[She shouldn't trust him when he says he won't let go. She shouldn't let him get any closer, especially now that the Zenith energy that had been within her was in him, now. It should make him more of her enemy again... yet she cannot see him as that. Though she was a woman who preferred things black and white... he had been frustratingly grey ever since that first real conversation they had shared. It drove her mad at times, and yet-
A dun foreleg slowly uncurls, moving as if to reach out and brush against a leg. He'd liked that- before. But she hesitates, and the edge of a hoof barely grazes against his trousers.
Hopemongers, she had labeled Meridian to him the first time they'd met at the edges of that pool full of memories. She despised it so, when it came from blindness or ignorance, but in her case... Going back for the kids, he says, and shame lances through her hearts. Can she claim that is all she wants? She wants it, that is true, for in those children who had a chance to live freely as she hadn't, but atop of that- He thinks they are dead. Of course he does. All of the Zenith believe that it is gone, but she can't-]
It is all my fault.
[She shouldn't be saying that, either. Something she has never shared with anyone, but now, when their communions blend together like something seamless, when he brings her mind to her students, that hidden village full of war orphans. Orphans that she, once... before she had realized there might be a way out of it all, when she had still been committed to loyalty to the man who'd had her dam bred to produce her-]
I was entrusted with them, by someone who put their trust in me, yet I am to blame for them being in danger.
[She had told him what she had been used for. Hunting her own kind, controlling the Armless, tricked into thinking that she was better than them, that she was somehow different-]
If I do not save them... What is there left to do but slit my own belly open?
[How can she do what he does? How can she just believe that they are all dead, when their deaths would mean honor dictated she should join them? How can she simply move forward into a content life as a Zenite and never look back on her failures... ?]
cw; suicide
A dun foreleg slowly uncurls, moving as if to reach out and brush against a leg. He'd liked that- before. But she hesitates, and the edge of a hoof barely grazes against his trousers.
Hopemongers, she had labeled Meridian to him the first time they'd met at the edges of that pool full of memories. She despised it so, when it came from blindness or ignorance, but in her case... Going back for the kids, he says, and shame lances through her hearts. Can she claim that is all she wants? She wants it, that is true, for in those children who had a chance to live freely as she hadn't, but atop of that- He thinks they are dead. Of course he does. All of the Zenith believe that it is gone, but she can't-]
It is all my fault.
[She shouldn't be saying that, either. Something she has never shared with anyone, but now, when their communions blend together like something seamless, when he brings her mind to her students, that hidden village full of war orphans. Orphans that she, once... before she had realized there might be a way out of it all, when she had still been committed to loyalty to the man who'd had her dam bred to produce her-]
I was entrusted with them, by someone who put their trust in me, yet I am to blame for them being in danger.
[She had told him what she had been used for. Hunting her own kind, controlling the Armless, tricked into thinking that she was better than them, that she was somehow different-]
If I do not save them... What is there left to do but slit my own belly open?
[How can she do what he does? How can she just believe that they are all dead, when their deaths would mean honor dictated she should join them? How can she simply move forward into a content life as a Zenite and never look back on her failures... ?]