Locked Inside
The numbness came first.
Not cold, but the absence of anything she could feel. It settled over her in a way that should have been suffocating- but it wasn't. She took no breaths, and still she felt no pain. All she could do was look out, *see* everything this ill-formed (perfect) copy of her did.
The horror came upon her slowly. First, when her reindeer came to this *things* call. Growing as it stopped by a shop to buy candies for the children- just as she had planned to do. And then. And then-
It turned her stomach, seeing this thing say the things it needed to to soothe Evith's worries. Make the appologies Matiese would have made.
That was the first time she cried in the gem, almost wishing she needed rest, to sleep away this nightmare, but- no. She couldn't. And... she wouldn't. Consequences weren't always life and death and she would live with this one, as a hatred for the man who did this burned in her soul. She wanted to catalogue each deed this copy made, make him pay for each violation of her life.
In the morning, the copy called the children *hers*, and Matiese's hatred faltered the smallest bit. What would it mean, to go after him, if she led these children down that same path? The thought nagged at her, as the group journeyed to the vault, as her copy gently *mothered* her companions in that way Matiese did- so perfectly and yet- there was the rub. It did so *perfectly*. The thought of what she could do to stop Onyx- a way to kill her if they had no better ideas- and it was *her thought* a plan she could not dent having and yet perhaps she shouldn't have. What did it say about her that the thought was accepted by her companions?
And in the depths of the vault facing that- that thing she could not identify, something far more powerful than she, for a second time. Her copy knew her motivations, knew the words to say even here where Matiese expected the betrayal. When the betrayal didn't come there, amidst the gold, Matiese almost wondered if it would come at all, if perhaps this planned torture would be a lifetime watching this double live her life.
But she was luckier than that- luckier and unluckier all at once, when she saw Manshun, or perhaps a copy of him, waiting, a smiling mask over his face and she knew there was a smile underneath as well. A smirk on his lips as he gave the order and she watched her copy obey, striking at a man she called her friend, a man she trusted with her life. And she could see, just on the edges of her sight, her companions, the doubt and confusion in their eyes. Hessitation.
And she knew there was a chance that hessitation would be enough to spell their deaths.
