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Sandrone is sure that the room is cold. She can’t feel the chill that most certainly wafts in from the smashed window, though. It's more of an educated guess. Knowing that it's surely frigid makes the loss all the more real for her. There’s no one there to complain about it, to snap at her to shut the window and start a fire to warm the room.
The Sixth. He’s not there to spew razor sharp words in her direction, to stare at her and her wonderful creations with disdain. She can’t blame him– he is so far above what she’s ever created, so far above her , that surely being in their presence is an insult. If she weren’t such a selfish, greedy woman she’d have stayed far away from him, to keep herself and her puppets from tainting him. But she is selfish, and she is greedy, so at every opportunity she could find she’d pull him away to her lab to admire him.
It all suddenly feels so pointless to her. The metal and wiring stacked upon floor to ceiling shelves, the half built ruin guards and the heaps of calligraphy covered pages. The research is all completely and utterly worthless, nothing but childish scribbles done by a terribly rapacious woman.
Sandrone steps forward, towards the window. Her palms fall flat onto the window sill, shards of glass digging into her palms. It doesn’t hurt nor does it bleed. She hadn’t expected it to.
As had happened so many times previously, she realises just how different Snezhnaya is from Fontaine. The weather being most obvious– she doesn’t see the damp cobblestone streets of Fontaine, ever-present rain clouds hanging above. Instead she sees a vast but hollow city full of ice and snow. People do not wander the streets with umbrellas in hand, in fact, the people of Snezhnaya do not leave their homes without a purpose. It's quiet, devoid of human life or warmth.
Not that she misses the people. So rarely having to see the imperfections of man is a blessing, and she couldn’t be happier. But still, when she looks into the mirror…
Her fists clench hard, teeth gritted. Perhaps she should worry about her false teeth cracking under the pressure, but she hardly cares. Sandrone turns away from the window and back to her desk, sweeping all the paper and metal off of it and onto the floor. Her shoes are delicate, but she still manages to stomp it all to bits, the paper torn and crumpled and the metal twisted and dented. It’s not good enough. Not even close.
She leans down, heaping her arms full of the broken remains of her efforts, and stomps towards the fireplace. The metal won’t melt, but it will become disfigured. One she begins shoving it all in, her dress nearly catches fire. She wouldn’t have minded if that were the case– it’s ugly, she decides. All the horrid unprepossessing things in the world should be done away with, either fixed or destroyed entirely.
And sometimes, correction is impossible, and demolition is necessary.
Perhaps she should burn as well. Climb into that fireplace and let the flames chew away at what little remains of a human body. Would she emerge something beautiful? Something perfect? Could she finally be worthy of him?
No, she probably wouldn’t. She doubts she could ever reach his level of magnificent impeccability.
Crafted by the divine, symmetrical in all ways, not a blemish in sight. Every single aspect of him screamed unworldly, alluring in a way that could never be replicated by man. And that was just what she is, wasn’t she? a human being, in the end? As much of her body she purified and corrected, there would always be something wrong . There was no way to truly make herself pulchritudinous like him.
The porcelain of her fist cracks when it meets the brick wall above the fireplace. When she'd take off her glove later, little bits of delicate ceramic would flutter to the ground, and another imperfection would be added to her painfully long list.
She'll have to fix it– but while she could make it functional again, it would never quite look the same.
Look what she's gone and done…