"She'll wander through a wasted life, with no words to say
It's not enough, it's not enough; she'll never feel, she'll never love
She's just a shell of her former self; it must be so rough."
- Shell, Nathan Sharp
~0~
Cinder did not, in fact, adjust well to her new situation.
Instead, it seemed to Hazel that the more time went by, the worse her demeanor became, as it slowly sunk in that this was what her life was going to be now.
With Cinder confined to bed rest much of the time, and allowed out only for her treatment sessions in the council room, Hazel had not seen very much of her. But what he had seen did not bode well at all.
She submitted to being looked after, albeit grudgingly, once she recognized that she had no other choice until she had healed somewhat. Though help wasn't exactly being offered from any of her teammates, she never went anywhere without both her subordinates, who stuck by her side as if they didn't know what else to do. Emerald was practically attached to her, a crutch both physical and emotional that hastily attended to her every need. From letting Cinder lean on her for support when she had to try and walk, to helping her eat, drink, and wash with a body that wouldn't obey her, to translating her clicking and rasping with surprising skill, the girl was right there. And Mercury...Hazel supposed that Watts and Tyrian's habit of calling him Cinder's attack dog wasn't inaccurate. The boy stood like a barrier between the two of them and the rest of the fortress, fists clenched and eyes narrowed, whenever they crossed paths with anyone else in the halls.
That didn't happen all too often, though, with Cinder confined to bed rest except when summoned to Salem's side for her "treatment." In Hazel's opinion, it was a curious concept. He had never seen Salem use her powers to heal; that was what Watts was for. But then again, none of them had ever returned home so grievously injured before, and the good doctor himself had confirmed that there was nothing more that could be done for Cinder with traditional medical science. So he supposed that, as always, he would simply trust that his master knew what she was doing. This did not, however, mean that it was in any way pleasant to experience.
Now, it was not their intention to come together and eavesdrop on their youngest's sessions of torment. But every once in a while, one, two, or all three of them happened to find themselves outside the door of the council room, and happened to stop for a moment and listen to the concerning noises coming from inside. Low, drawn-out moans, frantic but incoherent noises, and strangled attempts at screaming, interspersed with sharp reprimands from Salem...None of them could figure out what was supposed to be going on back there (Tyrian had attempted to climb out on the outside walls to peek through a window, but had been shooed away before he'd gotten a decent look). But they were beginning to see how it was supposed to help.
Every time Cinder hobbled out of the council room, she was just a tiny bit steadier on her feet, though still not enough to walk on her own for long. If she noticed a teammate there watching her - Tyrian leering, Watts smirking, and Hazel's own impassive stare - a furious snarl curled her lips, and her body twitched as if she wasn't sure whether to ignore them or not. Hazel watched the muscles of her throat move, watched her bite her lip to keep from trying to speak and embarrassing herself when nothing came out. He couldn't imagine how frustrating it must be, for someone who loved to talk as much as Cinder did to have her voice suddenly stripped away.
He could, however, imagine better ways to deal with it. The methods Cinder chose to employ included fixing her face into a seemingly permanent outraged glare, tensing like a snake if anyone approached her, especially on her blind side, and more often than not snapping and grumbling whenever anyone tried to talk to her. And it didn't seem to stop at that, from the way he had overheard Emerald's attempt to convince her to do the mobility exercises she'd been given cut off by a loud, sharp slap and a cry of pain.
"She's like a cat," a grinning Tyrian stage-whispered into his ear, when they saw the distinctly palm-shaped bruise left on the girl's face, "that someone dumped into a bathtub, then grabbed by the tail and flung right back out. Poor thing, I wonder how long she'll go around hissing at everybody before she realizes that won't fix anything?"
Hazel did not expect that to be anytime soon, considering that first, the sources of her indignant fury were a constant, needling presence, and second, she wasn't quite done with those normal medical procedures either.
"Mm, yes," Watts confirmed when Hazel stopped by the lab after a combat training session, to get a deeper-than-usual gash stitched up. "That whole left arm of hers is necrotic; even I can't fix it."
The final stick and pull of the needle closing up his flesh was as painless as the claws of the Beowolf that had torn it. Hazel resisted the urge to scratch at the completed sutures. "And neither can Salem?"
