temple to point at Levana's chest. The gun had gone off and the form of the queen's bodyguard intercepted the bullet. Levana, hadn't killed that man, but he might as well have been. The point was she had followed in Levana's footsteps without trying if not actively resisting. They were blood, and nothing, even being raised worlds apart in both the physical and social sense had changed that.

Ah yes, Aunt Levana. She remembered their first meeting so very well. Levana had mocked her name. "Cinder, how fitting, ashes, dirt, filth." The comparison was not perfect, but cut too deeply too ignore. Then again, there was the old earthen saying, 'takes one to know one.'

Cinder had seen Levana's real face, the one hidden behind the glamour. She was hideous, as deformed in her way as Cinder was in hers. Yes, Cinder was filth alright, but so was Levana. Both were poison, only Levana's was more concentrated, refined by years abusive use of glamour and scheming.

But how long before she fell in to the cycle of tyranny as her bloodline demanded. It was SO EASY! There were times she could just imagine some foul demon within pushing out with tentacles of insatiable need for sadistic pleasure. With the sufferings of others the only way to slake her desires, how long could she hold out? Was she forever trapped in the whims of others without even respect to her name?

In that hour of despair long ago, a new determination arose from within her. With a new purpose she shoved her pain into the furnace of her soul to fuel a new drive. Her life would mean more than being the puppet of others, a tool. She would use the demon within to execute a new plan to right the universe, one far more foolproof against the return of a lunar threat to Earth. She would not serve it, IT would serve HER!

Despite the array of precautions against her, they still underestimated her. She was not just the lunar queen or a cyborg, she was both and her potential was greater than the sum of her parts, so to speak. She did, with time, find the weaknesses in her cage and used them to her advantage. Now her plan neared completion, she could look forward to the peace that would follow. There would finally be an end to her cravings for domination.

Yes, and an end to the loneliness. She could stop watching him from afar, eyes green with envy for his new family. A truly beautiful wife, graceful, dutiful, and human to her core. Children, filled with energy and dreams, great futures unknown but always around the corner. A family of love and happiness, that had always been out of reach for her.

Yes, she thought in relief, soon it will end. I will be free!

Then the beeping announcing a visitor wrested her from her fantasy. She hated that, not knowing when visitors were in the coming. It left her with hardly any time to prepare herself. Probably why her sponsors arranged it so, but she dared not protest lest they tighten their leash. And this time she couldn't complain, these visitors were expected at her request, though more than a little early. It would have been either that or be very late, and early was better.

Except these wasn't the ones who were expected, she realized as she recognized his bio-electric signature. This was not a good time for a face to face encounter, she was so close! Could she still go through with the plan if she saw him again, in person? Even after all that had happen to them since that fateful night, would she falter to the hope of a lost cause? Not a treat then, but a test of her strength and commitment. Nevertheless, she could cheat a little, or rather show him her true face as she saw it. She turned her rotational throne to face away from the door.

She knew without looking the androids closest to the doors reached the handles and pulled the reflective facade inward. From the opening would march two figures, one the chamberlain android, the other, the man she had dreamed of for so long.

"Announcing the arrival of his Majesty, Emperor Kai of the Eastern Commonwealth..."