Chapter Text
“Mizi, get up.”
A woman with permanent splotches of redness covering her frame and long, black hair that appeared unnaturally shiny looks up slowly, once again met by a familiar face.
“Sua…?”
No, not Sua. A husk of what Sua never was. It peers at the disheveled woman with its wide, blue lifeless eyes. A look between pity and disgust across its face.
“You’re going to let my sacrifice go to waste, Mizi? Rot here until you die? You really are selfish.”
The harshness of not-Sua’s voice brings Mizi back to reality, “Ah… It’s not her.” She thinks to herself. Mizi forces her eyes to turn away from the figure bent down beside her to observe her surroundings.
“I’m talking to you, Mizi. Are you going to pretend that I’m not here? Just like you pretended not to know what would happen to me.”
Mizi sharply inhales, trying her best to ignore what has become a daily occurrence for her. She first looks down, seeing a small patch of fabric laid down on the floor beneath her; this is where she slept last night. An abandoned warehouse she had spent the past two days in, probably built for some Segyein procedures she couldn’t care less about.
It’s warm out, so Mizi felt no need to use it to cover herself, but it was always nice to have something to rest on.
Apparently bored from the lack of reaction Mizi gives to it, the apparition of Sua walks away swiftly, and Mizi pretends not to notice to spare herself the grievance she’d get after the figure spots her relief.
Turning to the right, she spots a string of familiar figures cut out from a torn sheet placed neatly on the floor.
Mizi was never an artist, that was always Till.
Till…
She rubs her forehead to push away the headache that’s beginning to form beneath her skull, but almost immediately after sees a tan figure with long, brown hair sitting down to her left on what looks to be a radiator, eyeing her with clear distaste.
“Why did you do it?”
Mizi closes her eyes and places her head in between her knees. It usually works.
“You knew I sacrificed everything for those children, yet you sabotaged everything I stood for.” not-Hyuna spits out.
Not this time, apparently.
”Why am I being tormented like this?” She thinks bitterly.
“You were wrong about me. My love isn’t cruel, yours is. You let your emotions blind you. You cause pain and misery everywhere you go.”
Mizi lets out a dry chuckle at that. Her words are still being used against her.
“You know I’m right. You ruined everything. This was bigger than Sua, than Ivan, than Till.”
Clearly fed up with the ghosts of her past (both literally and figuratively), Mizi stands up on shaky legs and cracks open the metal door in front of her.
The sun hits her skin as she sets her feet into the grains of sand beneath her. It’s hot, and it scorches a bit, but she couldn’t care less. Sporting nothing but a bra and some underwear she doesn’t recall where she got from, she would usually feel uncomfortable, exposed at the least, but decency had left her long ago.
She sits down in the hot sand, sucking in a breath as it contacts her skin. She uses her pointer finger to draw crude stick figures of Dewey and Issac, it grounds her a bit.
”I wonder what they think of me now…” Mizi ponders, although the answer to the question is abundantly clear.
She’s always preferred not to face the truth of things, and old habits die hard.
Deciding she had enough of the sun’s unbearable heat (or at least that’s what she tells herself), she reluctantly walks back into her new place of residency, immediately met by the sharp gazes of Sua and Hyuna.
They say nothing to her this time, simply staring, which makes her feel even worse than she did when their respectively soft and calm voices poisoned her with words that pierced her skin, akin to the bullets that had ended their lives.
Mizi shifts away uncomfortably, quickly picking up her ‘blanket’, a notepad, and the paper dolls she had made the night before. She looks at her large bucket of water and some foreign Segyein fruit she had half-hoped was poisonous to humans before taking a bite. She can only carry one.
She’s gone without food, but never water. Even so, the fruit is a dull but beautiful shade of purple, and it tastes sweeter than anything she’s had in months.
She sighs, deciding to let herself be swayed by wants rather than needs.
“The fruit it is,” She concludes as she wraps everything she needs into her sheet.
The sun was particularly hot today, and Mizi was regretting putting on the jeans she had been given as a new member of the rebellion.
Although it had been quite a few years, she hadn’t quite grown out of them yet. The only thing that was a bit uncomfortable was the tightness surrounding her waist, but she managed fine.
