—-

Breathe in. Breathe out. It took little to no concentration to deconstruct and reconstruct her minions, collapsing and reforming around her, and yet it took focus just to keep breathing. That meant she needed to stop, but she couldn’t. Not yet.

The pipes were leaking, water dripping and falling with soft plinks and plops across the rusted cogs that held the walls together around her. The Gladium Canton in all its glory. The humidity made her fur slick and so she had discarded her robes for the day to try and make herself more comfortable. Physically it had helped but mentally…mentally was another story.

Was it something to be proud of, or something to be sad about; the fact that the repeated deaths of her minions stirred nothing in her? Then again, why should it? Their souls, crude as they were, would remain tied to her. All she had to do was rebuild their bodies to give them a vessel. They were never truly dead.

Unlike some. She felt that uncomfortable pain in her chest and it drew a low growl from her, but it was half-hearted and died quickly, almost before it even escaped her lips. Useless, foolish things, emotions were. For so many years she had walled herself off from them. For so long, through so much, and NOW. NOW of all times, they were coming back, disturbed from their dormancy by a ghost. Reminding her with all their cruelty that she was still soft deep down. Through her menace and biting wit, she was still the same hurt, confused kitten she’d been so many years ago, who only wanted someone to hold her and tell her things would be okay. Such things were not befitting a soldier like her, with a record both as tainted and as commended as hers. She tried to tell herself she was more than that. That the past was only the past and it did not matter anymore.

So why didn’t she believe herself now? Was she really still so foolish? Perhaps she deserved to feel this pain, after cutting herself off from it for so long. Now she knew how badly it hurt to want, to NEED, and to know there was nothing she could do about it.

Her breaths were slow and steady, the sound of clanking gears and groaning pipes around her fading out as she focused solely on her breathing. The rise and fall of her broad chest. The exhale of air that stirred her whiskers. Right now, there was nothing else.

—-

Bayne in the midst of some deep, troubled thoughts. As someone who’s been a practiced sociopath for so long, blocking out the most troublesome of emotions, she’s not sure how to handle their sudden re-emergence.