Melanie sat, perched as she could normally be found, atop a bar in her nearly palatial home. Money had never been an object to the Underground's quiet Queen. Bare feet kicked against the steel surface, bare legs coiled and grouped underneath the slender body that'd provided such perfection in so many regards, for so many years and in so many venues. Dark eyes, the color of impossibly deep waters, lacked the typical turmoil. They were empty, empty and devoid of all human compassion, human emotion and human feeling. Robbed.

She was shouting into a phone-like device, a speaker attached to a screen. Shouting. Melanie's voice was rarely raised above a whisper, barely audible. The viper's sibilant hiss. "What the fuck did you want me to be? Who the hell could I have been?" Outbursts of anger were common enough to those who dared understand the Midnight Siren, the Dark Horse Rising.

A foreign language, laconic and sparse, barked out silent commands, or so they seemed based on the nature of the words. Seconds skipped, Melanie's fading heartbeat felt like it was blasting out of her chest. "Again, no."

That was her only answer, her answer the black flag that roiled above a nation torn between strife and utter chaos. "I wasn't good enough on that day, nor will I be on the next. You want more than I can be."

Won't and will not are dangerously alike, truth be told. The voice speaking was a rattling sound in the room, chains shaking and bonds breaking.

Dark eyes panned towards the perpetual shadows. Still empty, still broken,, she shrugged and murmured, "Then, Lord, I will not be. I refuse. I have made my choice."