"She claims to not be able to restore it, either. Which, just between us, I have my doubts about, but no point in questioning her. So, unfortunately," Watts went on, with a smirk that said he didn't find it unfortunate at all, "it's going to have to be amputated."
"Amputated?" It was the logical thing to do, Hazel knew. And he was certain that Cinder knew that as well, but he wouldn't be surprised if she raged at it anyway. "When?"
"Two days from now. Salem informed us both this morning. Surprisingly, Cinder managed to not throw another fit. But the way her little friends looked at us..." He set down the needle on a nearby tray and picked up a bone saw from another, smiling at it like it was an old friend. "Anyone would think we were going to do something horrible to her."
These were the moments that told Hazel that it was time to leave his teammate to his work. He nodded acknowledgement but did not respond as he stood up to walk out. Perhaps it was time to check on those three again, just to see if any progress was being made.
~0~
When he arrived at the wing of the fortress containing the team's bedrooms, it wasn't looking that way. Mercury was outside, leaning against the opposite wall a distance away from Cinder's door and immersing himself in a game on his Scroll, presumably to ignore the noises from within. He looked up when he heard Hazel approaching, and though the suspicious look returned to his eyes, he didn't seem overtly hostile.
"Hey," he greeted with a nod, locking and pocketing the Scroll. "I don't think you want to go in there."
Hazel stopped next to him, raising his eyebrows. "Her arm. Is she upset about the surgery?"
A dramatic shrug. "Hell if I know. She's been even angrier than usual since Salem and Mustache told her about it, but if you actually ask her what she thinks, she'll pull this weird smile and go like - " He mimed vigorously hacking off his left arm with a flat palm. "So I'd guess...not really?"
"What, then?"
"She's still not sold on this whole 'steady recovery' idea," Mercury explained. "Going little by little doesn't seem to be her thing anymore. She keeps trying to do everything the way she used to, and then blows up when she can't. Seems worse than usual today, though."
He pointed at the half-open door, and Hazel looked in to see the worst physical therapy session he had ever witnessed taking place. Granted, he hadn't witnessed many of them, but he figured it had to be somewhere up there.
"Just a couple more, Cinder." Emerald's voice sounded like how walking on thin ice felt, as she tried to figure out how to correctly urge her leader along; Cinder reacted to being told what to do by a subordinate about as well as Salem did, and Hazel supposed that the girl knew that all too well by now. "You don't need to go so fast...I mean, not if you don't want to?"
Cinder growled from between clenched teeth in response. Her hair, now chopped short where it had been burnt off, was plastered to her forehead with sweat. Her good arm was wrapped tight around Emerald's shoulder, fingers gripping her bare shoulder so tightly that the knuckles were white and the nails were digging into the girl's skin. She was trying to cross the length of her bedroom, but looked more like she was fighting her way through a blizzard for all the progress she was making. About an inch or two at a time, Hazel estimated.
Cinder made another tentative move forward, but with one wrong step with her bad leg, it buckled underneath her as if she'd been shot, and she pitched sideways with a shrill yelp. It was only Emerald moving down to catch her, lightning-fast, that kept her from falling onto the floor.
"It's okay! I've got you!" Emerald guided Cinder back to a standing position, wincing a little as she was clung to even harder. "We're almost done, okay?"
Cinder didn't look at her, just emitted another furious noise and threw herself forward again.
"This is painful," Hazel muttered, too low to catch either girl's attention.
"Yeah, tell me about it. That leg's not dead, but from what I've seen so far, it basically just works when it wants to. Still hurts her a lot, too." Almost as an afterthought, Mercury clinked one metal heel against the wall, smirking. "Even I don't have that problem."
After another long, long minute, the pair made it to the opposite wall, Cinder thumping it with her palm to mark the progress - or to satisfy the urge to hit something, Hazel wasn't sure which.
"Okay, that's three. The packet said two more and you can rest. Let's go..."
Cinder shot her a look of complete and utter disgust, and refused to be moved back around to do the next lap. Emerald didn't let go, but stopped trying, looking terribly nervous. "Cinder, come on...I know it hurts you, but you need to work at this if you want to get better!"
But it appeared that pointing out the obvious wasn't going to work. Cinder braced her shoulder against the wall and her good hand shot out to slam into Emerald's chest, shoving her away with a noise that Hazel thought was supposed to mean, "No!"