With not a clue on how to tell time while she was traveling, Mizi was getting tired once again.
She used to have a digital time-teller, a clock, what it was called in the days where had humans lived free, she thinks, but she ditched it on a particularly bad day where she had a nightmare of the Segyien tracking her with it.
“I miss that thing…”
It would drive her a bit less crazy knowing how much time had passed since she had left her most recent “home”, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Funnily enough, staying in one place drove her much more crazy than not knowing something as fickle as the time, so she refused to stay in places that did have a working clock for more than a few days.
Suddenly, a feeling she’s grown all too familiar with sets in her stomach.
”I’m hungry already…?”
She lets out a huff of frustration and bends down to open her makeshift bag, and pulls out the fruit she had found, taking a quick bite before sitting back up.
”Right… I need to think about where I’m going next.”
While Mizi would oftentimes just wander around the desert until finding something that could half-pass as a temporary home, having a plan always suited better.
Maybe she’d go to the slums next? She doubted anyone there had access to technology, let alone the time to hold a grudge against a woman they had probably long since forgotten.
No, too many Segyien.
A rivaling rebellion?
That’s rich. She’d thought about that dozens of times, and with every situation she’d mull over, the idea felt more suicidal than before.
”Anakt, I’m so lost.”
“Lost?” A coarse voice repeats back to her.
Shit. Had she said that aloud? Being alone for so long really was detrimental.
She spins around in panic, fixing her wig so that no pink can peer through and facing downwards to obscure as much as her face as she possibly can.
Through the black, she swears she can see a tinge of silver hair, and those familiar piercing, teal eyes.
No. It’s not him, His hair is too short, and he looks way too old… Right?
It’s been 7 years, of course Till would look older.
“Get it together, Mizi.”
“Where did you come from…?” Mizi asks reluctantly, making her voice sound as different as she can manage by lowering her tone. She cringes at her horrible attempt.
The man takes out a sketchpad and flips to a blank page, scribbling furiously. She inches her head up slightly to read what’s on the paper.
”I’m from the human resistance. Where did you come from?” it reads.
Mizi’s eyes go wide, and she tries to subtly cover her face with even more hair.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant… How did you sneak up on me…?”
The man smirks, looking down at his paper.
“You were just standing there, staring into space.”
“Oh…”
“Did I interrupt you?” he adds.
“No. It’s fine. What did you say your name was again?”
The man lets out a soft chuckle at that, but it sounds more like a strained cough.
“I didn’t, it’s Till. You?”
”Shit.”
“It’s… not important. Why are you out here?” Mizi says, her voice noticeably shaky.
He takes a bit longer to write this time, only hightening Mizi’s anxiety.
“Well, I was gonna take a ride to the city for a mission work, but I saw you in the distance and I got worried. It’s hot as hell out here, y’know.”
“Sorry for worrying you, but I’m fine. So… you can go.”
“You sure? You sound a little sick.” he writes
“Yes. Please, go…” Mizi half-begs.
The man, no, Till pauses for a moment, looking at Mizi with clear worry across his face.
“Okay, but wait a second.” He writes
Mizi can’t bring herself to leave him, even though she knows this isn’t safe, she still cares so deeply for the one standing in front of her.
Till, her friend, her family. Her only alive family at that. He’s standing right in front of her, and she can’t hug him, or cry in his arms, or even tell him who she really is.
She’s terrified. Does he hate her too?
Mizi is brought back to reality when Till places a sheet of paper in her hands, clearly trying not to brush against her in the procress.
“Keep it.” he says aloud.
Mizi stares down at what appears to be a map, and she nods quickly, if only to get him to leave her be.
Till gives her one last smile as he hops back onto a motorcycle that Mizi hadn’t even noticed was behind the two.
As soon as the man is at a comfortable distance. Mizi drops down onto the sand.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
“Ugly words don’t fit a pretty mouth, Mizi.”
Sua glares at Mizi, her tone laced with sarcasm.
“Please. Not now, Sua. I can’t.” Mizi says with tears in her eyes
“You’re crying over him?”
It pains her to ignore Sua, but she does.