❓+ "if everyone is welcome at the hotel, does that include me?"
YES OR NO, accepting; @toxitrosia.
rigidity chokes lithe limbs at the question, lips pursing in an effort to remain impassive; to wipe away her distaste at the question. it was true enough, if everyone was welcome at the Hotel, come hell or high water it'd stand to reason that she'd have an open heart and hand for any and all right? sinners and hellborn alike, overlord and commoner, the very people she swore to protect no matter their creed. yet, yet, it sinks. it digs, pries at her, gnawing as rabid dogs do to shards of bone; her mind recalls angel, sweet angel, the state he would come back in; never spoke on it, tight lipped, snarky, black eyed and incumbered with an agony he was keen to deny from her prying gaze. it didn't take much to put two and two together, of overlords and their tricks, who angel was employed under, it wasn't hard to see if one looked close enough; and she did. to remain ignorant of power, no matter how shiny or well curated the veneer, would be to foster vulnerability and she had enough of that to last her a lifetime. they all had their little secrets, charlie had buried the bleach white corpses of hers in cavernous closets with the golden encrusted ℳ emblem long ago.
she's grit toothed, torn cheeked from biting the inside of it; speaks in hisses like her father, when she answers.
to refuse was to smear the very picture of her campaign, what she'd so tirelessly worked to secure herself. personal feelings had no bearing here, when spears from on high were pointed, watching in their seraphic trance; when her Hotel's namesake and her dreams, oh those laughed at, humiliated, dreams depended on her compassion. and what did it speak on her? her guilt whispers and spits. her morals, what she believed in? that only who she deemed worthy could stay? that anyone she 'disliked' would be denied the very absolution she claimed was for anyone were they to put heart and soul to it? she had no recourse but to give the far and the many a chance, no matter her reluctance.