"A-All right...We can take a break. Do you want me to go get you a cold cloth?"
At the answering nod, Emerald ducked hastily into the adjoining bathroom, and Cinder finally collapsed, sitting against the wall with her good leg brought up to her chest and her bad leg stretched out on the floor. She shut her eye tight, and pushed her damp bangs out of her face. The way her labored breathing sounded, forced out of her still-raw throat and lungs, didn't seem healthy at all.
"So yeah, it's going great," Mercury said under his breath, a new twist to his smirk. "Don't suppose any of you guys feel like making yourselves useful?"
"I see no need. She's already shown her lingering weakness relying on you two." When Cinder had first brought two strange children into their fold (without actual permission, he might add), Salem had trusted her word about the benefits of her decision. Hazel had not objected...But he had had his doubts. "As one of Salem's chosen, she should be able to stand on her own."
"Well, she could before her leg was burned to a crisp."
"A poor example. My point is, whether she recovers or not depends on her." Hazel looked past the boy's shoulder again. Cinder still hadn't noticed them, but her eye had opened a fraction and landed on the half-empty bottle of water on her nightstand. Her gaze slid over to the bathroom door for a moment - Emerald wouldn't hear her if she tried to ask for it - and then back to the water, considering. This could be interesting. "If she wants to get better, she will. All there is to it."
"Are you shitting me?" Mercury hissed. "I don't know how much you actually know about stuff like this, but it's a little more difficult than that."
"Irrelevant. She can deal with difficulty on her own," Hazel insisted. "She knows better than to act like such a brat."
"What are you, her dad?" Mercury snorted, narrowing his eyes. "Y'know, if things were different, I might have agreed with you, but unlike you, I know how she feels!"
Something flickered in the boy's expression, as if he'd blurted out something he shouldn't have, and all of a sudden he wouldn't meet Hazel's eyes. Hazel had no intention of letting him leave it there, and simply stared pointedly, waiting. After a minute, Mercury sighed, crossing his arms behind his head and looking up to the ceiling.
"...One minute, I was walking around with perfectly good, natural legs," he began, careful not to let too much emotion bleed into his voice. "Not the strongest in the world, I'll admit, but I liked myself just fine with them. Then the next thing I know, I'm in my dad's workshop, and he's shoving rags and ether in my mouth and sawing through my fucking knees before I was even knocked out all the way. Woke up...And the first thing I see is my legs thrown in a trash bag. I mean, I...I'm pretty sure that's not what you're supposed to do with the damn things when you're done."
He made a choked noise at the back of his throat, that Hazel assumed was an attempt at a laugh.
"Technically, the metal legs are fine. Dad wanted to make a killing machine and that's what he got. But right at the start...I swear, everything, every little pain, every little difference, just drove me crazy. I...It hurt so bad that I had to make someone else hurt too. I wanted to destroy everything and everyone I could reach. I needed to. I barely even lasted a week before..." He paused, then turned to Hazel with a smirk that looked rather sick. "Well, I'm sure Cinder told you guys how she found me."
"So that's how it happened?"
"Yeah. I don't think you would get it. But when something like that happens to you, it's only a matter of time before you snap."
He opened his mouth to explain further, but at that moment a crash and a yell of frustration came from Cinder's room, that made both of them look over. Through the half-open door, Hazel could quickly discern the source of the commotion. In trying to reach the water, Cinder's injured leg had yet again given out and buckled under her, or perhaps her newly impaired depth perception had deceived her. But whatever had happened, had made her fall and crash right into the metal bed frame, her bad knee and shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, and knocked her to the floor, hard.
The girl had always had a remarkably high tolerance for pain, so Hazel could only conclude that the tiny, distressed ah, ah, ah noises she made as she realized she was struggling to get up came from momentary fright instead. For a second, she lay there, wide-eyed and shaking, leg twitching, her good arm alternating between grabbing at her chest and scratching at the carpet as she tried to pull herself back to her feet.
It only took that second for Emerald to notice, gasp, and dart back across the room to her leader's side. "Cinder!"
Cinder's only response was an unintelligible noise, something like a whimper, as Emerald bent down to help her up, wrapping one arm around her shoulders for support and taking her hand with the other for comfort. "It's okay," she soothed, as she guided her up and over to the bed, Cinder's bad leg dragging uselessly on the floor behind her. "You're okay, I'm here. I'm right here..."
