[center][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Vz4Iiuh.png[/IMG]
[@Crimmy] [@Plank Sinatra]
Behind the Café[/center]

There was truth and validity in the other girl's words. But...

I could feel the sting of her fingers digging through the thin fabric of my shirt and into my arm. It acted as a sort of grounding, to this moment. 

[color=9D36FF]"I'm sorry, Gratia. I apologize that you don't like how I'm dealing with this. That I'm not laying on the couch in some office expositing an entire history of how my father always wanted my sister to be the proper Nuit, and that no matter how hard I tried to impress him in everything that I was and did, he never offered as much as a second glance in my direction until my mother died."[/color] I stood up straighter and faced Gratia. [color=9D36FF]"Then I could tell him about my mother's funeral, about how while I stood there alone crying after my father's eulogy and my sister had to leave to pack her bags for Beacon I was beaten. Dragged through the mud and the muck. Taken to a warehouse, beaten more, had my wings hoisted above my head for buyers to see, had the feathers plucked out by a disgusting bitch with an attraction to pain. Then I could tell him how that made me feel. How I didn't want to shoot her. Because that wouldn't be enough. I could tell him how I listened to other girls die in the same room as me. They pleaded for anyone to help them, that because my semblance couldn't break cast iron I listened to the death of fifteen other girls before I got the chance to send a letter. You think I'm chasing Jericho's dick?"[/color] 

I asked my chest rising and falling faster than I had realized. Gratia's fingers and cold eyes still dug into me. But I couldn't feel the pain anymore. My eyes were still flat, just like my best friends.

[color=9D36FF]"I'm chasing the fleeting sensation I had when I spoke to him for the first time on the cruise. I'm chasing normalcy and I'm not going to find it on the couch of a therapist. I know that I wanted her dead and I know that isn't the right thing to want. I understand that no one would ever consider that 'my fault' because of what I went through. I know the steps I'm supposed to take, the excercises I should be doing, that I shouldn't jump into new situations because my current state is fragile. I'm aware. I just don't care anymore."[/color] I finished staring directly back at Gratia completely unwavering. I had only felt two fleeting moments of normalcy since the night I was kidnapped...