Her heart races. Her skin prickles. Her ears stretch upwards until it hurts. Her throat constricts. Her eyes narrow, and then they widen black as voids. Her grip on Redana tightens. And then it falters.

Her tail flicks once. Twice.

She is still split down the middle. Two visions and two feelings. She is feverish and she is freezing, she is lighter than a grave-wisp and heavier than the [i]Anemoi[/i]. She is trembling and she is calmer than a pool of water hidden in the bottom of a cavern. She is silent. She is singing. She is once again a hundred broken pieces rearranged and glued together in a desperate attempt to create something beautiful. She is once again herself. Bella. And Mosaic.

She is a child being lifted out of the most terrible trap and punishment she has ever endured. As the beautiful, laughing girl falls on top of her, she turns her eyes upwards and sees a severe and grandiose woman - the girl perfected - suddenly melt into a charming smile at the sight before her. It is a fleeting instant, gone before it's really begun. But she is certain: the girl who is about to get a name for the first time is certain that that smile was meant just for her.

She is a woman struggling madly to keep her breathing in check. To maintain her poise and posture as she lowers herself into a menial bow. The Princess is gone. She, Bella had done everything she could think of to keep Redana safely on Tellus but she'd been fighting with both hands tied behind her back. What was she to do, [i]kill[/i] the Princess?! But she has no excuses. She feels the iron terror of the Empress' eyes on the back of her neck. She cannot quell the shudder that runs through her body when the brands are brought close. And this too, she is certain, was meant just for her.

She is as breathless as the dead, not that she understands what that means just yet. She'd needed to drug her opponents, poison and trick and waylay them along the way, but all the same she'd run until her heart felt fit to explode and hers was the body that crossed the tape at the end of the Marathon. And hers was the head that wore the laurel crown. She dares to smile and it is stricken from her face as though carved with a knife by the cold and furious aura of the woman standing above her. What kind of an idiot was she? Of course Nero would know immediately that she had cheated her precious Olympics, that was the whole point of this to begin with! She cannot bring herself to apologize. She cannot afford to admit her mistake. The only thing that could raise her sins higher is if she reveals the shame of these Games to all of Tellus. Those perfect hands seem smaller now than they did once, but they are no less powerful and no less terrifying when they pluck the laurels from her sweat soaked blue-black hair. She flinches, anticipating torture, and what happens instead is that she feels an iron weight replace it. Her ears fill with applause. Her eyes fill with tears. When those fingers touch her chin they are as gentle as they are strong. And she is lifted to her feet a Praetor.

She is an awkward sort of teenager stalking the halls well past the bedtimes of Real People. But there is dusting to be done, and laundry after that, and Plover maintenance after that, and to set her [i]mise-en-place[/i] for Redana's breakfast after that so that maybe if polishing the Palace armory didn't take too long there would be time to curl up in her little bed in the Princess' room before she needed to be up and moving again. So she is annoyed and surprised and then mortified to see the Empress herself come gliding down the hall directly toward her. She dips into a hurried bow and dares not lift her head for fear of meeting the eyes that are so like the daughter's she has so shamefully fallen in love with. For fear of having that understood. The Empress' hand is unsteady when it touches her shoulder - she has been drinking. She asks Bella if she has been keeping up with her studies. Bella denies the blasphemy, and only offers that she has been diligent in helping the Princess in whatever meager way a creature of her standing can manage. There are horrible long seconds where she is left to wonder if that was the wrong thing to say. But Nero offers her a smile, drunken if not unkind, and pulls out a tablet from her robes. The quiz lasts for hours and her chores are left undone. There will be no sleep tonight no matter how good she is. But before the Empress takes her leave she feels a single warm pat, and fingers tousling her hair just behind her ears. Just in time, she dares to meet Nero's eyes. And what she sees is sharp and appraising enough to make her wish that she could be a Princess, too.

A mother. If little Dany was sure of anything, the best thing that anybody could have (other than a best friend!) was a mommy. And Bella knew watching the two of them what the shape of the little hole inside her heart really looked like. She knew at long, long last why the dark always scared her. Why she hated being alone even though she could barely stand the nerves of being around others. She saw something that seemed to her young eyes like tenderness, and before it reached her heart it grew and changed into hunger.

She is walking toward the corpse of Nero. She is slipped free from Redana and she is crossing the long distance of this audience hall as though it did not exist at all. The flames are all that hold her back. When they are wiped away, she will be herself again. That voice will be her own again. It will be Right. She knows it. She [i]knows[/i] it. Her red eye trembles violently and forces her eyelid closed, and she lifts a fist to smash herself in the face. She pulls it open and stares at the final obstacle between her and the wish she never even needed to make out loud. The sound of her heels are a symphony. The sound of her heart is sickened terror, but it only makes the orchestra sweeter.

Her talons glisten in the firelight, as though they were slavering fangs anticipating prey. Anything may be hunted. Everything can die. Even in this broken, crapsack clusterfuck of a galaxy to think otherwise is the domain of vain, delusional gods. Her eye and body know better. She sees the names of the fires. She sees the spots where her claws may cut them. 

"Hold on. It will only be a moment longer," she sings and her breath is hot with steam, "I am coming... Mother."