Snowman appreciated TA's display, even if Winona didn't. It was right. Warm. A reminder, as the stars shrieked like a bowstring against her unresined veins and the Terrors sang a chorus at the base of her skull, that she was a monster, too. Had anyone ever met a single other entity that did not have the capacity to be a monster? Win struggled just a touch when TA secured her, the trails of her laughter shimmering in the air before fading. The anonyme's grip was unfailing, and the only mode of recourse seemed to be magi-- No. No, no. Win stopped herself before she started, the spark of what little magic she still possessed burying itself deep in her stomach, hiding, before TA could take it away. Snowman didn't need to walk to TA's side. She was already there, eyes glittering with a predatory expectancy. Win, despite how harried she'd been in her attempted flight, affected valiance as her opposite approached her. She did not quail in TA's hold. Not outwardly, at any rate. She did not flinch when Snowman glitched a jagged obsidian blade to her palm. She gave no more than a sharp breath as Snowman pierced the skin at her brow, dragging the stone down like a plow to cut the soil. Everyone was reopening old wounds tonight, weren't they? It was hot and thick and sticky, looking just wrong in its cerulean chill as it dripped from such warmly-tinted skin. Snowman almost lifted the knife to her lips to taste Win, but hesitated. She was filth. Filth had no place behind her teeth. That was when Win saw fit to make a plea. "Br--", she began, but that was as far as she got. With an inhuman snarl, Snowman lashed out, striking Win across her unmarred cheek, though it now was ruined. The furious incision ran from below her cheek bone and angled up, towards her brow, diagonal to the pre-existing scar. Of course, Win wouldn't keep this scar after all was said and done. The first scar had been a mark of martyrdom (look how the Queen of Thorns behaved when I went to offer condolences for her mother's passing!), but this would be a mark of shame. She would make sure the public never knew she'd been held down and crushed. "Don't you DARE," Snowman roared, the volume at which she confronted Win so unknown to Dersites, much less their queen. Her chest was heaving. She wanted it worse. She wanted to strike again, slip and cut across her veins. But she was a patient woman, if nothing else. She took a moment to compose herself, her thoughts, steal a bracing glance at her moirail before she continued. "You should know what it is like one day, /Winona Qause/, to go home and see your name spelled out in the public as if you were a criminal." Getting close. Snowman held Win's cheeks, her nails digging into the fresh wounds, getting soaked in that awful, wretched filth that had the nerve to be the same color as her own blood. "/You should know what it is to be called a traitor. You should know what it is to have your face pressed into the sand while the people you fought for fight like dogs over a chance at your starved and drying body. You should fucking know what it is to have everything stolen from you. You should know what it is to not have your family or your home or your own future you witless, unprepossessing, soot skinned piece of SHIT/." Snowman's monologue was punctuated with a snap of magic left uncontrolled, electricity scattering across Win's skin, nails scraping rent flesh as Snowman slapped Win's face away from her own. So much anger, so much hurt left to fester, now finding an outlet. Her breaths had become deep and quick again, the room that much darker for the way her pupils had narrowed to slits in her anger. She might be dizzy. She might explode. She might ask more of her moirail than she'd ever done before. "Make her understand, TA."
