The night beckons while you dream
A life never lives in peace
As you stand upon the edge
Woven by a single thread
She had meandered onto the platform in the wee hours of the morning, wishing that her choice of location would offer her some degree of anonymity. The Shimada had still garnered the eyeballs of the fresh early-birds and the exhausted nocturnal travelers. However, once she settled herself onto a bench on the far side of a relatively quiet service platform, time bore witness to her being an innocuous presence. Eventually, the daily bustle of the station drowned her alleged fame and infamy, or at least painted a convincing illusion of it.
The sun peered over the horizon. The red orb cast long, soft shadows, of the pillars, the corrugated awnings above the platforms and the trains that stilled or streaked past the station. The gentle morning breeze, swept through the channels hoisting up the strands of her dark hair and tickling her scalp. The slight chill that lingered in the air coaxed goose-flesh and urged her to tighten the cloak she wore, so it clung to her more securely. She pulled up her legs, so her thighs were pressed to her chest. Resting her cheek against her knees, she continued watching, as though tilting her head was enough of a change in perspective, to miraculously reveal a different reality, one that had evaded her so far.
Cautiously, she leaned forward to ensure that her back did not come into contact with anything. While her wounds had healed, periodically she was greeted with the same searing pain that ran through the length of the scars, as she'd experienced when they were made. The torturous sensation was compounded by the fact that agitation in one often precipitated the same in the other. Despite her best attempts to endure it bravely, she'd come to fear these bouts of suffering.
It had made her needlessly attentive to the back of her torso. It was an unnecessary wariness, and existed simply to aid in maintaining the pretense that she had some control over the cursed injuries. She didn't. She had deduced no patterns that would allow her to ready herself, nor had she noticed any triggers that she could learn to avoid. Perhaps... this is why she found herself enjoying the consistency and reliability offered by the mundane and recurrent nature of the station, because the circumstances and the choices she had made had stolen that simple luxury.
The injury wasn't the only inconsistency. A hand snaked around her shins, clasping over them for support, while with the other, the Joyan rubbed her eyes, betraying exhaustion. The young girl had spent so long pretending to be someone else, that she feared she no longer knew who she was. In the line of duty, she'd been tossed from one organisation to another and then another. She made enemies out of friends and friends out of enemies. And then, at this rather precarious juncture, she'd given into her immature need for attachment and forged a bond that could be her biggest weakness, just as easily as it could be her pillar of strength. All she could do, was inappropriately fortify her fortitude by reminding herself of all those who had it worse. Who knew empathy could be such a beguiling tool.