when water is as thick as blood

WESSEX

Wessex is quiet for a long, long time, letting the silence divide them for too many minutes. In one second, she feels the impulse to rip the stupid girl to shreds, to shake her, to knock some goddamn sense into her brainwashed head. In another, she feels the urge to laugh and walk away, abandoning her fealty to the girl entirely. None of her imagined montage of actions are kind, so ultimately she does nothing, she simply sits and watches and does not breathe.

She has a singular question to ask her first, and the Ascended does so with a stare that is designed to bore into Amalia. Not with malice, no, never malice. Pity, perhaps. Or knowledge. Wessex forms the words in her mouth long before she opens it, but when she does, her words seem quite calm and calculated. On her answer hinges… everything.

"So you think I should have let myself die, then? Slowly. Painfully. Rather than save myself?"

No, I’ll be the stone
I’ll be the hunter, a tower that casts the shade
I lie awake and watch it all