never you mind, death professor

She stared at it.

...She couldn't not stare at it.

Little song bird, mellow humming, jittering lines, blasted pieces. Energy. Flowing everywhere, giving life to these caves. They had to put it all in one spot. Her least favorite spot. Do you know what excess energy does to someone like her? It piles up like mold, builds like a disease, a brick wall, makes one clatter and snap like a living wire. A crocodile in the arms of a fool. It has to go somewhere. It makes one lethal.

She sat here, staring at the arms of the fools, feeling their grip around her neck and chest as if it were the embrace of friendly ghosts. She missed friendliness. She missed her friends. But then, she had contributed to their ghost-making, hadn't she? Electricity. The deadliest tool at ~~his~~ ~~her~~ disposal. Knowing that you never really killed anybody doesn't help when they're all dead and gone anyways.

Ah, she was forgetting. She was forgetting! Someone out there. But of course she was, her body felt like a particle of light while her mind shimmered and faltered in the wake of its motion. To demonstrate: Madhukar's body sat on the floor and idly churned her the fingers of her good hand, while her mind, always a few steps behind, was still standing, and wanted more than anything to run to the mosses and bury herself within them. She really needed a new mask and cloak.

Alright, but for a second— come sit, listen to the body, and the part of the brain that still experiences genuine wonder. Listen to that, she tried. She thought of her transcendence trial. Yet another harrowing experience of bodies littering the ground — but what had been the product of that? It wasn't only bodies. It was also... light. The light which shown throughout the caves, creating a false sense of time. It not only destroyed, it also produced. But... how?

Have you ever tried to make two circles with your two index fingers, one moving clockwise and the other counterclockwise? Those were the cogs in Madhukar's brain, one part self-pity and the other part self-interest, spinning in different directions. She couldn't stop either train so they both ran down their tracks. The resultant trolley problem would be a blood bath. I only make chrysalises. She thought of the emerald. Of the place Doug often occupied, somewhere near here, in some eerie and lifeless tunnel. She thought of the generator, thought of ~~Tahi-shei~~, thought of, thought of— Madhukar stood.

Taking in a deep breath, she decided to walk out as far as she could go. Past the ledge, even, and over the water, perhaps. She wanted to get a different perspective on the generator. If magic was willing.

And it was. Step after step, she formed it to her will, shaping it with each breath. It was a good distraction. Air suppresses words, sounds, and thoughts. All the things that make war in her mind, muffled by pockets of air underneath her paws. All things must be silent for her to succeed in engaging self-interest over self-pity. Threats cannot be accounted for. Guards cannot be easily upheld. And she did not want to uphold them.

You know how it is with curiosity and cats.

Sometimes, he wandered.

Sometimes, when he had been working hard on this or that, one plot or another, setting up dominos to push them down in a rampant surge of calamity—sometimes, when he had been working his mind as well as his magic, Tsetse found that he needed a break.

Some days, this took the form of destruction. Rampaging through forests, tearing leaves from their branches, using the magic of the mind to drop birds from the sky with a thought (Stop.)—

—some days, this took the form of wandering. Withdrawing from the real world, from body to mind; dipping the thread of conscious thought into the oily rivers of his subconscious and letting them float away. Listening to the whispers. To the visions. To the things that flickered at the edges of his sight and sometimes, when they were bold, dared to walk in front of him.

Sometimes, he untethered his mind, and let it go.

Sometimes, he wandered.

Usually, he did not see Gembound. Or if he did, he ignored them; let them pass, drifted away from them, let his mind's wandering continue. He… he does not pass up the chance to interact with the little gem-beasts, most days. It is fun, to speak to them. To try and pry them apart through their words, to read their expressions with unblinking eyes, to hum with satisfaction when one of them stuttered, shaken by something he'd said… but these wanderings are meant to rest his mind.

He can hardly rest his mind if he is turning the gears of manipulation, now, is he?

But—

—there is a little upright kitty-cat, walking in the air above the generator humming in Polaris' river, and the sight alone is enough for him to stop and stare, jarred out of the whispering trance he's put himself into by the silent pad of a two-legged cat over the machinery. Her attention seems wholly focused on the machine; he is free to stop and stare, at least for now.

She strikes familiar. Her shape is… unusual, for the caves. There are two-legged beasties which roam and dance and cast around these parts, of course there are, but none who seem to take such animal shape. It's like someone has taken a cat and stretched it upright and told it to stay that way on pain of death and the cat obeyed.