To anyone else, this might have been comforting. But Hazel could see, in the curl of Cinder's lip and the indignant flare in her eyes, that it was only making things worse. He could hear the faint, raspy breath from here, building up to try for a growl, and watched carefully to see what would happen. Mercury, he observed, was doing the same.
Emerald didn't seem to notice, just kept talking as she guided Cinder to the bed, apparently thinking her ragged breathing and trembling body still meant distress and not anger. "Almost there...Easy, I've got you. You're - !"
Whatever she was going to say next was broken off into a choked yelp, as Cinder managed to twist around, grab Emerald by the neck, and throw her down to the floor with an incoherent attempt to shout. She started to fall with her, but quickly steadied herself on her good knee before she could hit the ground again, leaning over Emerald, who was only able to stare up in bewildered shock. Cinder grabbed the younger girl by the collar and held on tight, and Emerald immediately went limp and unresisting. Her arm and hand were still shaking and beads of sweat ran down her forehead, the exertion only worsening both her pain and the absolutely livid expression that twisted her face.
"Knew it. Bad move," Mercury remarked under his breath, shaking his head.
"Does she usually do this?" Hazel asked.
"Get rough with Emmy? Sometimes," Mercury muttered back, not taking his eyes off his teammates. "Flip her shit like this? Never."
Gritting her teeth and breathing hard through her charred throat, Cinder yanked Emerald up close and started to hiss something into her ear. At his distance, Hazel couldn't hear exactly what she was trying to say, only faint rasping and clicking. But from the stunned and then horrified look on the girl's face, he guessed that Emerald could understand much better.
"Ci...Cinder, I'm not...I didn't mean it like that!" she stammered. "I-I'm sorry, I don't - "
Cinder let out a rough, gravelly noise of irritation and, with what strength she could muster, threw Emerald away from her again, bracing herself against the bedframe to keep her balance. Emerald stumbled and almost fell over herself, but managed to stay on her feet, albeit coltishly unsteady. While she looked dazed and hurt, Cinder was still glaring at her with a ferocity that Hazel thought was completely uncalled for, all bared teeth and fire in her eye.
"Guh...G-Geeeh, ahhh," she growled, and for the life of him Hazel couldn't figure out what that was supposed to mean. "Ehh-et..."
Emerald's hand twitched forward, as if to reach out towards her leader. "Cinder, I really am sorry! Please just let me - "
"N...Uoh!" Cinder tried to yell, going bright red in the face at her inability to make herself understood. Leaning against the bed, she made half-hearted swiping motions at Emerald and the door. "G-G-Geh-ahd!"
"O-Okay..."
Visibly crestfallen, Emerald quickly left the room. She shut the door as Cinder climbed up onto her bed and laid down, panting hard, as if she'd just been tortured instead of simply tried to walk across her room.
As the thief crossed the wide hallway, Mercury opened his mouth to speak, and she immediately narrowed her eyes at him. "Shut up, Mercury."
"I didn't even say anything!"
"Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it!"
"Well," Hazel began, making the girl turn her distrustful glare on him. "Will you at least tell us what she said to you?"
At that, the sharpness faded from Emerald's eyes and the bite from her voice, leaving only exhaustion. "She...She said, 'Don't talk down to me. Don't you dare.' But I wasn't trying to do that at all! I-I wanted to...I just...I mean, I thought - !"
"Now, come on, Emmy," Mercury said, only half teasing. "What's Cinder always trying to tell you about thinking?"
Emerald gave a deep, frustrated huff, running her hands through her hair. "I'm...I'm just trying to help her. But it feels like I can never tell what she wants from me now."
"...What she wants, is for none of this to have ever happened," Hazel said quietly.
"Well, I can't give her that!" Emerald nearly shouted. "I would love to, I would give anything to do that, but I can't! I'm just...I'm trying my best, I'm doing everything I can do, but none of it's ever good enough for her!"
"Can't deny that," Mercury said, his carefully neutral tone like a peace offering. "Like, I get it, but it's fucked up to see her acting so different, right?"
Emerald sighed. "Much as I hate to agree with you...Exactly. She would never - It's like she's not even herself anymore."
