A Cut Above The Rest [Kaelen]

a constellation of tears on your lashes
burn everything you love
then burn the ashes
in the end, everything collides
my childhood spat back out the monster that you see

I have kept a very meticulous (and small) list over the years of things that frighten me, that truly, honestly frighten me. I don't like spiders. I don't like mimes. I don't like asparagus. There's a definite difference between an aversion to something and having a deep, visceral fear that can liquify your bones and render you useless.

I am was afraid of my father. Years upon years of walking around my own home, trying not to make a sound. A million bruises that I used to pray my teachers would ask about until I realized that they didn't care. It all built up to a terror that consumed me - home was hell and there was nowhere I could go to escape - until I took Fate into my own custody with a simple sleight of hand and a little extra something poured into a drink. It was the first time I ever felt strong, watching the force of fear that had ruled my life fade out in a tide of gasps and bloody coughs, and after that, I made a decision to master my fears rather than run from them. It didn't work out too well.

I am afraid of tight spaces. When I was still little enough to fit and Dad was in a really foul mood, I was doomed to long hours locked in the linen closet upstairs. The older I got, the less space there was, and I'd spiral into hyperventilating, dry-sobbing panic attacks, under the delusion that the walls were closing in. Even though that particular punishment stopped when I was about twelve, the memory of that blind horror stuck with me. I don't take elevators. I avoid getting caught in crowds. I stay the hell away from even the largest walk-in closets. Once when we'd sneaked out of class for me to take a smoke break, the door to the boiler room locked the second I closed it. Colt couldn't understand why I couldn't breathe or why my hands were shaking. I think the part that hurt him most was that even his kisses and stuttered, whispered reassurances couldn't calm me down. After that, I decided to find somewhere else to smoke.

I am afraid of total darkness. The closet was the kind of inky pitch-black that doesn't exist in most parts of the world. However, that sort of darkness is very easy to find in the subterranean depths of Thirteen. Colt used to laugh at me for having a flimsy plastic night light in my room, couldn't understand why I'd get so irritated when the kindly mocking smile would bloom on his lips. There's something about darkness that deep that makes fear shoot electric through my bones (maybe it's because it's a glimpse of what there really is beneath my skin, a poisonous, consuming void that sucks in everything around it), and while I have never been a creature of the light, I can't ever quite shake the feeling that there are things hiding in the shadows, waiting for me.

I am afraid of watching Colt or my family die. I knew the risks when I let Ella pull me into this war, knew that I was putting more than my own life on the line, but I never really felt the full extent of true terror until I went to pick up some information from one of our operatives only to find him dead on his bedroom floor, YOUR MOVE painted out in the rusty stain of blood on the wall behind him. In that moment, a fear greater than anything I've ever known gripped me, kept me paralyzed and rooted to the ground for a full five minutes as horrible visions of everyone I've ever loved being slaughtered skated across my visions. I knew who the culprit was. I didn't even have think twice. And that's why I've been out prowling the streets every night since, looking for a clash of the titans that might end to my detriment but would at least save Aurora or Moira or Colt from ending up as the next body left slumped in a puddle of blood, the result of the cruelest kind of game.

The kind of game reserved for the likes of me, and of Elspeth Moreno.

The rhythmic clunking sounds like cannon-fire in the stillness of the night, accosting my ears as I dodge expertly in and out of the alleyways that have become as familiar as the network of silvery veins along the back of my hand. It could be nothing, just a cat rooting around in a dumpster, but the solid beat sounds like something sinister, something human, and so I duck out from behind a lamppost to look for the source.

The broken lock and flurry of activity is enough to tip me off - because, honestly, who else would be narcissistic or insane enough to rob a shoe store? I growl in irritation at my rebellious adrenaline-response, cursing my breath for scraping rough and choked through my lungs, my heart for pounding out a rapid-fire drumbeat in my ears. She may have a certain skill for murder, but I've been walking hand-in-hand with the Reaper since the moment I first drew breath. And of course, there's the little insurance of one of the "borrowed" Shore daggers tucked into my waistband, a backup one shoved securely into the side of my boot. The Morenos aren't the only ones in this war who have been conditioned to kill. Career training wasn't all that fun for me, but no one can say that I wasn't damn good at it.

Swift and silent as the shadows that I still

holy water cannot help you now
a thousand armies couldn't keep me out
i don't want your money
i don't want your crown
see, i've come to burn your kingdom down

"I've always wondered what you'd be like. I always pictured you shorter. Maybe a couple of inches taller than me. In truth, after seeing Kiera… Well, my imagination ran amok. I pictured you as a male Kiera after that. I mean, sure, your face I could look at. But faces never tell the full story, I find." she says, her voice silken but dangerous, a quiet sort of poison lurking underneath with which I'm all too familiar. Elspeth Moreno isn't something to be taken lightly, and that knowledge is enough to keep my eyes glued to her as she traipses around in those stupid shoes, grinning at me like she's got a secret. "I take it you got my message. I hope you did. It was such a pleasure to write for you. And he was just so compliant."