Hm. Where does he know her from? Such an unusual shape..

It takes him a few moments of watching to remember. Her. In the cave of ice, where his breaths came hotter than usual and his rattling tail dragged in the snow-melt his body heat left surrounding him, a trail of watery carnage. The cat who had hunted with him, for the feast. Was that so long ago? The cycles have passed him so quickly.

( Hmph. He's been trotting in circles; all plotting, no action. What would his Master say of him? Farina would be disappointed in his inaction, no doubt.

He should work to rectify it, soon. )

Little kitty-cat, what do you think? He cannot read her face from here, so far up, but perhaps…

A lash; rising—a dark tendril of hidden-chaos that he can almost—no, he can see (rippling, twisting the air; dripping oil-dark and the drops rain down and the stone twists too pretty-dark-oilstone-iridescent, he would turn all the caves dark and dripping and shatter the stone if he could, yes-yes-yes), if only in dreamstate hallucination. And there is the cat, up there, and he reaches out to grasp the gentle glass thoughts that she is no doubt thinking, the turning hum of a generator in her brain.

The magic—connects. Grasps. Hooks its anchors into her brain and opens her up splitting the matter headfirst dripping oily things (he has seen the brains of lessers before in study he knows what they look like and now he knows her he knows he knows he knows—)

There is a turmoil, rolling, deep inside her. The cloudy white-waters of a stormy lake, twisting and spiraling, dragging the poor kitty's psyche down to its center. And in that center; oh, in its center, what is there to see? There is lightning running through the water, bright and full of power, but it is not the kind of power that makes Tsetse's bones sing. No, instead—instead.

The-dread-that-is-not-his drips down like oil into his chest; the magic keeps it at a distance, so he is sitting as an observer behind a glass wall, but he still feels a phantom shiver run down his spine at the delightful thrill of despair that seeps into him. Sweet ambrosia of the darkest kind.

Too much energy. Too much loss. So much loss. She has lost so much, the poor thing. Hurt so many people. It hangs from her like tattered remains of the disguise that concealed her their first meeting; her magic, too, destroys.

Chaos is not the only thing that breaks. Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to her power, when they first met; that moment she split the skies with a thunderclap and he knew she'd sooner split his skull than he split hers if he would want to use her as an experiment.

Her mind, running, running, running, turning against itself with no way out. And here she tries to flee from it, flee from her regrets; flee from her own self-hatred, and here is where the two of them differ, for where Tsetse relishes in the act of destruction and hurting and being feared she… regrets it.

It is an unfamiliar thing, regret. Foreign. Destruction is in his nature, burns in his blood; to regret destruction would be to regret his own act of existence. He'd sooner snuff himself out than regret hurting anything, anyone. Yet—her own act of so much destruction torments her so.

She wants to create. She wants to break free.

She cannot.

And so she distracts herself with the humming buzz of a generator, learning to fill the deep pit of despair in her gut; yet Tsetse knows it is only a mere distraction, and once she is done the dread will come rushing back in, those bleak thoughts, and swallow her in its grasp once more.

Poor thing. Poor, poor little kitty.

And—finding the spell still holding, strong in its grasp against the cat's mind (for now, at least; and perhaps that is because they are not so dissimilar after all?), he whispers into her head.

Dear little one. Why do you regret your actions so?

They, the two of them, like shattered pieces of a mirror; broken from the same glass which cuts, but jagged in different ways.

He pushes the raw edges of their pieces together and wonders why she is filled with so much remorse.

For a moment, she is floating. Breathing. Humming along to a one-note tune. It is the only stability her heart has ever known. The feeling of function, rhythm, like time is flowing in proper sequence and she is drifting in its channel.

And then, from the depths (below? above? behind?), a tendril in two parts. One — sudden, cold — clutches her chest (leaving her to think, for the briefest moment, I cannot escape ghosts—) and then she is violently flung from her pedestal. Plummeting, plummeting, plummeting for the coursing stream below. The other, dripping and rolling with steam like oil, dry ice, saliva from the maw of the machine, slithers into her skull through her ears, eye sockets, every foolishly exposed opening, and crawls right into her brain.

Dear little one. Why do you regret your actions so?

Her body, several steps ahead of her mind, reacts first. It attempts to summon a saving grace, a blatant symbol of the very agony she had been trying to conceal. Her mind feels broken into, cracked like a safe, and the heat of the fury that experience generates is almost enough to convert gas to plasma. It is certainly enough energy to spread, to unfurl into wicked wings and vicious antlers, to coat her in the haze of a nimbus cloud. Madhukar uses the reflexes of a feline to master the air, maintain it beneath her, and spin to face the adversary thief.

