What Do You See?
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.... falling down the rabbit hole ...
Footsteps and silence. Or it would have been silence if not for Zero's light-hearted
chatter as the taller reploid walked not more than three steps ahead, golden ponytail bleached
into silver by the moonlit darkness as it swished back and forth behind the crimson hunter. A
silver tail that flashed and swayed, beckoning and fleeing in the same smooth restless motion,
like an ocean's wave in the cold light. X stared at it without truly seeing it as he kept pace
with Zero, feeling the day's long hunt down to his metallic bones.
Listlessly, he glanced around the street, noting the empty buildings and their glass-less
windows that stood like eyeless faces over them. The broken street lamps and the wrecked cars,
mere shells of twisted metal and glass, no more than scrap with shattered eyes. And over it
all, the overwhelming gray. A play of dark and light in only one color, the heavy handed touch
of moon and midnight.
Zero's roaming walk brought them close to the cars lining the empty avenue, and X turned
his head at the faintest trace of movement, perhaps nothing more than a fleeing rat, and yet
his eye was drawn to it, forced to roam over the wreck of a smashed car.
In the moonlight, the single salvaged window flickered, and X paused, caught by his own
splayed reflection.
Only it wasn't his reflection.
The face was not his face, the armor not his armor, the helmet not his helmet. But it
was him.
He stared at it as Zero's steps receded like a stone skipping off water, his companion's
laughter fading away from his perception like a crow that flies it's song away. Separated from
himself only by glass and air, there was only flickering sparks of red where the eyes would
be, shaded by more than one layer of glass, like a pair of vermilion fireflies trapped in
oil-black amber.
There was no color. Only black and white, the cold hard touch of moonlight on the
window's glass. But the red was fire-bright as he stared at himself and lifted his hand to
touch it, to see if it was truly real or just a waking dream. The reflections hand lifted, in
perfect sync, in perfect cant, perfectly his except the blood that dripped from fingers' tips
and coated palms and wrists. Perfect, blood-stained hands.
X's hand stilled, caught in mid-air as the reflection's palm pressed against the window's
glass and a single drop of blood slid down the smooth, slick surface, beading on X's side of
the glass.
Death within, death without ... deader than dead and more bloody than the bleeding ...
The warped reflection smiled at him, no more than a twist of chill lips, the merest
upturning of the corners of a perfect mouth, cold and cruel like a dagger's blade.
"Hey, X! Are you coming or not?!"
And he ran, ran as fast as he could to catch up with Zero's smiling face, not looking
back no matter what ... even though he could hear the laughter, like a thousand shards of
shattering glass, tinkling inside his mind.
... and realizing it wasn't a rabbit's hole you fell into ...
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