Glass (Reprisal)

[JC]

We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
We are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
Cause we are glass.

Hold on a bit longer.

The words roused her with a jerk from the depths of a dreamless sleep. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly two years with one exception.

“Kenji…” She murmured, rubbing sleep from her eyes and kicking the knot of blankets off of her legs. Beside her, Charlie slept soundly. Jin furrowed her brows at him and slid out of bed.

Warm feet, a frigid floor.

Where were her slippers?

Unable to find them with a shuffle of feet, she instead shambled out of the master bedroom. The floor to ceiling windows of the New Haven apartment welcomed her to the living room, tinted against the glow of the city at night. This high up, she could see nearly to Seaside, but she didn’t linger long in passing.

Hold it together now. You've it in you to get through this just fine.

Jin stopped short, head tilted, ear quirked.

It was an echo, a memory. The words scratched at her consciousness through the lingering fog of sleep. As she pushed her feet into motion once more, she stifled a yawn with a cup of her hand. Around her wrist she still wore the same inscribed leather cuff that had always kept the blue rock safe and sound against the inside of her wrist during each of her possessions.

Possession.

That was quite the word for it.

Listen…

Don't even think about it…

Not you too…

Vigorously, she rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes and shook her head out. Maybe if she shook it like an Etch-A-Sketch, it would rid her of the encroaching voices.

Out of sight, out of mind. There there, let them take care of it.

“Okay, would you stop that?”

No response.

“I’m imagining things.”

You’re a terrible liar.

Scowling, Jin stopped at the barely cracked door of Kenji’s room and leaned her ear to the edge to listen. There was a shuffling that usually meant he was awake. He was such a calm baby though so it could be a bit before he cried out.

So sentimental. I never took you for the sort.

IceDancer had told her that once upon a time. Years ago. It may as well have been an entirely different lifetime. She was retired now, coming out sparingly for tournaments and spending the bulk of her time not in the training rooms of the Outback but rather in the dance studio or at home with her family.

How far they had come in a few scant years.

Some things are meant to be left broken.

Shut up.

Open it.

She set a hand to the bedroom door and gently nudged it open. A widening wedge of light spilled across a floor strewn with plush toys and little origami figurines. Movement in the crib but no sound, tiny feet kicking at the air. Only one sock.

Normal.

She went to close the door.

Seriously? The answers you want are at your fingertips and you’re just going to give up like that?

Perhaps it’s better if she doesn’t know…

She has a right to know! Oh, you’d rather keep her in the dark, let her play the part of Ice Queen. What was that about conceal, don’t feel? What a joke.

Says the one who got himself locked in a box.

Jin felt a creeping itch at the edge of her periphery but when she turned her head, there was nothing lingering in the shadows. With a frown, she stepped into her son’s room.

The heat hit her first, followed by a wave of arctic cold.

Are you going to lock me up too?

She rushed to the crib’s edge just as Kenji let out a cry.

“Shh, shh, shh, baby. Mama’s here.” She reached down to scoop him up and found his skin frigid, cold to the touch in a way she hadn’t experienced since…

IceDancer.

Kenji’s lip quivered, big blue eyes wide upon the looming figure of his mother.

Someone had to do what you can’t.

Curling her hands around him, she cooed soft, soothing sounds and picked the cold infant up to hug him against her chest. Behind her, the light from the hallway dimmed with the lithe silhouette of Charlie Nine in the doorway.

No one asked you to get involved. Or to eavesdrop.

“Are you hearing it too?” She asked him, lifting her voice over the rising tears of her son.

You need to be prepared to lose.

“Charlie…”

The light in the hallway blinked out. The eyes of the figure before her flared ember red.

Because nothing is forever…

In her arms, Kenji’s cries became screams just before they abruptly cut off. Glass shattered.

No.

That wasn’t glass.

Her arms caved in, grasping at splinters of what had been. Icy, sharp fragments of what was and never would be again.

Embers sparked, flame roared.

Close your eyes.

The fire overtook her.

Jin awoke with a start.

[JC]

“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.
--Tennessee Williams

You can’t fix him. You can’t fix everyone… everything. Some things are meant to be left broken.

It was an echo, just an echo. IceDancer’s voice had long since fled her mind. It felt longer than an eternity ago that she had last spoke with it even if that eternity was less than twenty-four hours prior.

Where are you?

Words on deaf ears. All she could do was sit.

Wait.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Time. The only force in the universe that could not be stopped, at least not with any sort of permanency. It could be rewound, but at great cost to what was and would be, and thus was far more damaging to do than not. There was no try.

A beep, a steady beep said her son was alive, if only just. On the outside, he looked perfectly fine if pale, making it all the more upsetting that the doctors could not find the root cause of just why the toddler was unresponsive. No brain activity, no base system functions save for the beating of his heart and the sluggish operation of his organs.

Tick.

Tick.

Fucking tick.

It was as though every ounce of stimulus pushed her way was met with a bubble of resistance to pass through before it ever registered in her brain. Everything was muted, dulled, incomparable to the young mother’s pain. Pain felt tenfold by her brother, her sister-in-law. Try as Jin might to assure KC and Grace that she had not felt their children cross the Veil, it was little assurance when she had no answer to just where they had gone instead.

There, but not there. Just as Kenji was.

As Jin had been, Charlie Nine stood sentinel over their son’s hospital bed. In his eyes, a brokenness she had not seen in years. Once… once upon nigh two years ago, Charlie had hypothesized that his karma for all he had done in the universe came in the form of this small child. Something that could be as dear to him as the blood on his hands had been to those who had perished by his hand.

Something that could be taken away.

Jin had soothed those fears so long ago, assured him that nothing would ever happen.

And here they were.

Her eyes were red, swollen from having cried her fill until she was an empty vessel, hollow save for the corrosive poison of her pain and rage roiling in her gut.

IceDancer, where are you?

FireStar, please?

Someone. Anyone. She would give the last pieces of her fractured, broken soul if it meant bringing Kenji and Ling Ling and Ping back home where they belonged. Curling her fingers around Kenj’s small inert hand, she sighed and bent forward, setting her head against it.

I’ll do anything… I swear it.