The way she says it so casually, how she mentions murder as if it's nothing but a change in the weather… I don't know why I find it disturbing. Maybe because I've only ever seen that kind on nonchalance in myself. I can remember the scene that I walked into, remember the vicious wounds and the crimson stains painting the walls, and it just doesn't seem to match up with the tiny little wisp of a thing modeling her new shoes in front of me, despite the malicious veneer over her skin and the quiet menace sparking behind her eyes. Elspeth Moreno's main benefit, I decide, is that people underestimate her. I won't be making that mistake. "I hope you don't mind me continuing browsing. It's been so long since I've indulged myself on a good pair of shoes. Besides, I was hoping we could talk. As one twisted individual to another."

"Well, if we were simply talking, I'd imagine the setting to be a little more civil than both of us standing here holding knives," I counter drily, making no move to drop my guard or put away my blade. Elspeth moves through the aisles with a sinuous, serpentine sort of grace, a practiced carriage that has a deadly beauty to it that even I have to grudgingly appreciate. The most hateful part of all of this is that we're not so different, her and I, both monsters in human skin with a kindred, violent spirit. We just happen to be on opposite sides of the same fight. A shame, really. We might have been something akin to friends, once. A mirthless smirk tugs at my lips as I move in careful counter to her progress through the store, never leaving my back unguarded, veins humming with adrenaline. "As one twisted individual to another, however, allow me to say how greatly I admire your work, Miss Moreno. The indirect approach, the big reveal, the bloody fingerprinting… nothing short of brilliantly unique. Intricate. Elegant. Terrifying. You presented an inconvenience by taking out one of my top couriers, of course, but I do like your style."

"Why did you come here, Kaelen? Don't give me some stupid reason. Like to kill me, there's a pretty long queue for that privilege. Why are you really here? Partaking in a little of your own shopping?" The grin that paints the Moreno princess' lips as she moves down one of the aisles toward me is nothing short of feral. There's a palpable tension thickening the air - two Alphas circling each other, each gauging the other for strengths, weaknesses, threats - but to both of our credits, neither one of us backs down even as she moves a little too far into my personal space. I have always seen the weaknesses of others play out like a living map in my head, and Elspeth's are easy to spot for the simple fact that they are the same as my own - Madness. Overconfidence. Narcissism. A mental chess game with her won't be easy (despite being utterly psychotic, she's taken down enough of my people and plans to prove that she's far from stupid), but the first move is clear enough. Flattery will get you everywhere, especially with someone like Elspeth Moreno.

"I'm afraid I'm not in the market for new stilettos, no. Suffice to say that I was just as curious about you as you were about me," I all but purr, the sardonic twist of my lips smoothing out into something a bit softer as I take a few steps toward her, a silent display that her attempts to get too close for comfort aren't going to work on me. I've spent more time than I can easily recall in bed with Alyssa Rocciano. I've played scarier games of Chicken than this. The filigreed blade of my dagger twirls effortlessly between my fingers in an echo of Elspeth's butterfly knife as the two of us fall into a slow, tight circle around each other, hovering on the precipice of destruction. "Your family has enough talk circulating about them, but you… Brilliant, psychotic, vicious, and beautiful? Sounds like my kind of girl."

I slide to a halt, meeting her gaze evenly, kohl-lined amber coolly appraising the scintillating viridian a few inches away. In my dealings with lesser beings in years past, I learned that flattery and flirtation was enough to get me into a girl's head or up her skirt, depending on what I was looking for at the moment, but this is different. Elspeth is a whole new kind of dangerous, something that could slaughter everyone I ever loved for pure entertainment. Arrogance may be a flaw of mine, but I'm not enough of a fool to allow myself to underestimate her. Still, it always pays to test the boundaries in a delicate situation, and I was born to push the envelope. With a cavalier sort of smirk, I reach with the hand that isn't fiddling with my knife to place a finger beneath her chin, tilting her head upwards to compensate for the height difference. We are close enough to kill each other in a heartbeat. I suppose that implies a truce, if not a trust.

"You're familiar with my work, I trust. Not so different in essence from your own. If the situation were different, I would have quite liked to… collaborate with you at some point," I hum, twirling a strand of bright-dyed hair around a single, spindly finger. I grin down at her, the icy-bright flash of my teeth that eerie, unsettling type of smile that I've been told sends a stab of chilly fear down the spines of the unwary. The space between Elspeth Moreno and I could almost be considered intimate if it weren't for the lethal, liquid animosity saturating the air of our mingling breaths, the malicious promise painted along the soft almost-whisper of my voice as I duck down close enough for my lips to brush the shell of her ear. "But don't fool yourself, Elspeth Moreno. You are not my equal. And if you so much as touch my family, I will destroy you with a wrath the likes of which has never before been seen on this earth."

holy water cannot help you now
see, i've come to burn your kingdom down
and no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out
i'm going to raise the stakes
i'm going to smoke you out