lona montgomery, peacekeeper

She has watched herself fade over the years. There is one inescapable thing on this earth - not even justice - time. It has brought lines upon her face, still graced with faded beauty but slowly sinking into the weathering of old age. Each wrinkle she earned from the past and the pain and the struggles. They were not born from laughing and blissful smiles.

In a luxury life there were broken glass bottles and cigarette smoke clouding the lungs of children with chubby cheeks wet by tears. Corruption lurked in the shadows cast by the beer bottles piled into a tower of resentment and slurred words. Hatred pooled within the shells of children suffering beneath the stones pressed against their backs.

She remembers that little girl with tight curls the color of the summer sun. She remembers her eyes, like great dark marbles in her skull, wide and fearful as they avoided zeroing in on what unraveled before her. But most of all, she remembers how she would take shelter under her bed or in her dark closet, covering her eyes with her tiny hands to block out the yelling and the noises of things being broken, the SNAP of the wooden chairs, the SMASH of bottles flying at the walls and shattering upon impact. But the destruction raging inside could not be heard, but oh, she felt it more than she felt the destruction in her home.

She was a lamb lined up for the slaughter back then. But her brittle glass bones have hardened to stone and stretched tall into pillars of strength. Her round eyes, stricken with terror and tinged red with tears, have narrowed to predatory sienna slits. She has grown into a lion. Her fur is white armor and her teeth are firearms. Her roar is the earsplitting BANG of a firing gun.

And when one becomes a lion, they do not remain in their former dwellings to lead a pride lesser than the one that awaits - the sea of white and authority. She abandoned the twins she had brought into this world with her lover, whose title paled next to the power that stretched its hand out to her. She shoved the past behind her and never turned back, for the blinding brightness of the white uniforms blotted out the ties she once had.

The moment training ended was the moment she turned away from the mother who drowned her sorrows in alcohol, from the father who forcefully dragged her into the life of a Career, from the lover who wasn't enough, from the children that shared her blood.

She was twenty years old when she was born again.

Alongside the sea and her gun, she was a queen among other rulers in white. The helmet is her crown and she wears it with pride. She did not glance back until she began to whither and silver crept into her hair, and with it, regret sank into her heart. The possibility of the family that never was, never could be, had slipped through her fingers like water. She had been bitter for a long time, tainted by her parents' harshness in their bouts of drunkenness and anger. But her own fire burned her and she took the bitter regret and expelled it outwards at those around her, lashing them with sarcasm more frequently than she had before.

Regret does not die when tossed out of its host. It reaches its roots deep once its seed has been planted and multiplies endlessly. It is a hydra - cut off one head and two more take its place. Pent up anger directed at herself for just - just leaving everything, for giving up the man she loved and the children she once cradled. Bathed in all the power she ever desired, she now hungers for something more. But she traded her craving away for the power that now courses through her.

"They ain't training Peacekeepers like they used to," she'd complain to her fellow elderly Peacekeepers.

"Youngins, put that gun down! Trade it in for a doll, won't ya?"

Despite her bitterness and guilt, smiles stretch across her face during a playful banter between she and a newer Peacekeeper (or, "baby Peacekeeper" by her terminology). She enjoys their sassy retorts hurled back at her in return for her ramblings - "Naw, yuns ain't holding the gun right." "Back in my day . . ."

Her skin is like old crumpled paper compared to theirs, smooth and glowing with youth. The young women grow their hair long and beautiful, but hers is cropped short to avoid high-maintenance; long hair would be neglected. And she does not want a ragged appearance to match her ragged voice.

She is faded, but she does not mind, she does not yearn for more days of walking unhindered by old age. She misses her sharp ears and keen eyes, but youth is unpredictable, youth is wild.

She does not long for a time machine or time itself. She needed power to fill the void, and now she needs family to heal the scars made by the sacrifice of leaving them behind. And despite the pain, despite wishing she could go back, she knows that she is better off as she is, morose and cranky and all. Power suffocated the broken, weak little girl that still lived inside until she met her end, and her soul sank to the ground to sprout a new body, one constructed from steel over flesh and bone.

She cannot have it all.

Power, or family?

Power, or family?

She knows she would choose power a thousand times over.

Without it, she is the weak little girl cowering under the bed.

Without it, she is a lamb.

Power is the glue and the bandages that mended her.