Morning was the worst time of the day.

The chill, the aching bones, harsh new light searching, cutting, searing delicate skin in its merciless wake.

Flo rolled over and curled closer to Tocuna for warmth under their tattered cotton blanket. She lay her head on Tocuna's chest and closed her eyes again, listening to the steady beat of her sister's heart. How they used to sleep like that, entwined around each other for protection from the outside world. She felt the girl stir, and looked up to see her eyelids fluttering open.

"Morning, love." She whispered. As usual, her sister made no reply.

She watched as Tocuna sat up, her robe falling from her shoulders as she brushed her hair up out of her eyes.

Flo couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy, however fleeting.

Hauntingly beautiful and bathed in eerie silence, Tocuna's delicate features and soft caresses made her everything Flo was not.

"Beautiful as always, angel." She stood to kiss the nape of her sister's neck, the girl shrunk under her touch.

"It's all right." Flo soothed.

Nobody had ever been able to understand what it meant to be a twin.

Nobody had ever been able to understand what it meant to be a twin.

Not their nanny, not the doctors, not even their mother. The two existed in a world of shadows and hand gestures, eyes that burned like coals, black against cream skin. Even their own mother's face turned pale at the sight of them walking through the house, hand in hand. Locking them away had been their mother's final mistake.

Thrown into the darkness of a locked bedroom with only each other as company, their skin turned paler and paler and more delicate, and the double helix of their fragile minds twisted in on itself. Their mother had lived to regret it...but not for long.

"Was it very bad?" Tocuna whispered, as if reading Flo's mind.

"Yes." She didn't need an explanation of what Tocuna meant.

"It's your fault, you gave me the matches."

"I know."

Slowly, Tocuna's head dropped forward, and she allowed Flo to touch her. Flo's fingertips delicately traced across the scars on her sister's body, the thin white trails of a past that never seemed to fade, only grow in their shared memories. White powder covered the worst of it, but the monster had grown, threatening to swallow them both.

"You told me to do it."

"I know." Flo sighed.

"They were going to separate us."

"They were afraid for you." Flo replied.

"I didn't mean my sister to get burned."

"I know."

"Does she forgive me?"

Flo sighed, and kissed Tocuna on the forehead. "Yes."

"And would she die for me?"

"Yes."

"And would she kill for me?"

Flo kissed her sister again, softer this time. "Yes."

"And does she love me?" Tocuna asked in a trembling, hesitant voice.

"Yes."

Part 2, Tocuna's POV is coming soon.