Is here the part where you say —Disclaimer: The Lunar Chronicles Series is not mine they are owned by Marissa Meyer-blahblahblah. This is a work of fiction. Any events that resemble- yadayadayada whatever things and stuff? Well, you know that routine already. But actually I'm just here to say something.
Italics are flashbacks. Regular fonts are on the normal time frame.
So read do on! And see you down below.
Lie
Rieux.
A small farmland located south of France.
Population: 3,800.
Lines of blue texts scrolled in front of her vision. Her netlink automatically recognized the geographical formations clicked in search. Various images of crops and picturesque cobblestone streets popped in the corner of her eyes.
As the hover ascended, the field zoomed out from the window. The hectares of land looked like patches of green and brown textile that was sewn together.
It was definite, she wasn't free again. The shackles that were bounding her wrists felt tight with the edges digging in her human skin and the other scratching the titanium plating of her cyborg hand. There was a bit of humor in here, because due to the failure of the first handcuff they had rather used the conventional lock and key one.
Her spine hurt from being hunched down on her seat. The chains that were interlocking the shackles were short. It was bolted on a metal contraption in front of her. She wrestled on the chains trying to lean that way and the other. But at her slightest movement the imperial guard that was flanking her side jerked his hand on his pistol. And Cinder knew that the orders were clear. It didn't matter whether she arrived at New Beijing alive or dead.
All hope slipped away from her. Her protective veil fell down. It was faux courage that got her out of the prisons of New Beijing to France. Fear snatched at her. For the first time in her life, she felt as lost as a little child. Her mind realized that now, give or take seven or eight years of memory lapses. She was fifteen by age but she only lived seven years of that during her lifetime.
A strangle whimper escaped from her lips. She hated herself from being vulnerable. She must've looked like the child that she truly was.
But Thorne had escaped. She was thankful. She had unburden Thorne of the dangers he might face shall he continue to be with her. But at the expense of another's. Cinder cringed.
It happened in just a blink. Thorne, the the humanoid wolf and the lady soldier. The latter two they were out to kill Thorne. One by orders, the other by sheer bloodthirsty instinct.
When she saw the three of them the decision fell into place without warning. It was her lunar glamour, the wicked thing resurfacing. It was another entity beside her. She commanded it to save Thorne. It obeyed her and drew the woman in front of the beast to have its jaws snap her neck. After that the deed was done, her glamour evaporated in the air. She saved Thorne.
The beast was gnawing on the woman's twisted neck. Bright blood streamed down its chin and its furry arms.
Cinders own throat closed in on itself. "Run!" She screamed at Thorne.
Lately she has be all kinds of people. A cyborg, a lunar and a myth, the long lost Princess Selene. She still believed that it was still only a legend fabricated by the minds of fearful Earthens and hopeless Lunars.
Now she was a murderer too. The thought ate up her insides. And for the umpteenth time in her life she was glad that they took out her tear sacs.
An alert beeped on the periphery of her vision. It stated that her hormone levels were too high, her core temperature was overheating. If she didn't calm down she's going to fry her circuits again. Her body advised her to take slow and measured breaths. It was hard at first overriding her human body's natural mechanisms. But she rationalized with herself and focused on the sounds inside the hover. She fell back into chanting her usual mantra on counting one to ten while taking in the advised measured breaths. It was when she reached eight that the warning stopped.
The steady thrum of the engine rocked her to and fro in this slow rhythm.
The ride felt familiar.
It was a train ride. The memory came rushing in her head unabatedly.
The earth was blanketed in pure white. It sleeps under a delicate padding of snow. Fluffy balls of snowflakes were chasing one after the other as they plummet their way to the ground. The air was cold and dry against her nostrils as if she's using them for the first time after a long time. Everything felt new. Every stimuli were as vivid as they were a strange mix of something she had felt before and also something that she is feeling for the first time. She cannot quite place it, but it was akin to being reborn or the feeling of air in your lungs after being submerged in water for a long time. Her muddled thoughts became clear and suddenly the whole world was full of all these lines waiting for her to seize. Every single line stretched into her future. They were composed of multitudes and endless possibilities. Her whole life ahead of her open like a blank book.
Right now, the air was crisp. The leaves were dried and cracked. The ride felt familiar but the line was cut short too early.
X
The lights down New Beijing were breathtaking. It was something she never took notice before. That's the thing about places that you left. Little by little you'll begin to miss it and coming back you'll start to put it in a different perspective, you'll see its entirety in million other angles you haven't seen before. No matter how it confined her. All the lives she could have lived. If only she weren't Cinder.