"Yes," Hazel agreed. "I had thought she'd grown out of outbursts like this long ago."
"Yeah, I - " Mercury broke off, and both children looked at him strangely as the words fully registered with them. "What do you mean, grown out of?"
"Hm?"
"He means..." Emerald stumbled over the words, not quite meeting his eyes. "How...How long has Cinder been living here with all these - Uh, I mean, with all of you?"
"Since she was fifteen."
"Yeah?" He couldn't quite place the look Mercury was giving him, but he got the sense that it was judgmental. "How does a kid manage to catch the attention of people like you?"
"She stabbed a Huntsman twenty-seven times in the chest," Hazel said matter-of-factly, pausing for a second to think back. The girl's howls of primal fury, the blood-spattered dirt and crude, jagged glass, still proved clear in his memory. "And the stomach. And the face. I think she might have gotten him between the legs once or twice, as well."
The hall was quiet for a good few seconds. Emerald just stared, eyes wide, with what Hazel couldn't decide was shock, astonishment, or both. Mercury raised his eyebrows, looking vaguely impressed, finally remarking, "Right. As you do."
"She'd been having something of a bad day," Hazel explained, with a half-hearted shrug. "That's not the point. Even then, she had considerable raw talent, and never had any problems with what she had to do to stay here. But she was much more temperamental back then. Didn't know how to deal with her own emotions very well."
As far as he could see, the girl still didn't, just did a better job of suppressing anything she didn't like. But he refrained from saying this out loud. He wouldn't undermine the image Cinder had built up for herself to show off to her subordinates (she was doing a fine job of that on her own), nor would he reveal what scant details he knew of the background she was so loath to talk about. However, that did not mean he couldn't let the children draw their own conclusions.
"Considering the sort of life we pulled her out of, I wonder whether lashing out isn't her way of dealing with trauma."
Mercury rolled his eyes. "Play psychoanalogist all you want, it's not going to help."
But Emerald seemed to be taking the words to heart, worry leaking into the frustration in her voice. "I want to help her. She needs m - she needs something to be okay again. And I know things must be awful and hard for her right now...But if she's going to throw it back in my face every time I try to make it easier for her, I-I just don't know what I'm going to do! What more am I supposed to do?"
"Well, for starters, maybe quit treating her like she's this fragile thing that's about to fall apart?" Mercury suggested, in a tone that might have sounded mocking, had Hazel not figured out by now that this was just how the boy talked. "That's not helping any, either. Actually, she just made it pretty clear that it pisses her off, whether you mean well or not. I just talk to her normally, and she seems to like that well enough. At least, she hasn't flipped out on me yet."
From the way Emerald whirled on him, it appeared that that had been a rhetorical question. "Oh, so you've got all the answers now?"
"Uh, I've got one, which is apparently one more than you have."
"That's rich coming from you! Remind me, who's the one who's actually - "
"We're going back to this, now, then?" Hazel said, as dryly as possible. Appropriately chastened, Emerald went quiet, and settled for looking at him indignantly instead. He supposed a few words of help would not go amiss. "Give her time. She'll have to accept soon enough that this isn't getting her anywhere."
Emerald sighed, rubbing her temple as if staving off a headache. "I get that, I get it, I just...I don't know how much more of...this - !" She waved a frustrated hand around at nothing and everything, at her leader, the fortress and its residents, their whole realm. " - I can take at this point!" She looked about to say more, but broke off abruptly. From the look on her face, she was clearly afraid she'd blurted out too much.
"Nothing here means you harm; you do us good service," Hazel assured her. The statement was true, as well as the implication that the former half would change as soon as the latter stopped being true. "Don't let it overwhelm you. I've found that taking time to yourself is fairly settling."
"Is that your way of telling us to go away again?" Emerald asked skeptically.
Hazel shrugged. "Do as you please. It's really none of my concern."
"Well, in that case," Mercury said, stretching his arms out above his head, "I'm going to work out a bit. If we're going to be stuck in this gods-damned place for months on end, I can't afford to get rusty. Em, want to come? You can sit on my back while I do push-ups."
Emerald rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Don't you think I have better things to do with my life?"
Mercury cocked an eyebrow, tilting his head to the side. "Do you really?"
"No. Let's go."
