She hates the sight of her own reflection.
Rin stands before herself in an endless sea of black shadow. All that remains is the pane of glass directly in front of her, showcasing her dismal figure.
Worn gray hoodie. Slim, scratched and callused fingers. Torn holes down her black stockings and discolored spots along her shorts. Gaunt white cheeks and faded blue eyes, accented by her drab blonde bangs hanging at her shoulders.
She hates the sight of herself. Her appearance leaves nothing but bitterness lacing her tongue, and guilt and shame that eats away at her from the inside out. Her hands in the reflection clench tight into fists, and she can feel the cut of her nails drawing blood.
This person in front of her isn't her. It hasn't been her in so long.
Who is this person standing before her, staring her deadpan in the face without a shred of humility? How can they stand there and draw such a deep, innate sense of disgust and dread from within her?
Her heart aches.
She's pathetic. Staring down this alternate version of herself does no good, but it feels like she's facing off against it, battling it and trying to win. But she isn't, and it's as if this battle was lost the day it started.
Who is this? Who is she?
Voices whisper in her ears, invading her thoughts and cutting apart her coherency. She claps her hands against her head in an effort to drown them out, but they stay close, unaffected by her scramble to preserve her sanity. Her eyes shut tight, but it only causes the voices to grow louder.
Weak.
Coward.
Nothing.
You are nothing.
Her blood chills and solidifies to her core, and she can't take the onslaught of invisible hands tearing her apart from the inside. They're peeling her apart, tearing through her flesh and bone to her soul and plucking it apart piece by piece, leaving only checkered remains of an unfinished puzzle. She is nothing at all, only the smoldering reminder of what once burned bright and fierce.
Not even an ember remains of the person she was meant to be.
Useless. Worthless.
How dare you think for yourself?
How dare you treat yourself like you're human?
You've never been human. You've never been you.
It's a crushing weight on her shoulders, on her lungs, forcing the air to blow past her lips and leave her empty and withering. Suddenly she can't support herself, and each word spoken into her head adds to the burdening mountain that presses her down. Her knees buckle and crumble beneath her, and she slips to the floor, the cold surface of the glass brushing her nose as she leans her forehead against it.
It hurts. It hurts so much.
Why won't it stop?
Why won't they stop? When will I be me again?
Will I ever be myself? Have I ever?
What am I doing here? How do i get out?
The dark prison around her only seems to grow smaller, pressing in on her from all sides and taking away her oxygen. Her throat grows raspy and pained, and every time she inhales a sharp, gutting pain wrenches itself straight through her abdomen.
Rin's eyes slip open and she finds herself face to face with that reflection again, only this time it stares back with fear and sadness behind those gray icy irises. Behind the reflection, shadowed creatures come up close, glittering eyes and long, black tendrils coming to encase her body. Her skin grows cold, and she feels strangled, her throat closing in on itself.
Those voices continue to mock her, and when she opens her mouth to scream, the wailing sound echoes only in her head.
An unimportant wretch.
When will you learn your place?
When will you understand your role in this world?
Stupid, ungrateful child.
Laughter. There's laughter now, laughter directed at her and cutting into her like knives, and suddenly she can't take it, Her hands flail at her sides, reaching, reaching, until—
A wooden handle. She finds it in the dark, as if a gift from an unseen entity; but it doesn't matter.
Wielding the hammer with an unholy, war cry of unimaginable pain and loneliness, she grips it with both hands and swings back, meeting the gaze of that damned reflection once more.
It stares her down with a small, peaceful smile, and she can't take it anymore.
The head of the weapon crashes down with a shatteringly loud clamor. Spiderwebbing cracks spread from impact as the face of her doppelganger becomes nothing more than a thousand pieces of crystal. Her voice is lost under the thundering smash, and she brings it back for another solid hit to the reflection. She can't see its face anymore, but it doesn't matter. She doesn't want to see the pain there, the sorrow, the anguish.
She knows it too well, that mask she wears.
That smile that hides her pain. That look on her face that turns her into an unresponsive doll. That clench in her jaw as she fights not to cry.
End it, end her, finish it all—
—just make it end.
She doesn't stop destroying the mirror even after she can no longer recognize herself. The glass piles at her knees, her hands grow bloody and tired with each swing, but she can't stop. Her chest heaves with exertion, but when the glass breaks, the voices fade.
Crushing herself, shattering her own selfishness, has to be the answer.
It's only when Rin grows too weak to lift the heavy weapon any longer that she lets it drop with a clatter beside her. She had closed her eyes in the moment of emotional rage, and only once its over does she peek out again.
Now all that lies in front of her is a cracked, jagged reminder of what once was. For a moment, just a single moment, it allows her to breathe freely.
Until she looks down, and is faced with hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces of herself, her reflection split between each one like a cobbled together mosaic of guilt and shame.
Clapping her face into her hands in a desperate bid to hide the sight, there isn't anything she can do but cry. The voices whisper loud enough to make her individual thoughts vanish, and the black tendrils surround her in a crushingly tight embrace, promising never to let go.
Not even destroying herself can erase the demons that have made their home within her heart, and its this reality she has no choice but to face.
Yet it only allows a yawning sense of deep remorse and fear to collect, a swirling vortex of negative emotions that remove her so far from what she was before that she can never return...
...until it consumes her whole, and the person she was will never be again.