That is when her brain finally catches up.

"WHA-T THE F—"

Her heartbeat is a deadly tempo in her ears, and something in her deepest mind feels like it's bleeding out an ichor that will pollute the waters. The adversary. I know "—YOU."

Madhukar's chest already feels sick and full with dirty clouds and swirling seas, but she knows she must hold it in. Swallow it. Because she knows who this is, and she can only guess what they must have done. Thief. Invader. And she knows, along with this, that to win a duel with a snake you must first grip it by the throat. Stuff the bird in a box and step on it before it begins to sing, but—

Rage boils and churns, finding its own ebb and flow in the pit of her belly. Her head reels with an unseen agony. Were she to bleed, it would stain the floor and water black with the malice that wells within her heart now. "WHAT- WHA-T- DID Y-... WHA-T DID YOU—" It won't come out 'til the cup runneth over. It was only boiling now. Boiling and biding its time. Curiosity was the vengeance of his ghost, keeping her at bay. The ghost that writhed its way around the fuming, imperial antlers crowning her head like a pipe organ of blades. It was that same ghost that kept her malice at bay as well, that tempered the pot, that shielded Tsetse from certain doom brimming just behind Madhukar's blazing green eyes. Tsetse would never meet his own savior, now.

The horse of pestilence had sparked the fire that would begin the war in her heart again, and like the bashing tides Madhukar would hold it, believing in the foundation of her bones, the fortress of her rib cage. She would hold this war within and hold her ground without (although she flew above water), letting the defiance shackle and rejuvenate her, absorbing the lightning in her water.

Leering with perfected hatred, Madhukar would seek out the eyes in this jagged, distorted reflection and, against all odds and previous judgements, she would wait. Wait. Wait. As the oil he had implanted quivered from the lip of the faucet and drip, drip, dripped its unending soliloquy... directly into her mind.

The first word out of the cat's mouth (well, one of a few, but he'll not count her shattered exclamation) is of recognition. A stuttered 'YOU'.

And Tsetse smiles.

(Do not imagine a horse smiling. Or, if you do, try not to imagine it on a face such as Tsetse's, void-dark and jagged like driftwood as it is.

His teeth are sharp.

They drip with Oil.)

The spell has long since slithered away from the spaces in-between neurons, faded; but the cat is still there, raging at what he's done to her, her fur bristled and soaking wet, and she has risen from the river Tsetse inadvertently plunged her into.

Her rage is beautiful.

Her magic, more-so. It is not like any kind of magic he has seen; Tsetse wonders if he'll see it again. What it is is this: wings of deep red, leathery like a blood-soaked bats', carrying her above the current. Antlers of the same dark carmine, spiraling up from her skull, seeming sharp enough to run an unfortunate animal through.

Once again, Tsetse finds himself admiring her power. Once again, Tsetse finds herself admiring the way that he knows he could not kill her directly if he tried. He'd try to get her beneath his hooves, make her sick with darkness, crush her chest in—and she'd summon that vicious, crackling lightning, and with a crash of the storm he'd be little more than electric-baked chevaline.

It thrills him, to interact with someone who could kill him if she wanted to. He missed this.

And now the chaos is in her too. Drip-fed corruption lacing across her brain matter; he could do that again, and again, if he was so inclined to. Hunt her down and spark the corruption, day by day—would she learn to flee? Would she give in, to the whispers, to the promises, to the thrill of hurting, killing, breaking? Or would she obliterate him, to save herself?

Creator… she's fascinating.

"You remember me," he purrs, voice an unnatural vibrato. Dual-toned synthetic words. "Guess, dear kitten. I want to see how close you'll get."

The organ pipes spewed their haunting, orchestral notes, commanding— daring to command her to guess. Well, she had already guessed. In the darkest wells of her heart, she already knew. Oily fingers caressed her mind, appraised its chambers, swept over its secrets. She wanted to bite that hand, she wanted to raze that synaptic citadel.

Its tone, its words, invoked yet another physical transformation in Madhukar, the consequence of anger and grief. For thieves and fools, she would put it all on display — all the fury it wished to see. The lights embedded in her torso flared with a brilliant, electrifying pattern of oranges, yellows, and reds, as vicious and violent as her jagged wings and magical adornments. The energy that flickered with each wing beat that carried her slowly and unsteadily towards the ground could have rivaled Polaris, and soon might, in the storm her soul was set on unleashing. She must have descended like some kind of angel.