Half of the sky was littered with stars and half were milky waves of orange, pink and yellow undulating in soft golden wisps. The city center, the market square and the Zen parks they were all bathe in this dusky hue, they were all still the same as when she left.
But she was not. The Cinder that used to live in here was inconspicuous, trying her best to be your everyday, normal, average half-human, half-cyborg mechanic, trying to blend in with other people.
The little insignificant thing that she was, as Adri would like to remind her sometime.
How she wished she could be a nobody again, a faceless form underneath the grinding of the city, drowned in all the noise and clamor by the people around her, just another nameless person.
But she was Princess Selene. And a whole lot of other buried secrets.
The hover didn't head to the New Beijing's High Security Prison. The skyscrapers from out the window turned into a blur. The roofs of the buildings receded as they reached the outskirts of the city. On the horizon she can see the edge of the urban area and where it blended with the rest of the countryside.
Soon the hover was passing above a lush forest. Cinder struggled to crane her neck to get a last glimpse of the Imperial Palace, only its golden roofs can be discerned amongst the towering concrete, glass and steel that made the city.
Kai. Is somewhere inside those palace walls. Kai. All of her thoughts of New Beijing always lead back to him.
She always carried in the back of her mind to go back just for him. To stop running away and run back to him. But she cannot be true to herself without being selfless and selfish at the same time. If she cared to admit, the risk of being with Kai far outweighs the greater order of things. Her life, Luna and Earth.
Even now as she turned the thought over and over in her mind it simply doesn't add up. She imagined Iko computing all of the chances and probabilities and already expecting that response from her.
In Iko's own words: I cannot compute.
It was childish and naïve of her to wish for silly things.
The detention facility where they took her was miles away from the city. It became clear to her that she's going to be isolated. As expected this was for the protection of the citizens of New Beijing. They won't allow an escaped convict to prance around the city much more a lunar-cyborg hybrid. Just in case she came around ransacking villages and manipulating human beings with her glamour.
When the guard stood up and pried her off her seat her legs buckled on her knees. The guard's grip on her arm was harsh. She was like a rag doll being strewn this way and that. But it's the only thing that's keeping her upright. She would've fallen on the cemented pathway the time when she stepped off the hover if it weren't for the guard holding her arm.
Something detached inside her chest when she saw the sight of the building she's going to be taken into. It was an isolation building. She struggled every step of the way towards the entrance. The metal grates lifted by themselves. The paneled doors cracked open in the middle with a hiss.
On the contrary to what she was thinking, it wasn't the smell of decaying flesh that met her, or the sight of blue and purple dots or the putrefied mix of various bodily fluids. It might as well be. She might as well have heard all the groans of sick people in pain or dying.
The inside of the building was as empty as a shell. She searched for the rows and rows of beds that were supposed to be there. All she noticed were light squares on the floor where the sun hasn't touched in a long time and where the bed used to be.
The green shutters cast an eerie glow to the place. This used to be a letumosis quarantine building, Cinder was sure of it.
Her stomach was empty and she hadn't eaten a proper meal since she had been held in prison. Something tangy and acidic regurgitated in her mouth. Her hand immediately went up and clapped her mouth shut. The room kept on spinning, her optobionics were in a jumble, it couldn't tell which was the floor or the ceiling. But what became even more palpable was that in here, or somewhere in a building like this, Peony had died.
You couldn't forget how the last light faded in someone's eyes. Peony's eyes were open, and dried and dead. Her sweet little sister.
You know how the lights get switched off one by one in a long room? That's how it happened. There was no notification in her control panel that her body failed to calm itself this time. The first thing that got shut down was her visual overlay. Then the part of her body where the nerves and the wires connected stopped sending electrical impulses in her brain.
Once again she was ensconced into this warm gel-like substance. She fell inside it and caught her midbreath, midfalling. Everything was pitch black.
X
Rebooting wasn't like a computer where you hear a fan whirring from the inside and a light will blip indicating that the systems are loading or resuming. In her case, she woke up with a click. She opened her eyes without any hesitation or grogginess.
The shackles were off from her wrists now and she can see the part where the metal dug into her human skin and the bruises it left.
Cinder pressed her fingers on her closed eyelids when she opened them again her surroundings were in a blur but it refocused back the room she was into.
The room was stark white and she can tell that the inside of the room was recently built. It was just as the same as her last prison cell only they have allotted more space for just a single prisoner.
