Roaki’s whole body went rigid the moment Quinn seized her hand. Too slow, she was too slow, too cold to react and now she had it. A pit formed in her stomach, a rose up and choked her—spared her the indignity of screaming when her self-sworn oath was momentarily forgotten. Heart pounding in her chest, eyes wide and fixed on their hands, she felt again a memory of panic. It was as strange to her now as it was then, smaller in scale though only just lesser in strength. A feeling she knew not from personal experience, but from inflicting it upon others. 

This was what prey felt like. 

Her fingers twitched in Quinn’s grasp. [color=ec008c][i]She’s gonna take it.[/i][/color] The thought came to her like a spear through the gut. [color=ec008c][i]She’s gonna take it. She’s gonna take it. She’s gonna take my hand.[/i][/color]

But she couldn’t pull away, she wasn’t fast enough. If she tried, and failed, what would Quinn do then? That anger she’d wanted so badly to stoke out of her on the battlefield was suddenly the most terrifying thing in the world. As she sat there, shivering so hard and so deeply that she could not longer tell whether it was from the cold or the fear, she heard words in the back of her head. 

[color=9e0b0f][i]A wolf doesn’t have to catch a hare, only outlast it. Their hearts are so small, the fear and the strain of a chase can kill them outright.[/i][/color]

Roaki had always thought herself the wolf, but she was sweating through the cold now. She shut her eyes tight, and waited to die a hare’s death. 

“[color=ffe63d]Roaki—[i]god[/i]—Roaki. I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, who [i]did[/i] this to you...?[/color]”

Silence. A long, icy silence. 

Roaki opened her eyes. Quinn’s voice…there was something so sincere there, so raw that it couldn’t have been faked. It was pathetic. She sounded like a scared little girl. She sounded like prey, and it was suddenly unbearably infuriating to Roaki that [i]she[/i] was the one in the cage. Her heart slowed, and as the panic passed she realized the fear was only part of the reason she was sweating. At some point she’d begun leaning onto the stump of her lost leg, and the pain was finally beginning to reach her. 

In that moment she knew that Quinn wasn’t going to hurt her. Yet. She yanked her hand away, the sweat made it easy.

“[color=ec008c][i]I[/i] did,[/color]” she answered. Pathetic as Quinn was, Roaki still couldn’t look at her. She supposed that made her worse. “[color=ec008c]I d-did it…to m-me. I g-got in…I’m…[/color]” her lips curled, sharp teeth scraping her dry lips bloody. “[color=ec008c]I’m a [i]pilot[/i]. I-I’m a p-pilot. [i]I’m a pilot![/i][/color]”

But the more she said it, the less true it seemed. She wasn’t. Not anymore. They’d taken that, too, and she’d have given every ounce of flesh she had left to get it back. Now she’d crawl like a worm for the rest of her life. 

Something dripped from her face, dotting the floor. Sweat, she told herself. It was sweat, because she wouldn’t cry for Quinnlash. She wiped her face against her shoulder just to be safe.

“[color=ec008c]Wh…why? Why didn’t you j-just…kill me?[/color]”