"MADHUKAR," her voice rattled defiantly, barbed and wired, as one paw beat against her chest to indicate who the name was for. She was no one's dear, and no one's kitten. "WHA-T YO-U HAVE D-ONE..." the words unfurled from her tongue, a raspy alto that slithered across the vibrant Polaris air, hissing like the aftermath of crashing cymbals, "WARR-ANTS DEATH." A mild cough tickled the back of her throat. She swallowed it like a medicine, in one excruciating gulp.

Her eyes locked on her target and narrowed into archer's slits. Madhukar attempted to conjure those spirits of wind and lightning that trailed after her, to show the tainting devilhorse the true strength of her judgement. The charge in the room would sway, compress, and shrieking bolts would scatter onto the ground surrounding Tsetse, Madhukar reining over it all. However, none of her lightning would be directly straight for the chaos beast, and this was made so, that Tsetse would understand: It warrants death, but I will not kill you. Yet.

Perhaps the cat is terrified.

But if she is, it is buried under layers and layers of anger and grief; a primal sort of upset, belonging purely to sapience. For, you see, mere animals do not have a sense of shame—no, he has pried into their minds before, and although they startle and flee once the chaotic magic fires upon their neurons, it is a kind of terror belonging to the unknown, to a category of creatures which has just enough mind to fear what they do not understand.

This? This anger? The fire (plasma, even) flashing in her eyes? No, that's borne from a different kind of primal feeling. High sapience causing her to hoard privacy to herself like a squirrel storing nuts in the winter. Acorns in her head, fractured and blackened by his spellcast.

Her voice is loud like a thunderclap when it comes again. That pretty little voice, so soft and scared, now full of so much hatred; oh, it's admirable the way she rallies. The voice of a cat growling and yowling, but also that of an executioner—she speaks his sentence for all the world to hear, and indeed, if anyone were around to hear their fighting, they might wonder just what, exactly, Tsetse has done.

Tsetse knows what he has done. He understands this price.

The sky fractures around him.

First instinct is to paw at the ground with a hoof, lowering his head, expecting the bolts to strike him, expecting fire to flash down his side in lichtenberg patterns any moment, any moment now, waiting, ready for a fight—perhaps to charge, knock her into the river—

—but the bolts flash around him, strike not flesh but stone, and at once he understands.

A warning shot.

His movement stills. Fire-chaos-green eyes lock onto Madhukar's once again.

He laughs. The laughter fills the air around him like lightning did just a moment ago, ozone still pricking at his coat; click-click-click, goes his vents with amusement, the segments of his tail rattling against each other as it swishes side-to-side. (Rather like a cat's if you think about it, though the emotion is far different.)

He reaches for magic, but it fails him; slips out of his grasp like oil, and for a fleeting moment his tail shudders with irritation. But then it is gone, the emotion is silenced, and he merely lifts his head up and regards her with a kind of earned respect.

"Well done… Madhukar. I suppose you would not regret it if I was the one killed by your magic?" He remembers that strain of guilt so easily… is she so willing to compromise her morals, or was it just the flash of anger that crumbled those thoughts?

Either way, he's treading a dangerous line, referencing the information he pried unwillingly from her head.

He enjoys the challenge.

The demonhorse's vicious laughter, and moreso its words — the way it said them — they stung like a bellyache, twisted her esophagus into one hideous, plummeting knot that anchored Madhukar to the floor. She couldn't avoid the way that question hooked into her lips and twisted them down and sideways, in pure disgust. She also couldn't ignore the almost embarrassing fall in height, the shift in perspective, as pawpads pressed against cold, vibrant earth, as macabre wings splayed to full length before dissipating. That earth almost felt hot, like dry ice, beneath her enmity. But she could pretend to ignore that embarrassment; raise her chin sharply upward so as to catapult her gaze into the eyes of her opponent — like stones loosed from David's slingshot. Pretend to brush off the sting as well, ignore the incessant swarm of violent memories lingering around every possible answer. Would I regret it? Comet, Tahi-shei, Twisted Twisted Twisted... No. It frightened her, but it also begged a question. How dare you ask me? Which begged another.

