Imbalance

Chapter One - The Beginning

Alice woke up angry.

It would seem, to an outsider, entirely baseless when she nearly growled in exasperation, making a fist with her left hand and allowing the crescent-shaped imprints to ground her in pain. The other raked through her hair, shaking the pins loose, lending it a wild look to match her raging thoughts.

The light streaming in from the picture window, unabated by lacy, too-sheer curtains, only annoyed her more. It felt too cheery, as if the mood of the world refused to match hers, every little thing somehow contradictory to her point of view. She squinted against the brightness until the intense titian color faded into more manageable hues, the room awash in the different shades of amber and gold that came with what some would call a perfect sunrise.

There would seem to be no reason for Alice's distress, if there were someone looking on - the truth was all too different.

Every morning that she woke to an empty bed, it haunted her. Hurt her more. While she was confident in the knowledge that it had been the right decision to cut the toxic mess that her husband had come to represent from her life, the cold specter of loneliness was already beginning to catch up with her. It showed itself most prevalently in the form of chilled sheets and mood swings, wrapping her in a sense of dread and self-doubt. She only felt anger, raw, true anger, on a good day.

It wasn't often that frustration and optimism went hand in hand, but with her they were one and the same. Fury drove her, gave her a passion and focus that little else could and put a sense of fire into her articles. So, although her heart beat quick, although her steps were stilted as she threw the covers off and moved toward the ensuite, Alice treasured it, let it shape her.

Coming to a stop in front of the mirror, she was met with features of hardened stone. An intimidatingly cool disposition, one she was intimately familiar with, that she prided herself on. Her hair was up, and she met her own eyes, able to see the emotion written there where no-one else would register it. The only evidence that she was human at all came in the gentle arch of her eyebrow, conveying a subtle disgust with the state of the world at large.

She'd stopped being offended by the nickname "ice queen" long ago. It really did fit.

"Damn," she swore to herself, breaking the eye contact with her reflection and instead casting her gaze to the sink. Her hands splayed out on either side, contacting the cool marble harshly as she leaned against it for a kind of support. The heat abandoned her as quickly as it had come, leaving a freezing emptiness in its wake, and it was like the strength just seeped from her, despite the confidence she wanted, needed to have. She and Hal, despite whatever problems they may have had, had been a united front; Alice could almost always count on him to back her up, and now she stood alone, independent of everything.

It hadn't even been a week yet. How was she expected to cope with this for what could be the rest of her life?

She could do it. Of course she could. And she would. But a job meant for two had now become carried by only one, and she found the prospect a daunting one. Her infallible composure seemed to be cracking from the inside out.

She would not cry.

It felt like his absence was almost breaking her. She felt like glass - beautiful, but more fragile than anything... ever so easy to shatter. The idea of it, of how flimsy she was, irked her greatly. Alice Cooper (no, Smith. It's been twenty odd years since she's answered to that name but damn if she won't wear it with pride now,) did not like to appear weak by any stretch of the imagination, but her hands shook when performing the most basic tasks now for fear of getting something trivial wrong.

She didn't want Hal in any capacity, but she needed him.

She needed him to balance her.

Tears dripped into the basin of the sink, breaking promises in the mere act of existence. A feeling of inferiority settled over her, even though she knew she'd been the one to take the initiative in the continuous power struggle they were locked in. It was all they said about her now; she'd heard the whispers.