She was free to move around the room. She examined the table and the chair that was propped on one side near the wall, it would come useful when they interrogate her or for lunars to come and torture her. The wall on her left side was made out of glass and if she squinted hard enough she can make out outlines from outside the room, but maybe that was just her imagination because all of a sudden she felt like a caged animal. They didn't install automatic doors this time they figured that she was good at electronics, instead they opted for the old fashioned metal door on a hinge and that's unfortunate maybe they'd also figured out that she's bad at picking keyholes with hairpins too. The bed was also different it was a hospital bed that have been reused. That was when she was sure that she wasn't hallucinating before she blacked out.
Was she all alone in this middle of nowhere? She remembered the androids that were roaming in between beds from the quarantine facilities with their sharp prongs and metal pincers. Are they going to exile her? To be treated like she was diseased? Was she contagious like all the people that had been in here? She was immune to letumosis but they won't risk any human contact, they were more afraid of something much more dangerous than being infected.
Nobody would dare to come to her. She will only be interacting with androids from now on.
The doorknob creaked, it turned ever so slowly until it was twisted at its farthest and it stopped. Seconds passed and she can feel herself heaving a shaky breath. And as if the door finally made its decision, it swung on its hinges and banged on the wall.
The sound made her jump from where she stood.
Maybe above what's all that happened she should be glad seeing his face. Maybe in the slightest of chances and hope nothing had changed. Her mind hurriedly riffled for that day the first time she met him. A simple mechanic couldn't feel any less. She had been honored by the presence of the Prince.
The mixture of feelings slowly settled into her. That concoction of gooey liquid swirled round and round in her. She was, —really glad and relieved, even that she cared to admit to herself. Then something awful stirred into her chest.
And she just knew.
The emperor stepped inside the cell. Nothing but the clicking of the soles of his boots can be heard in the room.
In the way her life changed in the past days, it has changed drastically for him too. And in spite of his youth something hardened and congealed in him in such short time.
He paused, the corners of his mouth pursed trying to muster that part of him that's capable of hurting and wounding someone, that part of him that didn't exist in the first place. He would've failed if he looked at her, but he did not.
He's the emperor. It is his responsibility to protect the hurt and the wounded and to smite those who hurt and wounded them. The words came rushing out his mouth.
Something distracted her from the corner of her vision even before Kai spoke.
"You disgust me!" Kai spat.
Her first reaction was more confuse than shocked. But her audio interface began to catch on and processed what it has heard. It was the equivalent of being slapped and like a hand it came down upon her and weighed her down. That little part in her middle withered some more.
Her ears rang. White spots began to float in her vision. She felt faint. That irritating indicator that was now becoming permanent on her sight told her to calm down. Her emotions were on a high and her body is reacting too much.
But isn't that how normal people respond? Does her control panel know that? Does it also know that emotional pain is as hurtful as the physical one? If she were to choose, she would have rather Kai slap her or kick her. It would've hurt less or not, but it would've hurt different.
"The whole world is in chaos! Queen Levana is waging war! Do you know that Cinder?"
This wasn't news to Cinder. She had lost count on how many times she blamed herself. Thinking all of it would be enough and would compensate for other people's judgments. But other people were other people. And to hear Kai put the blame on her…
"Hundreds of people are dead Cinder. And more people are going to suffer! If you could've surrendered from the beginning this would've never happened. We're on a brink of a war. We cannot fight and let hundreds of thousands of people die. I cannot sacrifice their lives in exchange for your own."
Suddenly a light flickered in the periphery of her vision.
"And maybe they're right Cinder," Kai's lips contorted into a wry smile. "I trusted you. But I should've known that you're every bit just as selfish and manipulative, lying lunar like all of your other kind. You make me sick! I wouldn't let your kind either to walk around this planet."
Something bright flashed on both sides of her temple. A detector that's indicating a warning she's too dumbfounded to pay attention to.
"I cannot wait for Levana to take you out of this soil and bring you back to your wretched place on the moon!" His eyes hardened with revulsion.
An orange light overtook her vision. Cinder was momentarily blinded by it.
When a moment has passed and she already gathered enough strength. She lifted her gaze, although shakily she managed to glance at him. That look in his eyes it was the same look that he had before. Like he couldn't bear the sight of her. And she was causing him pain just by looking at her. She remembered running away from the ball. How she had fallen from the stairs. How humiliated she felt.
Of all the pains she had experienced, Kai's hurt the most.
She thought she was immune to all the hurt this world can give to her. From Adri's tyranny and always that lack of mother figure that she craved from her from the beginning and still expected until the last. To Pearl's snide remarks when she couldn't ignore them. When her foster father got ill with the plague and was taken away. And Peony's death.
They say, feelings were the hardest imprint on a memory. She remembered a sad one.