Questions unfurled, and the cold floor nullified some part of her ire, and the warning shot forced Madhukar to remember her pride, her power, her control over the situation. She needed that most. Stab and lunge with each venomous word as this one might, but win? Against her? No; it could dash the ground with that hoof, make a big display, but truth be told all the same: it owed her its life now. She had that power, and it knew it, and that meant Madhukar could breathe again. But then, if it knew that, if it had known that from the beginning like it seemed to... The questions unraveled, they trickled down invisible stairs, like a ball of yarn, until they were finally nothing more than a single thread. A single question, which Madhukar practically barked — "WHY?" And though her throat revolted, Madhukar knew she had to press onward for the sake of clarity, and so "WH-Y DO IT?" she demanded, her voice like a snapping cord.

Why ask? What intrigued? What kind of sorry creature wanted to know, and would go to such an idiotic length to know it? Win— win! It could never win, so why contest! So what if it knew the things she regretted? What power did that hold for it, something that knew so little else about her? And what, again, what kind of imbecile would go looking, chasing, for such a modicum of weakness in her?! Madhukar considered. A collector? Some curious adventurer? Why not pick on someone else, someone you've actually spoken to for more than one hunt, someone with real hang-ups about KILLING you? Or do you not value your life? Or are you just lonely? It incited a whisper to begin scratching at the back of her mind: Twisted, Twisted, Twisted. The freshest kills made the strongest ghosts, the hardest to escape. And that one really was a ghost, not just a memory stuck in some chrysalis — she was actually dead. A lonely ghost, the kind that chased her into a blizzard looking for nothing beyond her fury. To overcome her, somehow, even though it would never end up mattering. Madhukar's tail twitched, and the lights at her flanks didn't know what to do with the presence of ghosts and revelations, so they simply buzzed and beamed all different colors until they finally reached chilling, bone white.

At least the memories erased some of Madhukar's expression. Her eyes still rattled with the might of one holding a gavel in their hand, and her brow still condensed with her pensiveness and rage, but the snarl stepped back. The lips now covered the teeth while the ears angled forward, seeking the next reason to bare them again. But the downside arguably outweighed that, because now Madhukar would be forced to wonder, truly, about this creature, or be distracted enough by her guilt to lose control. And of those two, it seemed as though the devil she knew was actually worse in this scenario. The one she did not, the one right before her, she could hold at some form of impasse. Unless this was victory for it, to have manipulated her — strong-armed by her own mind into mutual curiosity? Wouldn't that be sad, if it were. A tragedy for the both of them.

Why?

Why? Isn't that a funny question? Why, why, why? It strikes Tsetse with both amusement and a kind of strangeness; he does not think he has ever been asked the question before.

He does not think there has ever been anyone to ask him such a question. The rats certainly don't ask as they sicken and die from plague, their bodies curling helplessly in on themselves, the whites of their eyes writ large as they foam at the mouth, desperate to survive but not knowing their death was already consigned to the fates—

—oh, how he wishes for greater subjects. Subjects that have the capability to speak, to scream, to cry; wouldn't that be beautiful? Wouldn't that be a beautiful thing indeed, watching their brains rot out from under them? Pretty things, pretty things.

Madhukar is a pretty thing indeed, though Tsetse does not see the reason for her to mar her form with mud and mask. Wouldn't she be so much prettier stripped of futile disguise? He wants to see her face. He wants to see the whites of her eyes.

A tilt of his head; some buzzing noise that could be interpreted as a soft laugh. "I was curious," he says, simply. "You are curious."

Tsetse flows into the slow prowl of a predator; a muted step-step-step of six pairs of hooves on stone, as he lowers himself ever so slowly down to eye level. "You fascinate me."

Why, again, "WHY?!" She couldn't fathom this, this fascination with her. She couldn't just peel back that stupid grinning skull and look through all the gaps in those gnashing teeth to hunt down its thoughts, its intentions — to invade, steal and infect them like it did to her. How the hatred burned her, or how it yearned to with such awful, entitled greed, lapping at her heels like maddened dogs. But to tell you the utmost truth, Madhukar too, the core of her, was held in some kind of glass container, feeling the threat of the heat but none of the fire. Observing it from a distance she had learned to keep for her safety and the safety of others. Anger still shot through her every particle; malice, contempt, hatred, but she knew it would all come to fade as she continued down this dark and shady path. As she let herself be lured.

