FEVER:
I am not so weak as to fall to you.

And she means it - blood pounding, but she cannot die here, she cannot die here. She did not die then, she will not die now - but it hurts when they collide, hurts from wounds that will not last, hurts that she's under all these eyes who are seeing her fight and seeing her fall, seeing her fail.

She has to change the narrative. She has to win. She pulls as hard as she can against unseen wires, trying to make the blows connect like they should.

(They won't. She has to fall. She has to fail. This is what she did not tell herself, when they sat in a room, blood flowing between cuts. The pain of losing it all, the agony of shattering, it needed to occur. She would not get to avoid it. Else they would not be.

But she can't forget her. And so she fights like she would have done. Because this ghost, this shadow that she knows/does not know, Orin cannot be allowed to win.)

She will lead us to ruin. Years of careful planning, of tasks that the other cannot even fathom attempting, a view that stretches past the horizon.

(Maybe it needed to be ruined.)