All the hatred she possessed filtered through her mind. She wished she could express that part of the story. Sure… the humans had been stupid; they should have killed out the demons while they had the chance. Now the humans were dying. Stupid stupid stupid.
"You broke my arm," the words jerked from her. "We… humanity… pressed down on your race for so long. We were blind to what should have been the first issue. All of this could have been avoided…" then she added, "all the pain to your kind."
Chrys laughed. He didn't miss the pause. "Your kind started this because they were scared of us. Don't try to placate me… tell me flat out what you think. Go on."
Ashes didn't want to say anything. If she said everything that was going through her thoughts, she could expect to be in agony for months. Chrys was violent, and she was the example. Even words exchanged between the two of them with no one else around would be enough. It was a dance. She had to speak enough of her mind to placate him without releasing his anger. Sometimes she succeeded. Sometimes she spent a few nights trying not to scream and failing.
"My kind was stupid; we reacted to our fears without much thought. Always being taught that reason was better than emotion and belief told us that we ought not to trust your kind. We created the problem. But so will you." These thoughts had been turning over in her head for a few days; that this situation only created more problems.
"You hate me for what my ancestors did. For the only thing I ever knew or was raised to know. And after I am long dead, and the children of my race sit in my shoes, they will hate you. How long before you fall the same way I did?" she said. He thought about this. Her compromise had worked, thanks to the way she kept the real hatred she felt out of her voice. She still believed in all those things that she had been raised under. She still believed that he ought to be chained and she ought to be the one sleeping in a comfortable bed. After months of abuse, both physical and emotional, she learned to keep her thoughts to herself. She learned to compromise and she learned how to use truth to disguise lies.
"What makes you think," venom was seeping into the words. "That ANY of your kind will survive long," said Chrys.
"What good is hatred if you don't have anyone to act against?" She replied.
"True." Rising from the bed where he'd made himself quite comfortable, he went to her. It was over in a few seconds, Ashes cowering on the floor, trying to protect herself from his blows. He kicked her again for good measure, and returned to bed, flicking the light-switch on the way, so that blackness descended.
Being the example was boring, Ashes decided the next day. What else was their to do when Chrys was busy. Ruling a race wasn't just some joker position. She learned a lot about the flaws in the various governmental systems just by coming here. They might think her dumb and fragile, but she knew how to listen. There was no other way to occupy her time. Many of his meetings were private, nowadays for just that reason.
She learned in the time before this that the humans reign over the demons was characterized by fact and reason. Of course, fact had its place, and the demons would never throw it out entirely, but the system they were putting in place gave emotions their power too. Emotion was a motivator, a satisfier and they intended to collect those. She also learned a bit of the way a demon's hunger worked. These were the things that she never bothered with in her old life because in her old life, demons didn't matter. A demon didn't necessarily have to eat human flesh. Animals would work. Raw meat was especially enjoyed, but they could cook it as well. Going without food would kill them in a similar way to how it killed humans. Many of Chrys' politics involved how to feed his kind. The debates were between those who wanted to raise humans as livestock, and those who argued that doing so would end in disaster, the humans one day realizing that they could be in power as well.
Ashes was more than interested by these debates. She wanted to contribute, but she was realizing day by day how little she knew of the world she was living in. It was this concept that led her to ask a question one evening. The day had been one of her more boring experiences. Her bruises had all but healed from her last attack, and the violent responses seemed to be losing their appeal.
"I'm not a nice person?" she said to Chrys. He was surprised. He'd gone through his bedtime routine, the two of them talking about the downfall of humanity, and watching her cry. He was about to drift into sleep when her voice whispered the question. She could hardly believe she was saying this, after everything he'd done to her, shouldn't she hate him; shouldn't he be the one feeling like a terrible person? Even he had to think about it.
"You weren't." Chrys said. "You did awful things to my kind because we're different; because you were scared of us." He almost added that it wasn't her fault, she didn't know any better. But he didn't really believe that. The words that followed were automatic for her. She'd been trying to find a way to say it for along time. Not because she was scared for her life or her race, though that might have played a small factor. Viewing it from the other end of the spectrum, she could see things that she would never notice from anywhere else.
"I… Tha-… … Sorry." She tried to be sincere, but to her ears, it sounded choppy and nervous. To his ears, those were the things that made it real. It wasn't rehearsed. It wasn't just the words.