The fascination wasn't foreign. Which is perhaps why a certain old and stale desperation had seeped into her second commanded question, why behind her chipping mask her eyes widened further and her brows furrowed tighter. Twisted, Tahi-shei, Kitty in some manner, even the snake from her hatching, they had all held these fascinations about her, they had all taken interest. Ruthless, rampant interest that taught them death, murder, and bitterness. Madhukar was not a source of positive fascination; nothing good about her could hold interest so much as all the bad. And she knew it. But why? What was it about that part of her? Or, really, what was it about them that became so magnetized? The common denominator between these great loves and great enemies. Was it jealousy? Was that it? That had become Madhukar's best and only guess. Envy, from all these different creatures, because she had such monstrous power. But right before her stood a real monster, through and through, and could it still be envious...?

The longer she stared and thought, the further Madhukar's claws tried to press into the palm of her emerald-holding hand. The shape of it wouldn't let her hurt herself this way — a strange gift from a dead nemesis that was turning into more and more of a curse by the second. Of course Twisted would do this to her. Of course she would do this to Twisted. It was a match made in hell; one of many, too many, enough to make Madhukar wonder if she was truly and less of a demon than the one in front of her. She didn't want to be. She really didn't want to be.

But the one she had taught murder had taught her mercy. She could feel the substance, light and saccharine, slipping through her arteries and veins like a poison, riding on the curiosity this beast instilled, invited in her. It was a battle over her soul from the past wills of present ghosts. Madhukar at least knew Twisted would want to see it zapped. She couldn't go to the point of smithereens, but... there was yet hope, need even, for a compromise. She would see what it said, and if it offered any enlightenment, anything worthy in return for what it had viciously taken, that mercurial mercy would only grow. And then Madhukar would do it, because even in her moments of mercy, she was still and would forever be herself. Isn't this what she was? Isn't this what they all wanted? The whites of her eyes — anything but a builder, a giver, a friend who loves and is loved. They wanted their death wish.

Well.

In the end, she screams like all the rats do.

There's a difference between her and the rats, of course. If she was little better than the rats Tsetse would have poisoned her, pumped her full of plague and discarded her at the first opportunity. Rats are fleeting little wonders; fun to play with, to watch the progression of his disease and to pick them apart later to see how such an invisible thing has ravaged their insides, but they are so temporary. He has lost count of how many rats he has killed; he has never seen a point in counting to begin with. They don't matter.

Madhukar matters. Madhukar matters because she could strike him down with lightning on a whim—the phantom charge of the warning bolts of lightning seem to ache over his coat, crawling like worms. She's infected him; from the moment he saw the pretty thing with her dapple-coat stark against winter snow he had her in the back of his mind. Just a fleeting thing, at first, as dismissable, as easy to forget as the rats: but he came back.

She found her here in Polaris, floating. Watching the generator, watching it tick-tick-tick; he'd read the perfect imprint of her thoughts at the time, the essence of a bird's wing pressed against the snow, and he knows she'd wondered, too: a different kind of why. A distraction from her heaving guilt.

The guilt, the guilt. It was always the guilt. When he'd first cast out his corrupted magic and sunk its hooks into her mind he wasn't expecting much. It was a thrilling curiosity, but fleeting as everything else; a search for how she'd tick. She'd wanted to pick her apart like the rats, she did. She still does, but now—now, she would like to be able to stitch her back together afterward.

"Why...?"

His magic sparks. His magic oozes. A little, lithe, flickering thing, not quite worthy yet: the magic burns when he pulls it out, and although there is no pain to go with it and he knows it is not real he still hears the sound of something tearing in his ears when he takes a flickering torch of corrupted magic and brands it to her brain.

A brief step back in time. What he is pressing to her brain, whispering in her ears, pouring into her head is—him. His thoughts. The vaguest impression of what he saw in her as she floated above the generator: the buzzing memories of a brain wired and grown in chaos.

Her mind, ru███g, running, running, turning against itsel███h no w█y out. And here███e tries to flee ███m it, flee from her regrets███ee from her own ███f-hatred, and here is wh███e two of them differ, for where Tsets███shes in the act of destruction and hurting and bei███ared she… re███ts it.

████n u█amili█thing, reg████ Foreign. Destru████on is in his█ature, burns in his blood; to re█ret destruction woul████e to regret hi████n act of █xistence. He'd sooner █nuff hims████than regret hur█ng anyt████ any█ne. Yet—her o████ct of so much destruction████ents her so.

He blinks the aftershocks of his own shared memory away and murmurs in her ear, strangely soft, voice like the fluttering of moth wings, "I do not feel guilt, pretty thing. You do. That is why you fascinate me so."