The thoughts buzz inside her head heavier and more sickening than any of the wine she's ever had. They float there in her forehead, shapeless, indistinct, and obnoxiously loud. Sometimes they jab at the side of her head, or crush into the back of it instead, so that she feels the urge to slice her hair off to relieve the weight or else feel like her neck is going to shatter under all the pressure. 

Pressure. That's the word to describe it, more than thoughts. Except she knows that isn't true. Some of her migraines are memories that churn inside of her until they start to make her nauseous, while others are ideas she simply can't chase to their inevitable ending points. She knows better than to try and grab hold of them, but ignoring them only makes them buzz more insistently. The pressure builds, and she does not have the talent or the background to simply ignore it. 

The first solution that occurs to her is exercise. Her body is brimming with annoying and excessive energy, after all. Burn it off, wear down again, sleep, and perhaps if she's lucky slip back into her malaise and die properly this time. Her jaw clenches at the thought, but she pushes past it. Even if she couldn't sink beneath the waves again, she would at least shed the ugly sense of shame that had pulled on her ankles like weights at the utter weakness and gracelessness with which she'd dragged herself this far. So hour by hour and then day by day, she dedicates herself to renewing her body. She lifts crates of abandoned goods and deposits them without pattern elsewhere. She tries crunches and leg lifts and pushups, and when her frustration builds to a peak she finds one of the Yakanov's infinite corners and she destroys everything that looks even remotely valuable until she can't breathe anymore. 

Later, she tries simply walking. And when that doesn't work, she runs. The more she does it, the better she gets. Some of the slinky ease she was so used to moving with seems gone forever, but she finds ample power in her stride she didn't have before to replace it with. She sweats, and never bothers with the time it would take to wash herself clean. Her muscles burn, and where she does not bother to stretch or rest them they become nothing but pits of ache and exhaustion. But they also regain their definition, and a little more besides; taking her soft and perfect, touchable body and turning it into a thing fitted snugly over plates of iron.

These are not good changes, and this is not a good ache. They do nothing to pause the buzzing in her head. They do little and less to ease the sense of total disgust she feels whenever she catches her reflection in a glossy enough surface as she passes. And worse than any of that, more she runs the more the memories take shape. Memories of the young woman she watched and helped train, and when she forcefully swats those aside, memories of the time beyond her when she had to take her place. They grow larger in her mind, splinters swelling until they ooze with infection. She has never felt uglier. What is the point of running when there's nothing to run [s]from[/s] to?

She stops. 

She is vaguely aware of the state of her hygiene. It's such a stupid thing to be bothered by, with no way out of where she is and no company to keep but this single smiling god who never looks like he's even capable of giving a shit what she looks or smells like. But it's a thought that doesn't feed the buzzing, so she clings to it like a precious treasure. Her treasured blue-black hair is matted, clumped, greasy, and more split ends than actual hair. The single braid she'd tied before her life exploded (for luck. now there's a fucking joke...) has turned into a tangled vine that tugs painfully on her whenever anything gets to close to it. Her face is healed of scars, but the blood she'd smeared across it before the wounds had stitched shut is caked across her face in the form of stains and the crusts of scabs that haven't peeled away. Her Auspex shines as brightly as ever, but that only highlights the contrast of her natural eye and the hideous mark she's allowed to build up underneath it with her miserable sleeping patterns. 

And her clothes... well. they're worthless, aren't they? Frayed. Sweaty. Torn. Shredded. Threadbare. What had been a beautiful and unique expression of her power was now nothing more than a moldy extra skin and a way to trap extra dirt on her. Ugly, disgusting creature. No wonder nobody loves you. Her stride is fluid and perfect as she makes the long walk from The Grave to the showers. The pump is sluggish after sitting still and unused for so long, but it doesn't matter. She uses the time before she hears water start to splash across the stall to peel away her ruined outfit. It falls apart with barely a whisper from her pinky claw; she knows as soon as it sloughs off of her that it will never move from this spot on the floor again. 

The cold water stings everywhere it strikes her skin, but she forces herself not to flinch away from it. It's even worse when she steps far enough forward to wet her hair, and the impossible tangles and mats start tugging against her scalp. She tries to work her fingers through the locks, but whatever magic in her fingers that kept a certain messy princess presentable for every ball and social function isn't up to the task her. Her finger catches against her braid and it pulls a hiss out of her throat. She snarls and slams her fist against the wall, cracking the tile. Fine, then. Fine. She takes claws to it instead. Snip, snip, snip, they run unevenly through the bits that hurt and pull and won't come unstuck whether it's for dirt or knots, and in the end she's left with a crisscross of mismatching styles. Her bangs are gone, the left side of her hair's been cut short against her skin but the right smooths out on its own so she leaves it as it was. Uneven. Unseemly. But at least she can clean it now. She shuts her eyes and lets the water run over her. She scrubs away grime. She scrubs away blood. She scrubs away shame. Soaking wet as it is, her fur returns to the lustrous shine that befits a girl of her high breeding. 

