[quote=@Stern Algorithm]
"I'm sure that in the beginning, Eponine served you only so she could protect me.  I think I can say with confidence that that is no longer the case. Despite the walls she puts up around her, Eponine cares for you too.  The two of us will never leave your side."
[/quote]

Maria levitated a cup to her hand. "Thank you. It has been a long time since I've heard those words. They remind me of him..."

Maria lapsed into a memory. It was a time when she was wandering the streets with Klaus. Despite having turned into one of the magi, the hated empresses of this world, he was still there, by her side. He wanted to protect her from all the violence and death that would inevitably follow the life of one touched by the Incubators.

[i]But I was wrong. I was the one who should have been protecting him.[/i]

She remembered the day she found him, mangled and broken, his limbs twisted and blood flowing from his mouth like a stream. The horrors she faced at the orphanage were nothing compared to the suffering she felt at that exact moment, the moment where she realized there was no innocence left in the world, no hope for any happiness as long as people were free to do evil. She decided she would be above it all, above the pain, above the grief.

Before she realized it, Maria crushed the cup in her hand, causing bloody shards to drop down on the floor. She now looked at her crimson palm pierced by ceramic barbs, her eyes quivering, not out of physical pain, but the pain her memories brought her. The hand was slowly regenerating due to her magical curse, but the shards stayed stuck to her hand, like they were naturally jutting out in a gross fashion out of her flesh.

"Fantine, do you see what this is?" She showed her bloody hand to her. She wanted her to see what it was like to be cursed with magic, to understand that it was not pure magic, but corruption that flowed through their veins.