a broken crown: loud like silence - 679 words

Caspian rested his jaw on his palm. The windowsill he leaned against was cold and jagged. Unpainted, unfinished concrete. Frost embroidered intricate details on the edges of the glass squares, that were separated by wooden bars. The white paint was chipped off on multiple places.

 

The glass reflected a mirrored image of the eternal back to him. It was tired, and nearly numb. Unfeeling, and yet still retaining a lingering tinge of begrudge, that was as clear as black ink on pale-colored parchment. The snow falling outside made his mind calmly imitate what it saw and processed - a snowstorm, that kept his thoughts trapped in a cage of stasis, like a glass of water left in the freezing cold overnight.

 

Caspian didn't know where the place was that stood behind the frosted glass. The ship hijacked windows the same it hijacked doors - whatever it could find, irrespective and selfish. On this one, the insulation was lackluster. A freezing wind wailed quietly as it pushed through the cracks, and sunk its fangs into the shifter's skin and scales.

 

For once, the cold didn't bother him. His priority lied in lazily counting and keeping track of the clumped up snowflakes falling outside. He couldn't let his gaze wander through the crystallized curtain. Seeing people have something he so badly yearned for would only spell trouble. The bitterness and jealousy his chest clutched fast against itself wouldn't let him stay afloat if he did.

 

"Sir?" The usually so sharp and biting AI Interface had her tone of voice mellowed. It was careful, and melancholic. Remorseful, even. Steve inched her feeble, material body slightly closer to the eternal, the claw-like fingers on her metal hands nervously fidgeting. Her movement was abrupt, and far from smooth. A rail or two somewhere high up, invisible to the naked eye, clearly needed some new oil.

 

"Go away, Steve," Caspian replied without moving an inch. His tone, in turn, was vexed, and it had a quivering, delicate underbelly. Steve was distracting him, and not in a good way. He couldn't help his body from tensing up. These so-called traditions stretched his patience thinner than a human hair. They made him more fragile than he already was. Cracks grew into chasms. He could feel the tears burning in his eyes he so desperately tried to fight from surfacing.

 

Steve hesitated. Glanced around her multiple times, as though she could find something to tame the upset beast in front of her, if she just looked close enough. Anything she'd say would only make matters worse. She knew it.

 

There just were such a tiny amount of things she yearned, among seeing her master happy.

 

"What about your friends?"

 

"I don't have any friends," the shifter growled, his breath clouding a small segment of the window momentarily.

 

"That's not fair towards anyone, Sir."

 

The Interface's argument got the eternal to straighten himself. The old lounge chair wailed under his weight and movement. The way his eyes snapped to Steve made her halt completely in her literal tracks.

 

Tears decorated his lower eyelids like gilded stones. They glimmered under the lobby's artificial starlight.

 

"One time doesn't mean anything." Caspian couldn't keep his voice from quivering. "One time doesn't mean anyone wants me around."

 

"What about the sweet on--"

 

"Shut. Up."

 

The Artificial Intelligence wasn't able to present a counterargument. Caspian turned back around, and fell into the chair like a sulking child. He buried his face as close to the hijacked concrete wall as he could, and wrapped his arms around himself. This discussion was finished.

 

The expression on Steve's singular reproduction of an eye drooped into the territory of grief. At the end of the day, the things she could do for Caspian were limited. She couldn't force him to do anything. She didn't even want to - but she was no miracle worker, either.

 

With her cold, metal hands, she picked up a worn blanket from the backrest of the couch nearby. Steve gently set it on Caspian's shivering shoulders, and slid back into the darkness she had come from.