At first, she squeezes her eyes shut again to the point of pain. She forces her body to sit still in stubborn defiance of the sun shining on her. Just another five minutes. Just another ten. She can will herself back to sleep if she can just hold on long enough.

It doesn't come. Her legs crawl up and down with an irritating prickle of energy arcing through her system. The pressure builds in erratic little waves that leave her skin crawling and her muscles buzzing like they were filled with constantly fluttering wings. She can't stand it. She can't keep her hands from scratching at her thighs, and when that doesn't do anything she's forced to start bouncing her legs instead.

The movement undoes her. The more she bounces the more she burns. Heat radiates through her feet into her ankles up her calves. A chill spirals across her spine and sets her shoulders to twitching. Her eyes and nose itch until no amount of willpower in the universe is enough to trick herself into thinking sleep is possible. Her eyes behold her 'bedroom' again, against her will. The decay, and the shining god sitting in the middle of it. 

She swipes two clawless fingers across her itching face, scraping away flecks of red-black blood that had scabbed over and dried up weeks earlier. Her cracked lips force themselves open and let a deep sigh and a moan escape from inside her. It's the first noise she's made in... who cares how long, and her ears wince at the grainy crackle. She paws at her face more and more, cleaning it off, wiping at her lips until they feel clean and wet again, but no matter how much she scratches and probes she can't find what she's actually looking for. Underneath the dry, itchy blood smears there's nothing but smooth skin without traces of the wound that put them there, or even the thin line of a scar to remind her of her lessons. 

She growls, a low and wet gurgling sound that grates her to hear it. She settles for huffing her annoyance through her nose instead. Apparently her stupid body's been hard at work using all the energy she'd so carefully tried to waste. And it was such a simple plan, too. No people and no princesses to get in her way or be too stupid to follow along. No moving parts that might break if she used them out of order. No moving at all, actually. All she had to do was sit here, and wait. And she couldn't even do that right. Fuck. Of course she couldn't; when had a single one of her ideas ever worked out? She wasn't allowed to have plans. She wasn't allowed to win.

"Yyyy-- HHRRRRRK!"

The girl gags and sputters with the effort of speaking. She coughs and snorts again and again, pulling the muddy buildup of a hundred different crying sessions torturously out of her throat and holds it in her mouth. She glares straight at the smiling god so that he can't mistake her intentions when she spits as messily as possible at the spot between her feet. Her hand feels smooth against her lips when she wipes them clean, though for the life of her she can't figure out why she bothers.

"...Fucking cheater."

She slumps backwards until she feels the dirty, tangled mess of her hair clumps against the base of her tail. Apollo watches her, and smiles. She turns her head away, and his smile follows her in the reflection of a puddle of water that's built up in the hollow where a stack of vacuum tubes used to be. She squeezes her eyes shut again, but even when she buries her face in her hands he follows her into the darkness in the form of flashing spots and a persistent red glare pressing through her lids. 

The wall at her back reverberates each time she strikes it with the back of her head. She slumps forward, then back. Forward, then back. Again and again, drumming out her slow, dull percussion with her body as the drumstick. The pain barely registers anymore. That's not why she does it. Forward, then back. Forward, then back. Thump. Thump. Thump. Go away. Go away. Go away. Leave her alone. 

Apollo smiles on. The girl's eyes are dry. How can this be? The entire time she's been here, she's never been short on tears. But the proof of her sincerity has completely deserted her. Her mind flits lazily back and forth across all the usual thoughts and images she's kept as companions to keep her strong. The look on Redana's face after she'd forced those pills down her throat. Ivory Smile, cut down by her own hand. The Lanternites' frightened, despondent faces watching her in the dark. Vasilia, reaching for the knife. Mynx. Mynx. Mynx. 

Nothing comes. Forward, then back. Forward, then back. Thump. Thump. Thump. She can't cry. Not with either eye. Of course she can't. Of course. She can't do anything right, can she? She clenches her bouncing knees up to her chest and rocks shakily back and forth on her butt, and nothing happens whatsoever. She even catches herself pulling her tail out from under her to keep it from getting pinched. Stupid! What's she doing, caring about that? How dare she find the energy to be bored? Fucking loser, can't even die right. Can't even mourn properly. What a sorry excuse for a perfect Servitor she turned out to be. 

A sudden shift in her weight creates a chorus of clinking wine bottles that sing in all of their empty, glasses chimes as they bounce and roll to be away from her pathetic frame. The avalanche tumbles away from her in all directions, not caring that she froze and flattened her ears like a frightened kitten the second she heard the noise. And still no tears, even at this latest abandonment. And still, the god smiles. Her legs itch. Fuck this. Fuck this place.

Her legs tremble under the effort of supporting her body for the first time in forever. She rises off the floor with a loud, gravelly snarl of pure effort. She tumbles forward onto her knees a second after. Fuck. Fuck! Her fist pounds against the floor and hardly makes a sound. She reaches for the last bottle brave enough to keep her company, and throws it to teach it better than that. A meter. Maybe two. And it rolls instead of breaking. And she [i]still[/i] can't cry!

The girl sucks in breaths through clenched teeth that settle painfully in her overtensed belly. She grunts and pushes up again, and this time manages just to stumble forward a few tiny steps before finding her feet flat underneath her. Her lungs whine for more air. Her shoulders sag. Her tail droops limply down by her ankles. She turns a cold eye on Apollo and coughs another blob of sap or snot or whatever the fuck on the ground before she walks away.

There is nothing of her old grace in her movements. Her steps are not precise or even, her hips do not sway with the allure of a woman secure in her absolute beauty. Her feet drag horribly and only intermittently leave the ground as she slips and stumbles about in the empty corpse of what had once been a crown jewel of the Hermetic fleet. Her legs bobble frequently and her hip and thigh slam erratically against the wall she's obligated to walk along just to keep upright. The ugly knots in her hair slap against her back with every attempted step. 

She has to pause frequently to catch her breath. But now that she's moving, what's the point of sitting down again? She'd only get bored again. Apollo would just find her again. She ignores the acid burn in her thighs and shambles slowly and relentlessly down a corridor to fuck-knows-where with all the grace and form of a person who'd learned how to walk from hearing stories about it spoken through a thick wall. At least she had those sharp, attentive ears, right?

She moves without point. She moves without purpose. She moves because it's very slightly better than the alternative. She moves, and she clenches her teeth because she catches herself flinching when she wonders whether or not there's anything left around here that could do a better, faster job of things than she'd tried to do on her own. Coward. Faker. Can't do it if it hurts, can you? That's why those fake ass tears never fooled the smiling god.

She pushes through a doorway, and a sudden thunderclap of metal dropping onto metal send her ducking for cover, hiding pitifully underneath her arms. Like those could even save her. Like she's even supposed to want to be saved. The echo of the monster rings inside her ears, despite how much she flutters and shakes them to clear them out again. Finally, she dares to open her eyes again. 

Well, what the fuck. When was the last time she'd found herself in a kitchen?