Who: Cecilia (and Neptune) When: Morning Where: Her and Owen's room
The idea that just a few nights ago she had been as relaxed as she had been in over a month was laughable to Cecilia now. It had all been a nosedive after Juno's injury for her, and she figured it was all going to get a hell of a lot worse before it let up again. That was how they worked, wasn't it? Get everyone comfortable, trap them, watch everything fall apart. Lather, rinse, repeat.
She wasn't sleeping much, but she figured no one was. Not through this storm, and certainly not the night after the 'visitors' some of them had experienced, like Owen. Thinking about the whole thing still made her skin crawl, but somehow her brain latched onto the medical side. The drugs. What the hell were they using on them? What Cecilia had been doing was hardly considered sleeping, but she woke in mid-thought, still turning it all around in her head. She may have dreamed of twisted landscapes sculpted by her own paranoia, but it was too hard to say. Cecilia rolled onto her back and sighed at the ceiling. Neptune raised his head to look at her. “Yeah,” Cecilia murmured. “Time to get up.” She wasn't surprised that Owen was already gone, and could vaguely recall listening to him leave in her half-in-half-out state of sleeping. Yesterday had been the only variation of that routine. She could have woken up and talked to him, but somehow it felt wrong. The situation was awkward, so it was better not to make that worse.
Cecilia put her glasses on as she got out of bed – her eyes were far too irritated from lack of sleep for contacts today – and headed over to the dresser. She'd left a couple of flashlights from her bag up there, and she grabbed one and turned it on before heading into the closet. She waited for Neptune to join her inside before she shut the door behind him. In the closet she had only the beam of the flashlight to go off of, but it was a small enough space and bright enough light that it wasn't a problem for her. There was a shelf at the back of the closet for Cecilia to prop the flashlight on while she found her clothes and changed. She stripped down to her skin and pulled on a new pair of cotton panties, and as she reached for the t-shirt she'd set out movement caught her attention. A long mirror was mounted on the inside of the closet door, and when Cecilia raised her eyes to it all the air left her lungs in something like a scream. She whirled around, eyes darting around wildly for the man in the black mask. She'd seen him watching her dress in the mirror, standing against the far wall and slowly reaching out for her.
There was no one there, but it was some time before Cecilia was ready to accept that. The entire world was lost to her briefly. Minutes later, she was vaguely aware of pulling everything in the closet down, and looking in the mirror again and seeing nothing but her own crazed reflection. She couldn't really remember sitting down and balling herself up in the corner near the door, but that was where she was. Neptune glued loyally to her side, and four small crescent moons carved into each of her palms. She could smell dust and mildew and most of all blood, but very little of that blood was hers. It was drying on her hands, caked in her nails, on her face, in her hair... someone had told her that she'd smashed his head in, but she couldn't remember doing it. Everything was cold, and gray, and hot, and red all at the same time. The inside of her chest was molten and every breath was an agony. Her hands and feet were brilliant white lances of ice and fire, but it was too much effort to try and move her arms. She wasn't sure that she could move her hands anymore. They were dead to her.
This will pass, she promised herself, squeezing her eyes shut and then popping them back open. She had to keep her eyes open, just in case he wasn't dead. But no, he was dead. This wasn't Maine. It wasn't Jeffrey she had seen. Still, eyes needed to stay open. The flashback would pass, and Neptune was there with her, and everything was going to be okay. Or at least, as okay as it ever was.
It passed, and in time her frame trembled from the tension. She forcibly unclenched her hands, forcibly took deep breaths, forcibly closed the door to that bad day back in Maine. This was a whole new bad day, and she had to deal with it.
She dressed first, because even if whatever she'd seen hadn't been real, her own nudity caused her discomfort when she triggered. It was worse here, when someone was always watching. She pet Neptune and looked around at the damage she had done, and would need to pick up. But first, she turned her attention back to that mirror.
Cecilia approached the mirror and stared hard at it, an accusing sort of look in her eyes. She could have imagined what she saw, it wasn't entirely out of the question, but she didn't trust it. It's just a mirror, she told herself. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and mentally counted to five. It's just a rough day. I just need to sleep. When she opened her eyes, blood was seeping out of a bullet wound dead center of her forehead.
Nope.
Cecilia clawed at the damned thing and ripped it from the door, stepping aside and letting it fall to the floor. The act was not nearly as satisfying as she needed it to be, so after only a moment's thought she decided, most emphatically, fuck it. She stomped on it several times, until the fucker was well and truly broken, because hey, it wasn't like she needed to worry about seven years of bad luck. That was pretty much a guarantee no matter what she did, so just fuck it. Once she was done, she used the remains of the frame to carefully sweep the pieces into the far corner of the closet, where she had seen the masked man. In the back of her mind she knew she was going to have to explain that to Owen, and it probably wouldn't be a fun conversation, but she couldn't really worry about that now.
It was going to be a fucking terrible day. That cheerful thought in mind, Cecilia began the work of undoing her damage to the rest of the closet.