Once upon a time, she'd have moved the stars for her crew - for her friends... her family. People she'd thought had accepted her flaws as readily as she'd accepted theirs. Of course... she hadn't known them well enough to know all their dirty little secrets until it was too late, it seemed.
And she was becoming just like him, now.
Her own ship. Her own crew. Her own dark deeds. Either a flask, or a joint always at hand.
She wasn't, usually, all too interested in things like fury - why bother, really? Anger is a quick burning fuel that leaves you worse for wear, most days.
Better to laugh, and live, and indulge in the now.
But when it came to a broken vow - when it came to the person who said they'd be there... blaming her for what was done to her? The things that haunted her, day and night, those things were her fault? Accusing her of... of being something she wasn't, now.
He'd looked at her with disgust, after all her suffering. After she fought to get back to her 'friends'... back to the man she respected, and admired - suspicion and revulsion were all she got.
"Yeh aren't me Lily-flower, yeh sick fekk. Yeh dunnae get ta use 'er against me."
The memory was as stark now, as the moment had been, then - and still made her stomach churn in a way nothing else could.
A knife right in the heart of the girl who had held on. For him.
"What do I have to do to prove that it's me, it's really...honestly me? How do I prove to you that you are why I held on? That I hit rock bottom, and I endured horrific things because you told me that's what a bilgerat does - that they survive no matter what. You taught me not to play fair, so I beat the fucker at his own game in the end."
Long, thin fingers drifted upward in the mirror, to set lightly at the silvered lioness pendant she still wore - the one the Marquis Vynguld had given her so long ago, now. He'd told her to embrace her 'Lioness'; to embrace the parts of herself that she'd always been afraid of - forever the doormat, the lap cat... never embracing herself in full, never stretching her legs, or her own claws... unless at the behest of another.
Iloam's words had been a slow-acting poison - and the only sort that could harm her now; a poison that gnawed at the edges of her as surely as the demonic impulse did... his revulsion. The man who'd given her a home, and a purpose, and a family when she'd had nothing.
She disgusted him now. She'd survived... and for what? To see loathing in the eyes of her loved ones? But perhaps anger was best left to simmer - perhaps, if they wanted her to be a monster, she would be, in time.
"Yeh aren't goin' ta fool me - so next time yeh see me, walk t'e ot'er way."
Love betrayed had a way of rotting inside a person - of twisting, and befouling waters that once were pure - and rejection of a hand reached out in desperation had a way of amplifying that effect.
But as much as she hated the things he'd said to her - the false accusations, and his paranoia that she wasn't even herself... she hated even more that she was becoming just like him.
