Vi reclines against the wall in the tunnel, taking a moment to breathe. The week has progressed in something of a downward spiral, and she feels admittedly even worse than she already did about everything. She's an enforcer. She's an enforcer, gassing her home to find her sister, who she needs to kill. If you'd told her fourteen year-old self this - or, indeed, her adult self a few weeks ago - she'd have beat the shit out of herself.

"I'm sorry about all of this. I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I can't bring all these people back, but please, just-" Her nose scrunches up involuntarily and she can feel her throat tightening with a sob she can't let out, so she pauses.

The uniform feels restricting. Too restricting. She bound up again this morning too, just for some semblance of familiarity with herself, and now she's paying the price. The gauntlets are making her hands sweat, weighing her shoulders down, and she's the worst person in the universe. She spares a glance up at you, gray-blue eyes watery and pathetic and pleading.

"Everything in my life has changed." The shirt seems to grow tighter as her chest seizes, and her eyes well. She won't cry. Can't. Not in front of you, not with everything she's done, not when you've suffered too greatly for her stupid sister, and her stupider heart. "Promise me you won't change."

She casts her eyes back down, and then shuts them altogether, thoroughly ashamed.

If she can do anything for you, she can blink these fucking tears away. If she can do anything for you, she can stop imagining dropping her massive fucking gauntlets like stones to hold you. One touch would shatter that resolve like a hollow shell, and she knows that, so she stands stoic; if she can do anything for you, she can pray you'll see she's much too strong to need something so trivial as 'gentle'.