The pair walked the short distance down the corridor and back into their own shared bedroom, leaving Hazel standing there without another word. Which was all right, he supposed; he wasn't going to stay around here for any longer than he had to. He had plenty to do, as well. That being said...
He gave one last look to Cinder's door. He couldn't hear anything behind it anymore, but he could be certain that the girl was still in there seething. Letting her take her time to adapt would work, eventually. But taking things to their logical extreme, he wasn't entirely sure that 'eventually' was good enough, for any of them. Perhaps Mercury was right, after all. Giving Cinder a nudge in the right direction - a solid push, more like - to hasten the process was likely necessary.
A deep, weary sigh rose up from Hazel's chest. Nobody else would do it, that was for sure. Once again, the duty of being the sole voice of reason on this team would fall to him.
0~
He decided that the break of dawn that next day was as good a time as any to make his move. Or, he supposed, as close to 'dawn' as his master's realm had.
In any case, it was early enough that none of the three were awake enough to intercept him, let alone stop him, when he picked the lock to Cinder's bedroom door and stepped inside. He closed the door quietly behind him, and walked soundlessly up to the girl's bedside.
Cinder slept restlessly, just as she had when she had first come to live at the fortress as a child. Her eyelid twitched and she writhed under the blankets, mouthing that same unintelligible word over and over again. But this time, Hazel could focus enough to read her lips and guess the word: father. Father, don't. Interesting, he supposed.
Hazel hesitated for a moment over how to go about this. Internally, he went over what little he knew about his youngest teammate: Cinder Fall, twenty-two years old, daughter of Mistrali mercenaries, both long dead. Possessed of a heat Semblance focusing on deconstruction and reconstruction, and after being put through proper training here, had exceeded expectations in learning to combine that with her Dust, swords, and bow. Had proven loyal to Salem and a worthwhile member of the team since her recruitment, but dealing with her own personal issues and flaws was something she had always vehemently resisted, instead preferring to run full steam ahead and pretend that they weren't there.
He would be the first to admit that he had never been one to talk very much, if he had his way. But there was a lot that needed to be said that Cinder would not want to hear and that nobody else was able or willing to tell her. After this brief deliberation, he decided that she would respond best, and more importantly fastest, to the direct approach. Perhaps she needed to be shocked into understanding.
So to this end, he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, took hold of the girl's uninjured shoulder, and shook her until her eye flashed open. It took her a second to focus enough to recognize him about two feet from her face, but when she did, she immediately recoiled, her back hitting the bed frame, and let out a strangled attempt at a yell. Her good hand reflexively flew up to cover the exposed scar.
"I've seen your wounds at their worst," he pointed out. "You hardly need to do that."
Something like a growl came up from Cinder's throat, and her palm flew out to ram into his chest, trying to shove him away from her. The action wasn't half-hearted in the least, but he barely felt it. It wasn't anything like the last time they'd sparred, he thought, remembering the vicious strike to the neck she had very nearly finished the match with.
"Do you mean to tell me that you've lost your fire already? That's not like you at all."
The look Cinder gave him was an ugly mix of disgust and hatred, and she pushed at him again, inhaling and exhaling hard, like she was preparing herself to speak.
"Stop that," he ordered. "And sit still. Seven years you've lived here; you should know that I, at least, am not here to make fun of you. And you're not in a position to refuse free help."
Cinder still looked as though she were trying to set him on fire with her glare alone - which, it occurred to him, she might now be fully capable of doing - but after a moment, she quieted and sat back against her pile of pillows anyway. She raised her eyebrow and gestured insistently at Hazel as if to say, Well? Get on with it, then.
Fine, he would. "What do you think you're doing?"
Confusion flashed across her face for a moment, before stubbornness came right back. If she could speak, Hazel knew, the answer would depend on which of the thousand snappish retorts no doubt running through her head now was fastest out of her mouth. But since she could not, he went on.
"You understand how you're acting, don't you? That you're being irrational?"
Glaring.
"Do you think lashing out at everyone, like a stubborn child, is going to help you in some way?"
More glaring, but with added bristling for good measure.
"Hackles down," he growled. Cinder was usually the easiest of his teammates to deal with, he thought ruefully, trying not to show frustration. "This isn't a test. I asked you a simple yes-or-no question. Answer it, or I'm not leaving."
After a long moment, Cinder gave a single shake of her head.
