"You."

That single word, like a knife thrust in the air. Alone, it hangs there. She does not follow up on it, does not elaborate. Several times she lifts her glass near her lips, and several times she lowers it without swallowing any of its remaining mouthfuls. It hangs in her hand, never touching the table or anything other than her fingers for even a second. Moving back and forth between different points of commitment and never usefully reaching any of them. It is a weight. A burden. A small one, but hardly alone. 

She locks eyes with Marcina Villajero, and says nothing. Though she opens her mouth as if to several times, and even takes a breath to feed the sentence, it never comes. Her answer is this single too-sharp word. And yet she stares. Her attention may wander to the lumpy steel surface of the table or the movement of her fingers on its surface, or it might flicker to the press-types and the hangers on for an instant, a moment, or even a while, but it is never truly off of Marcina Villajero. 

She does not elaborate. She does not move as if to leave. She does not permit further conversation, but neither does she end it. You. That was the word she spoke. The shape of the thought that attaches to that word is a swirling dust storm inside her head. Liquid eyes dart this way and that, but her face keeps still. She holds them open without ever so much as blinking. Her tail pounds some random woman in leathers in the back and she makes no notice of this whatsoever. Not that it is happening, or what the reaction to it might be. 

"Want me to be right."

Ah. Repetition, then. No true answer but simply a mirror held up to a thing said five minutes ago over drinks. Curt and vicious, and only valuable as information insofar as the nature of that reflection reveals their true meaning. Insult and anger, arrogance and injured bravado. Revelation piled atop revelation and still the gall to keep staring, keep pushing, keep pestering as though fresh secrets will come tumbling out with a poke. Breathiness, exhaustion. A failure to understand the meaning of the words until they drift minutes apart from each other, spiraling out into the depths of space desperately reaching hand out for hand even knowing those fingers will never close around one another's again. It is cold out there, and dark besides. A terrible place to die. 

"You. Want an opponent."

Her fingers curl overtop the table. Clipped claws tap out messages to no one and for no one with impossible rapidity and desperate insistence. She could be piloting. She [i]is[/i] piloting. And nobody will ever know this. She could be sewing. She [i]is[/i] sewing. An nobody will ever know this, either. She might be comforting something, herself, a lover, an old rival in some strange ritual, and nobody will ever know. 

The moment of learning. Of taking someone new inside herself and becoming more whole. The moment of teaching. Giving it all back tenfold and helping some promising new face catch up and pass her. Tethers and chains, weaving together into an inscrutable mesh holding her in place. But only in the way that gravity holds one in place. Particularly in the galactic sense, defining the boundaries of where she might roam at any point for any reason with any warning or none, scattered so far apart that she becomes invisible to each of them and yet expects the fact that the tether still exists to matter when it someday pulls her back. She is at once too caught and too loose.

"Like I [i]claim[/i] to fight."

Always the question. The prodding. The assumption. Digging around for more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. More. Digging for more. For more. Digging. Eyes meet eyes, and there are no smiles. The drink hangs heavy in her hand, and the clinking of melting ice slipping and hitting the glass is the only thing that counts the time or insists that the conversation move forward. She breathes, quietly. Her tail whips that same back, insistently. She does not turn around. 

The failure of communication. Not of words to be understood, but a heart to be seen. Open the bag to let out some light, and a hand immediately reaches for the opening to snatch something new. To ask her what it is she loves, as if that's a question with any sort of answer. As if the answer could be held in a single palm and carried off like a heart ruby. As if there was even a heart to take as a lesser prize to make up for the gem tumbling away ages ago across some shifty chain of museums. Admired and learned from, though never actually.

Fashion. Crystal Etching. Anime. Riddles. Crafting laser arrays. Fluid dynamic study. Mecha construction. Maintenance. Upgrade. Piloting. Strategy. Racing. Swimming. Dancing. Chess. Quietly reading, but only the same handful of documents in an ever-tightening loop. Woman after woman after woman. And Solarel, who was different from a woman in some way. Different from a lover in some way. But not enough to fully escape either label. A blustering goddess straining to wear a crown before she's learned to crave the collar. A soft starlet of a priestess with a heart large enough to forge pathways in the stars. A soft and vulnerable kitten, even now catching hiccups while she tries to figure out a way to ask the wishes of her secret heart in an e-mail of all things. An older, better friend than any of them still waiting for her chance to shine as brightly. Solarel again, and the promise of her lethal, rapid growth. 

Foolish. What an impossibly stupid question. Don't you [i]know?[/i] It's bad luck to place a Mirror in your bedroom. All it can do is absorb and reflect the entire universe. It cannot love. It is a hole in the fabric of reality that rejects love. It reveals the truth of everything, but only in the way it lies. And in the end it shatters into shards so sharp and deadly that it cuts your entire being to pieces. A dangerous thing to allow so near to your heart.

Love. What does she love? How could she? To love she would have to understand what it meant in the first place. If it were possible to love, then at least one of the many things that fit the description so perfectly should have been enough to fill in her reflection and finally fucking keep her in place. But nothing ever keeps her in place. Only in orbit. And there is no answer more monstrous to the question of 'what do you love?' than [i]everything[/i]. It is the exact. Same. Concept.

As nothing.

"You."

The word again, and just as sharp. But now, followed with a shrug of the shoulders and a turn of the head. She puts her shoulder between herself and Marcina Villajero. A shield, is what that is. For... someone. That is the riddle of the moment.

"Have no need to hope. If I am not in this moment the opponent you long for, then watch me Marcina Villajero. By the time I reach you in the arena I will have become her. Do not. Let words. Like Hope or Claim stain your lips again. You are far, far too beautiful to let that kind of ugliness stain your soul."

She sets her unfinished drink on the table at last. Reaches into her bag and pulls a large fistful of coins out before dropping them next to the glass with a clatter that draws every eye in the bar to the exchange.

"For the drinks." she says.

And even still, does not rise to depart.

[Mirror is reducing her feelings by 2]