Reflection
She stood there, dripping wet, a towel clutched in one hand. She was always struck by her reflection at times like this, off guard and unprepared for the harsh memories it brought back. The full-body view provided by her bathroom mirror certainly didn't help.
Her face. Her hair was evenly cut and well cared for, no longer the frizzled mess it had been when she'd escaped, dry, split and tangled. Her eyes were as sharp as ever, her stare as intense and calculating as it'd been when seen through the portals. She supposed that would never change. Her nose had never been broken, nor her cheek bones, though there was a scar on her chin. She could still feel it, the burn of skin flying off, a few hairs dropping, the cold shock of such a close call, the questioning voice. "Are you still there?"
No, no she wasn't. She was free now.
Her neck, her shoulders, her arms, her chest. Again, mostly untouched, though from the elbows down she was flecked with shiny patches, scars left from chemical burns. She remembered every one, every time she'd slipped or fallen on the gels, catching herself, the pain red-hot on her palms and everywhere it splashed. The voices rang through her head, warning of the dangerous properties of the gels.
She was glad she'd never been so hungry she tried to eat them; no doubt she'd be dead by now.
Her feet, ankles, calves. Untouched by anything, protected by the boots that had saved her life so many times. It had taken months of walking around barefoot or in flats to stretch out her Achilles tendon, shortened from being en point for so long. It hadn't bothered her; being able to walk flat-footed was a symbol of freedom, and she didn't care how much pain it took to be able to do it.
Because hell if she was wearing heels.
Her thighs and her hips. Long, upwards-pointing scars, the dragging of fire and shrapnel along her skin, shredding through the jumpsuit after stepping on the trigger, coiled around the base of the button. If not for her boots, she probably would've lost her legs, and would've died very soon afterwards. Her abdomen as well, peppered with bullet-scars and bomb shards, though those were shorter marks.
The most powerful scars from that fight were emotional, though.
Her hands. The worst of all, always stripped to the elements. Bright red palms, burned too many times, scraped from catching herself on the abrasive portal surfaces, cut by protruding pieces in the abandoned sections of the facility. The fingers of her right hand, forever partially curled, unable to straighten after so much time clutching the pull-trigger within the ASHPD. The backs, a scramble of dark marks that she couldn't remember how she got; blowback from bullets, she'd guess. The skin stretched and pulled whenever she tried to do anything, no matter how heavily she lotioned it. Precision movement was something she refused to give up on, but less than a year after her release, she'd developed arthritis. Her pills only numbed the pain, they didn't help with the clumsiness she'd developed as a side effect of it. But still she persisted.
Besides which, she hated the pills. She hated putting a foreign substance in her body under any circumstances, and pain meant she was alive.
Chell sighed, turning her back on the mirror and drying her hair. If this was going to happen every time she took a shower, she told herself, she was going to have to find a new home for that thing.
Perhaps a dumpster.
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