just to spite

Her ears flattened at his sudden, feral movements, and she danced back almost instantly. Her body had never forgotten the grace of the kill, even after all this time. Still, she didn't understand why this strange one, this Rogue, feared her silly words, her questions. There could be a thousand reasons, singing in his skin, if only she knew the words to say.

Panic, anger, fear - but why? His motions could show her so much, but she would never really know why. Curiouser and curiouser...

"Want?" she asked, tilting her head. She hadn't really thought of it. Till now - everything she had done had been simple reaction, at least to her. "I...know not."

She couldn't understand others, much less her own games. He was a fascinating new thing that had somehow entered into her little world, a curiosity that she wanted to...she wanted to know. To play. Above anything, she wanted to keep him here awhile longer, and if it meant playing along with his demands, then so be it. She mulled over his strange words, slowly remembering the meaning of each one.

"Stains?" she said, finally. She lifted her foreleg again, into the moonlight, and the scars shone better. If one could touch they would feel the multiple flaws, like running a hand down torn silk. "Here. Was perfect once - death doll, killed many. He said - I perfect. But then Sanguine come, Id come, and I perfect no longer. That is sin, no?"

If she thought about it long enough she could feel the old pain - how her flesh had shredded and blood poured down like fire. The first time she had felt fear, a true fear, because he was the Warrior she could never be, and his eyes - his eyes were mad. She wondered if these tales were what this strange Rogue were looking for.

This appeared to knock him back down a few pegs.

The blue Rogue examined her scars from the distance she had made, a small frown curving his lips. She really was innocent wasn't she. He could tell from her lack of understanding that she had no intentions of pushing all the right buttons. Yet she still managed to do it pretty good.

He shook his head with a slight hint of empathy toward her. He then decided to help her.

Soft muzzle moved forward to carefully grace the marks of her other life, when she was perfect. He kept his eyes on her incase she denied his touch.

"No Lock, that is not a sin. You were being used, then you were backstabbed. Although it was probably for the better," He shrugged a moment to back away from her again.

"And you can't just become imperfect. You either are, or you're not. I don't think you've lost it. You have flaws, mind you everyone does, but you're hardly imperfect."

This conversation sounded familiar, certain words causing him de ja vu of a time not to long ago with another mare, who could read him just the same. Only to a different extent. She could read between the lines, when Lock was unable.

Used. That was what Sanguine had said as well? Used and cast aside. She tilted her head as the stallion reached out to touch, but she didn't back away. Touch. Only recently did she understand that touch could be kind. This Rouge, could be kind...

What was the word for the feeling when he drew back? Pain. That couldn't be it but it was the only way she knew to describe the funny hurt in her chest. She stepped closer again, almost as if pulled by sudden want. She looked up at him, eyes curious, searching. "I...believed. For long. I killed, for long. And if I...not death doll, then what? What did I kill for?"

He wanted her past and she was giving it to him - he wanted to help, and she would let him. Most of all, because she needed to know. She had done what she had done to prove her worth, to prove that she was everything the Architect had said she was. And then when that meaning was taken from her, when she was told that she had never been perfect-what did that make her?

Murderer. In their travels she had heard Id called that, and Sanguine had given her a simple definition, one that seemed to fit. But then she said that she was not one, and that Id was not one either and couldn't tell her why. And though she would never admit, it...bothered her. A wrongness lived in her, twisting away inside her chest, and she didn't know what to do. She wondered if he would.

It was now that he found himself changing. A small flutter of something deep inside him, but he pushed it aside too soon to figure it out. He would not get attached, he would not get attached...

She began closing the distance again and he found himself smirking at her actions. Was she assuming that he had all the answers? She was making him feel like a superior, like being a Rogue made him some sort of God. Hardly. Too many mistakes had been made to ever qualify him as being holy. Quite the opposite, if he was asked.

The way her past was explained made her seem like she craved attention and approval from others, like an eager puppy. He quirked a brow before a sigh was blown between those thin lips. How could he describe something when he had never experienced it, only witnessed as others bowed before his feets, awaiting his compliments. He had smiled at their dipped forms, expecting nothing less.

Ether wasn't like that anymore.

"It appears as if you killed for praise, my dear." Another step was taken to shorten the strides between them. He didn't reach out to her, she could do that herself.

"What do you think you are now? No longer a death doll, then what? A broken puppet, waiting for the strings to be pulled? You are what you wish and do what you wish, darlin'." He paused a moment, a small smile forming. Being blunt was not the purpose of his little speech, but providing closure. She didn't need a reason to kill other then that she wanted to.

"You are perfect because you made yourself so, not because someone else gave you the title."

"I don't know what I want."

She shook her head, a little childish, a little forlorn. All she had been taught was to fight, to kill. The Architect's experiment, his finest specimen. For her that was all that had been. And now those things were taboo - it was not the place, the time. It wasn't that she wanted to do it again - not completely - but she didn't know what else she could do.

They say ignorance is bliss. She had been complete before she knew of this world and it's laws, burden of the blood on her hands.

"Not praise," she clarified, shrugging, and looking into his eyes. They reminded her of the Architect's, something in them, at least. "Kill...because that is all there was. All I was. Now...nothing left."

Nothing left but a hollow garden for a hollow girl, days she spent destroying things little by little because she didn't know how to do anything else. It was almost tragic, but she hadn't the capacity yet to care.