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The glass was cold.
Dylan sat on the floor of his cell with his knees drawn up, arms locked around them, forehead tipped forward until the only thing left in his vision was the reflection of himself in the reinforced panel. The reflection looked back with the same flat, tired eyes he had been avoiding all day. Same jaw. Same mouth that had tasted like copper from biting the inside of his cheek during the conversation with Arish.
You're not even fucking human!
Arish's voice had burrowed its way into his skull like a splinter. Dylan had not responded at the time. There had not been an answer that would have mattered.
The reflection tilted its head the same way Dylan did. He watched the motion like it belonged to a stranger. Human faces did that. Human faces shifted, reacted. His did too.
He pressed the side of his face harder against the glass until the pressure made his cheekbone ache. The reflection's cheekbone whitened the same way. Proof of something. Or maybe nothing at all.
Was he human?
His blood still ran red when he got cut. His lungs still burned after too long without air. His body still demanded the sleep it rarely got. But those were only surface details. Underneath it all, he was...
The reflection's mouth curved, just slightly. Not a smile. At least, not a happy one.
Or was he a monster?
Maybe being a monster was easier. Monster did not require the slow, exhausting work of being a person with friendships and connections. Monster got the mission done and then got put back in the glass box until the next time the world needed it. Monster did not have to notice the way conversations died when it entered a room, or the careful way people chose their words around it, as if the wrong syllable might set something off.
Dylan's fingers dug into his own arms hard enough to leave marks. The reflection's hands did the same. He watched the pale pressure points form and thought about how easily he could have ended the argument with Arish differently. How easily his abilities could have answered for him. But he had stood there and taken it, because somewhere under the static, there was still a part of him that wanted to be the person Jesse thought he still had the capacity to be - the human one who belonged on the other side of the glass.
That part felt smaller every day.
He tried to remember the last time the word human had felt like it fit without friction. The memory stayed out of reach.
He let his eyes close. The reflection disappeared. The voice stayed.
Dylan stayed on the floor long after the ache in his joints turned into a dull throb, forehead still pressed to the glass, waiting for an answer that would not come. The reflection waited patiently for him to open his eyes again.
When he did, the same face stared back.