When she was eleven years old, almost already half a year in her stay in New Beijing. She and Adri and her two sisters went to her foster father's funeral. They were all swathe in black and they were kneeling in front of an epitaph where the name of her foster father was inscripted. She stood far along the side underneath the shade of a tree, wondering on all their sad faces. When they got home that day, Adri stood in front of the fireplace mantel for vigil. Adri stared at her fosters father's plaques and medals the whole night because they don't have a body to mourn, while her stepsisters huddled together on the edge of the sofa. She watched them dry their damped faces with handkerchief as streams of water escaped from their eyes and flow to their cheeks. Once in that night Adri suddenly turned sharply toward her and looked at her with so much scorn. Cinder retired early to bed after that in her closet of a room. She lay slowly on her cot, rested her cheeks on the back of her hand and waited for the tears to come. But it didn't.
Her eyes felt heavy. Full of a lifetime's worth of tears that cannot be shed. It must've feel like the greatest release to be unleavened with the hearts burden. She can only imagine. How all the heads of her only family were down as their shoulders shook hearing their painful cries from the loss of the head of their household. How Adri consoled her only remaining daughter, Pearl, and hushed her broken sobs even though she herself was crying. All that pain cannot be contained it has to go somewhere.
She closed her eyes and remembered with the strangest of fascination the sight of the purest form of water unabridged and free flowing. They were like falls and raindrops at the same time. The rivulets of tears cascading down their eyes, across their cheeks and into their chin. Taking with them the pain.
She sank lower and let it all came down to her. Let him watch her break some more from the inside. A shaky sigh escaped from her mouth. Her lips trembled irregardless of her having bitten them shut. Her surroundings blurred. As her heart ached, the back of her eyes burned. Then she felt something wet formed in the corners of eyes and it slowly flowed and gradually clouded her vision. Water. She saw water brimming on the edges of her eyelids. She closed her eyes tight making few of the water globules slid down her cheeks. When she opened them again she saw tears clinging into her eyelashes like dewdrops.
She was taken aback. With a shaking hand, she laid her finger on the side of her face and traced the line of tears on her cheeks. When she withdrew them, she saw that her hand was not damped as she expected it to be.
Kai was transfixed by the sight of her. She was the loveliest thing his heart ever witnessed of falling. She looked devastatingly beautiful. He wanted to wrung his hands on her hair and pull them to expose that delicate flesh on her neck. He wanted to hurt her so bad and put kisses on her all over.
It took all of his strength to keep him rooted in his place. His temples hurt from grinding his teeth resisting the imaginary glamour.
"I hate you." He said lastly.
The last layer of that thin wall that she had built around herself finally crumbled. Leaving this gaping hole in her middle part where all her happiness fell into.
She sat on the floor broken and empty.
The orange light continued to blink in the periphery of her vision.
TBC
A/N: Remember when I said something from Cinder and Kai is coming up? Weeelll, tadaaaa...? I'm not sure how this thing turned out. You would be the judge. So please don't forget to leave a review.
So, the orange light. Yes! I'll let you figure that out.
And yes! I would dare to say TBC even though I haven't outlined anything for chapter 2 yet (ah, i plan for this to be a two shot). Which is very bad for me, I only have snippets and tags of it on my notebook. But maybe... this could be a stand alone for now? But I will still put it in In-Progress. Because on chapter 2 I will explain Kai. Oh, that poor boy. *shakes head*
So, inspirations for this fic. The train ride on the second flashback is based on the train ride on the movie The Book Thief; the skyline of New Biejing after that scene is based on the night skyline on the movie Her; and lastly, the quote, "True love will triumph in the end—which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have." Is by John Green on his review on Twilight. I just watched it a while ago and I'm like shaking my head and laughing. Anyways, yes! That is the quote where this muse came from along with the idea of the confrontation of Kai on Cinder on the last part. Which is the hardest part to write. It's hard to make Kai cruel. And yes! He's really, reaaally! Out of character in this fic. Thus! I shall explain on the next chapter, if i everything in my life is not busy, which is rare these days.
And, I just finished reading Cress a few days ago and already face palming myself on what I've written on La Vie En Rose (which is another one of my fanfic, if you haven't read it yet, read it now while it's still on the first page of the archive. hehe) My thoughts after reading Cress? I will give one *looks at you darkly and wink* —I'M SHIPPING CINDER AND JACIN! Is that sacrilegious? But maybe the Winter installment can still sway me. And still Scarlet and Wolf is still my OTP!
Anyway, I talk too much. Now it's your turn. Review, please?
Thanks for reading.
-esp :D