All she has to wear now is the towel she's drying herself off on. It's stupid how much that bothers her, but that hasn't exactly been stopping her, lately. There's nobody here. Nobody to care. And even if there was, so what? Let them stare! Let them feast on her beauty and beg her to... she shoots another nervous glance at Apollo, whose eyes are as closed as they had been the last twelve times she'd looked. Heat rises to her cheeks, and she snarls as she pulls the towel tighter. 

Her hair and tail leave a trail of water on the ground as she glides through the station. Now her steps turn delicate and quiet: instincts all turned on avoiding attention and keeping her bare feet from stepping on anything that might hurt her. No more pain, she decides for the hundredth time before discarding the thought again. All the buzzing in her head is quiet right now in the face of the problem occupying her. There are thousands of quarters aboard the [i]Yakanov[/i], and in the face of the evacuation there's no way they could have taken anything with them. A hundred new outfits lie waiting for her if she is but willing to explore the depths of a small moon to find them. She turns her feet toward more familiar ground, instead. Through the hall where she'd given herself over to dance and swam through a river of something beyond beauty and terror both. Over the cracked ruins of the weapons and armor she'd destroyed to make it that far, through the winding hallways that echo with a satisfying click when she taps her toe claws on the floor. The Lanterns would be miserable here. It's a good thing that she'd... nnnngh. Her fingers brush across her hacked and ruined hair to quell the thought before it can join the chorus. 

And then after hours and hours that seem longer and lonelier tracing backwards than she remembers them going through the first time she reaches the hangar where she'd thrown her life away. Or discarded the first pieces of it, at any rate. And sure enough, there is Apollo, shining and smiling and giving her light to work by. And sure enough, those useless fucking idiots didn't manage to pack a tenth of the gifts that had been laid out here for her pleasure. And nobody bothered to come check when they left. Her fingers trace the edge of the cold metal braces holding the burning star engine that was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the collection. Morons. The fuck was she ever going to need a thing like that for?

She digs through chests, instead. Ingots of electrum, platinum, and gold clunk against the floor as she tosses them about. And then the bolts of fabric, the real prize. Wool and silk, cotton and synthweaves, reams and reams and reams of them in all manner of colors and patterns. She sniffs at a few, runs her fingers across others, and lets her Auspex run the calculations through her senses. She settles on a soft, comfortable wool, dyed red and black and painted every which way with patterns of coins and diamonds in neat, interlocking rows. A little more digging finds her a knife and several pairs of scissors tucked amidst her treasures. Another bolt of black cloth unravels to make her threads. Her eye guides her muscles through the cuts, though she's never made them before in her life. Three discarded patterns pile into a clump behind her before she finally gets it right. Hours pass by in the sewing, and not a thought or feeling squeezes against her head the whole time. 

She slides the dress on over her head, and sighs deeply. The fit is tight, enough that it fights against if her she tries to make any sorts of large or exaggerated movements. The knee-length skirt obligates her to sit on a makeshift stool, or with her knees demurely tucked against and her legs curls to the side if she wants to sit on the ground. The fabric stretches across her soft chest and wraps the sharpened muscles in her arms in a dazzling sort of hug. She reaches up and presses her fingers against the weight of the turtleneck, the first sensation of the comforting squeeze against her neck since...

There's a lot more work to do, Girl. A week of failures and an entire chest of ruined silks finally produces a pair of tights for her to put on, which wind up being white by necessity more than design. Four days to make a hat; a soft and floppy red beret that covers the top of her head and hides the worst parts of the transitions between her hair lengths. Like this, she can almost seem like she swept it all to one side by choice. She finds a mirror, and rolls her eyes at the reflection. So much work to do. 

It's a time consuming process to carve usable pieces off of her ingots, and an even longer and more exhausting bit of work to take her tongs and her miniature press and shape and squeeze the lumps of metal into small, smooth beads. They glint in Apollo's light in greens and golds and silvers and reds. She sets each one in a bowl as she finishes, separated by color. The god watches her, though if it's with interest or ire or just the passive zen of an observer of the whole universe she's long since lost the ability to tell. She flicks her tail in his direction, and reaches for her tools again. 

She's going to need thousands more of these beads for her next project. Mind numbing work. Good. That's the only sort of thing she needs right now.