It's nonsense, at first. How can she not be alone in the experience, that's the whole fucking point, and there was never anything like this, in all the horrors and deaths in all the planes they saw, nothing even remotely like this. Their carefully neutral words barely reach her in her bubble of misery, through the struggle of shaking off the claws of her imprisonment still so firmly lodged in her mind. It just, it's really not the time for a convoluted attempt at sympathy.
But that's, that's not what they're saying. That's not what they're saying at all. Instead, it's a list of everything she went through, succinct and yet impossibly heavy, grim, hurt. Their voice bending under the weight of it all, the horror and powerlessness, cracking--
And no one will tell you why. She gasps softly at that, her gaze finally raising to meet theirs, and the tears she'd been holding back spill over unhindered. Not understanding what had happened to her brother and the others, how they couldn't recognize her corpse or the umbrella, how Taako had stepped over her dust like it was nothing, how they all goofed about the Gauntlet like they had no idea what any of it meant, just let it incinerate Barry and another innocent town, it was-- torture, beyond words.
It hadn't taken her too long to figure out, once they'd been brought to see Fisher, once Lucretia fed them her story of the Red Robes. Madame Director up on her throne, never breaking character through her lies, through Taako acting blithely unconcerned about the deaths or his own worth, never so much as flinching as she looked at the umbrella, pretending like it didn't mean a damn thing to her. Lup would've been proud of her iron strength, if it hadn't been warped into bringing so much irreparable, unforgivable pain to them all.
Betrayed by her own family, like the kid. And all the both of them could do was watch.
Her chest is tight, feels like it's gonna burst with horror - for them, now. Questions strangling her, what happened to them? who did this? how did they break out? what miserable fucking cosmic injustice dared to put a child through this? But none of it makes it past the shock of looking into the eyes of someone else and seeing her own grief and fury burning there. None of that really matters, at this moment, in the face of all this, just like it doesn't matter how she got stuck in the umbrella or how she was freed at last.
So she simply holds their desperate gaze through her own tears, and nods, accepting what they've given her, understanding. It's not pity. It's not gratitude, to be sharing something this horrible, but it's-- knowing you're not alone when you've been forgotten by the entire world, screaming out in vain for so long. She unfurls just enough to reach out a hand, offering contact and... offering a vulnerability that she'd never let anyone else see, not even Taako, after that first night on the beach. Voice as small as that of a child, she asks, "Do you-- do you still sometimes feel like you're not really here?"
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But that's, that's not what they're saying. That's not what they're saying at all. Instead, it's a list of everything she went through, succinct and yet impossibly heavy, grim, hurt. Their voice bending under the weight of it all, the horror and powerlessness, cracking--
And no one will tell you why. She gasps softly at that, her gaze finally raising to meet theirs, and the tears she'd been holding back spill over unhindered. Not understanding what had happened to her brother and the others, how they couldn't recognize her corpse or the umbrella, how Taako had stepped over her dust like it was nothing, how they all goofed about the Gauntlet like they had no idea what any of it meant, just let it incinerate Barry and another innocent town, it was-- torture, beyond words.
It hadn't taken her too long to figure out, once they'd been brought to see Fisher, once Lucretia fed them her story of the Red Robes. Madame Director up on her throne, never breaking character through her lies, through Taako acting blithely unconcerned about the deaths or his own worth, never so much as flinching as she looked at the umbrella, pretending like it didn't mean a damn thing to her. Lup would've been proud of her iron strength, if it hadn't been warped into bringing so much irreparable, unforgivable pain to them all.
Betrayed by her own family, like the kid. And all the both of them could do was watch.
Her chest is tight, feels like it's gonna burst with horror - for them, now. Questions strangling her, what happened to them? who did this? how did they break out? what miserable fucking cosmic injustice dared to put a child through this? But none of it makes it past the shock of looking into the eyes of someone else and seeing her own grief and fury burning there. None of that really matters, at this moment, in the face of all this, just like it doesn't matter how she got stuck in the umbrella or how she was freed at last.
So she simply holds their desperate gaze through her own tears, and nods, accepting what they've given her, understanding. It's not pity. It's not gratitude, to be sharing something this horrible, but it's-- knowing you're not alone when you've been forgotten by the entire world, screaming out in vain for so long. She unfurls just enough to reach out a hand, offering contact and... offering a vulnerability that she'd never let anyone else see, not even Taako, after that first night on the beach. Voice as small as that of a child, she asks, "Do you-- do you still sometimes feel like you're not really here?"