There is silence, the sort that means someone is really, really not wanting to continue. But she makes herself do so, even as it feels like forcing herself forward. Ripley was there. And more than that, the path of honesty cannot be turned from now, after so many hardwon attempts to stay on it.

How simple it would be, to look up with soft eyes and claim she doesn't remember. How bloodless. How much she wants to hide in the amnesia, her cloak for so many misdeeds.

"The details aren't the clearest, but from what I've pieced together as some fragments have returned...I was to use its power to help control a great and terrible creature. And through that, and my own work, to sow fear and discord through people, beginning a war of conquest."

A manufactured war, one hand offering a solution while the other orchestrated terror. There is no pride in this. There is no glee. Whatever dark satisfactions her heart still holds for it, they are long, long hidden.

"I've hurt a great number of people, Ellen. So many that it might as well be a mountain of them, unable to be counted. I cared for nothing and no one." If Ripley hates her now, then...there would be relief, that someone else sees her as disgusting as she is. "Being stabbed in the head was probably the only way I would have ever stopped. I just...didn't have the decency to die from it."

Now she makes herself look at the other woman. Bear witness - do not look away. Accept her verdict, with empty hands and a willing heart.