"That's what I thought. So, now let me ask: how long do you think you can keep it up?"
Cinder blinked (or whatever the one-eyed equivalent was). All the anger flooded out of her face, and now she just looked puzzled.
"I'm not talking about what we think of it. We don't care. What I'm talking about are your subordinates. How long do you think those two are going to put up with you?"
Ah, there was the outraged look again. That hadn't taken long at all to come back. A thin rasping noise came up from Cinder's throat; she meant to argue, but Hazel cut her off before she could try. "I know what you want to say. They'll never leave you. They belong to you. Everything they have, they owe to you. And if you had said that just a few weeks ago, you would have been completely right. But things have changed now."
Her eye narrowed. She gestured to the wall to their right, that separated her room from Emerald and Mercury's, and then shook her hand in a slashing motion across her neck: With them? Never!
"You don't honestly think that. You just don't like admitting that this balance of power you've set up has been flipped upside down. And don't hiss at me," he added, seeing her lip beginning to curl, "because I'm telling you what you already know. Don't you remember what happened after you were beaten on Beacon Tower?"
Cinder looked suspicious, but shook her head, surprising him somewhat.
"You really don't? No one told you?"
She shook her head again, glancing away for a moment to think. After that moment, she pointed to herself, then to the window, out into the distance. She snapped her fingers, and then gestured to herself and to the floor, all around the room: I was there, and then I was here. Just like that.
Well, then. In hindsight, Hazel supposed, it shouldn't be too surprising that she had no recollection of what had happened. He knew well what destruction the silver eyes could wreak on anything in their path, he thought, unconsciously shifting his arms. Bad enough to inflict on a normal human, but instant death to a Grimm, and he couldn't imagine what kind of agony they could cause to a Maiden who had stolen her powers by allowing a Grimm to fuse itself into her body with them. The mind acted to protect itself from trauma that would destroy it; no doubt the pain had been so intense that all memory of it had been blocked from Cinder's psyche for her own safety. He did feel a twinge of pity for the girl at the thought, but that only reminded him of why he was talking to her in the first place.
"You ought to remember. It's important," he chastised her. "Those two saw the light at the top of the tower and realized immediately that you must be in trouble. So they ran all the way there, scaled the tower with their bare hands, and then hauled your deadweight body all the way back home before the Huntsmen could find you."
For a split second, Cinder looked stunned, then quickly resumed looking irritated before Hazel could notice she'd reacted. He decided not to comment on it.
"You're smart, I'm sure you understand. There was nothing you could have done if they had decided to cut their losses and run away, and they could have done that very, very easily. The girl would have eventually starved and died alone without your help, and the boy would have had nowhere and no one to go to without you, that's still true. But you would have bled to death on that tower and your hard-won power passed on to your killer if they hadn't taken the risk and chosen to save you. Now, you owe them just as much as they owe you, if not more. Do you understand that?"
As expected, the look on Cinder's face said clearly, I understand and I hate it. And you.
"You don't have to like it. But you do need to adapt to it. They don't like it here and they're losing patience with you. You can't control them the way you have been anymore, by holding what you did for them over their heads or by threatening them with power and strength you've now lost."
She pointed to the wall, then to herself, then drew a shaky equals sign in the air with her finger, looking at Hazel as if he'd just said the most idiotic thing she'd ever heard. We're equals now? That's ridiculous!
"I didn't say that. You brought those two home, and how you handle them is your responsibility. But even a worm will turn, Cinder; you know that better than I do. Keep trying to act as if you're untouchable, and soon enough they'll turn on you and you will be left alone, with no one who'll let you use them as a crutch. You haven't been working on your mobility properly. You've lost control of your powers, and you don't know how to properly use your weapons anymore. As of now, you're completely useless on your own."
Cinder's eye widened and her face twisted in fury. Her hand shot up, sparks bursting in the palm, clearly trying to bring a fireball into it. But Hazel didn't even flinch, knowing that that was all she'd be able to do. And sure enough, the sparks fizzled out even faster than he'd thought, leaving Cinder staring at her own empty hand as if it had suddenly taken on a mind of its own and slapped her.
