Later. Later. There'd be time to figure out what the fuck Vesper just said later. She could tell already it was the kind of gossip-bomb that Beautiful used to drop as part of a mission; the kind of stupid and dangerous comment that was really laying groundwork to destroy something later when all the implications sunk in. But it turns out that knowing the trick and following its path were different things, and every moment Bella spent gasping stupidly was another one Vesper could use to set herself on fire. 

Her muscles don't even tense. Her tail does not flick. She skips straight from standing to pouncing without even enough warning to keep up with it herself. There might be a trap in this. There might be several. The air between them might be filled with wires even the eye of Hermes hadn't spotted, or there might be poison on the ground she can't smell harvested from [s]Mynx[/s] Redana when she wasn't looking or there might just be a gun, or the trap might just be designed to get her to offend some god by her actions that would turn all of her blessings and talents into curses before she died within sight of her dream. She might even just knock a screw loose somewhere in the room, and who could even follow the shape of [i]that[/i] trap?

She flies in slow motion. Her mind races; she can see the progress of every last millimeter of distance she gains in excruciating detail as if she'd had minutes pass between each one. This was the problem of trying to get ahead of Vesper. She couldn't tell what level her sister's mind was operating on, and that made it impossible to understand the implications of anything at all. Maybe everything she thought and did had already been predicted, maybe a single impulsive decision was about to undo a masterpiece of scheming built atop a pebble. Maybe she needed to be smarter about this. Maybe she needed to be less herself. More Mosaic. Or less. More Bella. More someone else entirely.

She wishes she had Redana's talent for changing what it meant to be herself. 

This is taking forever. She can't read the expression on Vesper's face. She can't even see it with that lighter taking up so much of her vision. Her nose is telling her everything about every tiny corner of the room (nobody has dusted under the bed since the ship was dredged. Something spilled recently near the door, but it was frantically cleaned up. The drawer nearest that typewriter contains something rotten, like crab meat that's been left to sit for a year in the sun) that it isn't telling her anything at all. All she can feel is the resistance of the air against her fur and skin. The only noise to be heard is her own tortured grunt as she thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks about everything and nothing of a decision she'd been committed to before she could catch herself making it.

None of it matters. You could unmake Bella and spin the pieces into something or someone with three hundred times' the brainpower and she'd arrive at this same moment anyway. The word is still sticking to all her thoughts, and every time it echoes it makes the conviction stronger: 'sister'. She tossed the word around so freely. She'd never thought about the why before, but here it finally makes sense. 

She couldn't really [i]be[/i] Vesper's sister, not even in the sense that both of them were born grasping for the same flickers of moonlight. Bella was the final effort of a long dead program with nothing left to kill; just a pawn to distract while a queen moved elsewhere across the board. But the way Vesper talked sometimes it was perfectly possible she was not only the older of the two of them, she could turn out to be the [i]first[/i] Ikarani. And her mind at any rate operated on such an unfathomable scale most days that connecting felt impossible. An idiot ball of muscle like Bella must be the most useless, boring companion she could ever be inflicted with.

But duty didn't connect the Assassins of the Temple of Artemis. Their personal experiences were each so distinct that they would forever be stepping on each others' toes the closer they got to one another, so that wasn't it either. But sisters. Sisters. [i]Sisters[/i]. The word always stuck. Because Artemis' children were all connected by one single, horrible thread:

The desire to die. 

Yes, that want. The need, the overwhelming intrusive thought that drove each of them to seek suicide in the way that made sense to them. It was more than the simple wish to end so much as the nature of it. Gentle, slow, without pain or suffering. Just sit still, drink your wine, and wait for starvation to do its thing, Bella. Just wear the armor and let the names wash clean until they wash you away along with them. 

Mynx, who only wanted to die in the arms of someone who loved her. Someone she'd spent her whole life trying to save, so that when she finally succeeded she could pass on knowing for those last few seconds that whoever she loved enough to die for loved her back enough to let her. The violence of the fantasy hid the need to go out on a soft kiss and a hand on the back of her neck.

Beljani, Gemini, who needed to constantly be distracted from her own power so she didn't simply slip away into it and never return. Her death didn't even need her to make a choice, it didn't even need her heart to stop beating. All she had to do is wander into a crowd and hide there until her face disappeared into it completely.

And here was Vesper, on the verge of collapse for the second time that Bella had seen her, winding up a machine so subtle she wouldn't be able to follow the mechanism back to its beginning when it clicked on and signaled her doom. She'd die accomplishing something, a hero freed from the need to think anymore. 

Except that, the last time she'd set something like that in motion she'd already put Bella in the way of it and quietly prayed to drift off to sleep instead of absolute oblivion. A break from the weight, not its absolute removal. 

So what made them sisters? The Ikarani, the Diodekoi, the Oratus, and the Toxicrene? Well that was easy. So easy that Bella had missed it for years. Without ever asking to, they lived their lives as bombs. That meant they were the only ones who could hear the song inside the death wish. That quiet prayer to the moonlight instead of the darkness shrouding it. That hidden cry for help.

And in the face of that understanding, did it really matter what Vesper was up to, or what she might accomplish if someone let her roll the dice? 

Together, they go toppling across the floor and collide with the stripped down wall opposite the horrible typewriter. Bella heaves with terror atop the body of her sister, hiding the little lighter from view as best she can while clamping a hand over Vesper's mouth. Her eyes tremble as the room shrinks too small to hold anything but this awkward embrace.

"Ves, don't..." she growls, "I'm sorry. Don't finish that story. Don't do this..."