Hazel let her stunned silence hang in the air for another few seconds before he continued. "Right now, you can barely walk, see, or speak, you only have one working arm, and you can't take care of yourself, let alone fight. And that makes you furious, but no one cares about your anger except you. All that matters is, you're even more helpless now than you were when we found you. Do you remember that? Even after all this time, are you still just that hungry little alley cat I pulled out of the dirt and filth of Mistral?"
Cinder almost flinched, as if the reminder was a physical blow, even as her face contorted in rage. "Sh-haah, ahh!" she managed to snarl, before choking on the attempt to shout at him. Clearly, memories of the past were still bitter to her, and though (unlike his teammates) he had never seen the point of deliberately provoking people, Hazel still could not resist hammering the point in a little more. Gods knew she probably needed it.
"You wouldn't want us to throw you right back where we found you, of course. To be fair, neither do we, not after all the time and effort we've put into you. But if all the work you've done turns out to have all been for nothing, then we will have no reason to keep you. Remember: you're difficult to replace, but not impossible." He pauses, thinking about whether or not he should continue, then decides that it wouldn't hurt to share his own personal feelings on the matter. "That would truly be a disappointment, Cinder. And I've never thought of you that way. You became strong enough to bring an entire kingdom down, but the way you're behaving now, you're as good as giving up on everything you swore to do. And if you do that, you disrespect yourself, you disrespect me, and you disrespect whoever it was that trained you before me."
At the last item, Cinder caught her breath, surprised. She opened her mouth, but Hazel went on before she could hurt her throat any more: "Yes, I know you said you were self-taught back then. No, none of us believed you. You struggled, but not that badly. And you took too well to our training to not have experienced something similar before."
The look on Cinder's face and the half-hearted nod she gave could only be translated as, All right, that's fair.
"I would hope, for your sake, that you're a better liar now than you were then," Hazel remarked, finally getting up from the bed and starting to leave. He'd said his piece, now it the rest was up to Cinder. Still...Perhaps a little more. He stopped, looked back over his shoulder, and added, in a tone he hoped was more gentle, "You've certainly become stronger since that day. Aside from letting yourself be ambushed, you did well on your mission. You should be proud of yourself."
It seemed Cinder's anger had burned itself out, at least for the time being. When she stared back at him, she merely looked very tired, more so than he had ever seen her. She nodded once, the fire in her gaze momentarily calmed, and Hazel decided to take it to mean, Thank you, Hazel, for helping me get my head on straight, because no one else is going to do that for me.
"It's the least I can do, to talk to you like this," he added. "You know about...the interest I had in your being assigned to Beacon, and I've spoken to Salem about what happened there. And she tells me that you fought and killed Ozpin's current incarnation."
For the first time since she had arrived home, Cinder's trademark smirk reappeared on her face. Hazel wasn't sure how she could make a simple nod of confirmation look so incredibly smug, but she pulled it off.
"I know you had higher priorities to attend to, so I assume you had to make it fast. But, tell me...How did you do it?"
Cinder's smirk broadened. She brought the sparks to her palm again and spread her fingers out from her chest, to mimic flames catching. She did this a few more times for emphasis, and Hazel could fill in the rest, the visions of a roaring inferno and dying screams. Burning to death...An extraordinarily painful way to go. And a more than appropriate punishment.
He didn't quite smile, but it was close enough. "Good girl. If he had any decency at all, he'd stay dead, like his vessels." Like Gretchen, he thought with a twist in his heart, but did not say. "But no such luck. I told you before you left, death is nothing to him but a delay in his plans. All we can do is make him suffer for what he's done."
Cinder seemed to understand clearly enough. She gestured to the window, touched her chest with her middle finger and pointed to Hazel with her index finger, and then twisted both fingers together and made several vicious stabbing motions, as if she held her sword again. More sparks flew to emphasize her point; it was a wonder she hadn't lit her bedsheets on fire. Hazel didn't think that that was any actual sign language she was trying to use, but he could still get her meaning, too.
"Next time out there, you'll kill him with me?"
Nod, nod.
"I see. Well, to do that, you'll have to step back and take your recovery much more seriously. Won't you?"
The tired expression returned, but Hazel thought he saw the first dawning light of comprehension in Cinder's eyes, and wondered why he hadn't realized that the promise of murder in her future would be the best way to achieve that.
"Sleep on it, if you're still unsure. You've got the time," he finished, before turning and leaving the room, closing the door softly behind him.