This branch of the Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth (these ones call themselves the Lords of the Maze) are not nearly stupid enough to leave her entirely unguarded, even at night. But they just pulled off a great plot, and the two who are supposed to be guarding her are very drunk and very preoccupied with their card game, and neither of them is actually paying especially close attention to their prisoner, or even particularly looking at her. 

(On guard duty tonight are Snare, the one who likes to call her a "diabolist whore," and Ruse, the one who was convinced that she must be holding back information about the operations of Fort 17 from sheer obstinacy rather than because she had never so much as passed through it on patrol.)

She counts the drinks going into them, and once the number is high enough for her liking, she shifts around her horrible little stall until the angle is right. Then she concentrates.

There's a first-circle wizard spell called Secluded Grimoire. It can be used by a wizard to hide their spellbook in the ethereal plane indefinitely, and recall it with a thought. 

Muvaki has never used it for this purpose, however, because she's not stupid. She can hide her spellbook without spending one of her precious spell slots on it. However, nothing was stopping her from using Secluded Grimoire on someone else's spellbook. 

She did this once or twice, as a mean-spirited prank, the victim's spellbook always turning up in a weird place.

Then, someone charmed her and talked her into stealing from one of their teachers for him. She'd been caught and gotten tortured, worse than she'd ever been tortured in her life.

So three weeks later, she snuck into his room, cast it on his spellbook, and kept it hidden away.

She realized on day two that it's still there, three years later. She can still recall it. And once she does, she'll have a spellbook.

The book appears in the corner of her cell. She shifts slightly, opening it.

 Reading out of the corner of her eyes, doing her best to monitor the ongoing card game, she begins to prepare spells.

"—Hey! I've got two sixes, you've got three sixes, that makes five!"

 "Yeah, because we shuffled two decks together."

"Fine. But after this game I'm counting them all, and if there's the wrong number you're going to get it, you understand me?"

 "Yeah, yeah, I got it. It's your turn, you have a card to play?"

In some ways, it's one the more agonizingly stressful hours of her life. 

In others, it's quite straightforward. She's playing a game, just like they are. The rules of the game are very simple. She has to prepare her spells without alerting them. If they win, they'll take her spellbook, and torture her until she dies, days or weeks or months or years from now. 

If she wins, she gets to kill them, or die trying.

"Two and two, I win! Pay up."

 Ruse hands over two copper.

"You trying to cheat me? You said you'd give me three if I won."

 "I said two. Count yourself lucky you're getting it at all, after that stunt you tried to pull with your queen."

She waits until Snare, the one with the keys to her cell, is busy looking at the hand he's just been dealt. She casts Sleep, aiming for Ruse.

 Ruse slumps over. 

Wow, he must have been drunker than he thought. Snare's going to take the opportunity to look at the top few cards of the deck before he wakes him up.

Charm Person.

She feels it land.

"Heeeey Snare~", she says, hating the tone of her voice but pressing on anyways. 

He grins at her. "Aww, you looking to have some fun tonight?"

She nods. "If you let me use my hands, I promise I'll make it worth your while."

"Maybe if you ask me really nicely."

"Pleeeeeease?" She flutters her eyes at him. (Ugh ugh ugh)

"Alright, little whore, but you'd better be grateful. I'm doing you a favor here."

He comes over to her cell, unlocks it (it takes him a couple tries to get the key in properly), and steps inside.

She holds up her shackled hands for him, eyes big. (His knife is on his belt. Just a few more steps. All she has to do is not puke.)

He unlocks them too. "Now, what do we say?"

"Thaaaank youuuu," she says, and pulls herself up against him, putting one arm around his back - "mmmmmm" - and reaching carefully for his knife.

She can get it! He's rather distracted at the moment!

Well, he'll probably figure it out when she stabs him in the neck with it.

Twice, for good measure.

He collapses to the floor of her cell.

She makes sure his blood doesn't get on her stolen spellbook, then steps over the body to go slit Ruse's throat before he wakes up. 

In theory he's the stronger fighter of the two guards, but that doesn't do much to protect against having his throat slit. Now he's dead too.

She sobs in relief, shaking.

But she's not done. They have a wizard and three more swordsmen. And she's going to kill all of them for doing this to her. 

Luckily for her, they're all in the same room, sleeping on bunk beds. Sleep.

Now they are even more thoroughly sleeping!

Good! Because she's not going to be quiet about slitting these throats. She's sobbing and laughing as she does it, actually.

After killing the first swordsman and watching his eyes snap open in horror, unable to do more than gurgle, she realizes she's been making a major error.

The next one she stabs through the crotch once she finishes his neck, and his eyes slam shut in glorious agony as he bleeds out.

The last one she kicks in the balls and stabs through the left eye. 

Then it's just her, the blood covering her, and the wizard.

Can she find his spellbook?

He sleeps with it on his person, wrapped up in a soft little pouch. (He may be the only wizard here, but that doesn't mean he trusts the other Lords of the Maze not to steal it.)

Okay. She handcuffs one of his hands to the bed with the cuffs she'd been wearing only minutes ago. 

Then she breaks the fingers in his other hand to wake him up. 

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK, EVERYONE WAKE UP—"

His eyes catch up to his hand, and he takes in who, exactly, just woke him up.

"Good morning!" she says, her smile full of teeth and her face, hands, and clothes all stained with blood. "If you try and cast anything I'm going to stab you in the neck, okay? But you can scream some more, if you like! The others are all dead."

Her horrible grin grows even wider.

"V-very clever, girl. Y-you know, there's a place in Baphomet's service for bright p-people like you."

It probably won't work, but it's not like he has a better idea.

..she looks like she's seriously considering it. "What's in it for me?" 

"He, he can offer you power, and knowledge, a-and the chance to rise high b-by your own wits. He's the cleverest o-of the gods, you know."

Her eyes are wild. "Really. The cleverest."  She waves the knife in his direction; specks of blood from it hit his face. "How do you figure?" She sounds genuinely interested. 

"The p-prince of Hell tried to t-trap him in a maze he could n-never escape, b-but he outsmarted him a-and stole the working for his own domain. A-and none of the Good gods even have a chance against him."

She sighs. She hadn't expected this would be so boring. (she just thought that it might -)

Whatever. She already knew he was stupid - now she knows he's one of the boring kinds of stupid. 

"It's just not very convincing," she says conversationally, though there's a bit of a wobble in her voice. "Sure, he managed to find his way out of a fancy maze while Asmodeus was distracted with something actually important." (Muvaki doesn't use Godpronouns for demon lords, any more than she would for Razmir) "And then he, what, spends millennia doing basically nothing of consequence, worshiped only by the idiots of his own kind? And then, when someone else hands him and his ilk access to Golarion on a silver platter, he fucks it up so bad that they've barely made inroads a hundred years later!" (She's almost yelling at him, now. Why is she yelling? That probably ruins the effect, right? It's not how she remembers her dear Chosens lecturing her, at any rate.)

She takes a breath, angry at how shaky it feels, and continues at a normal volume. "No, I don't think your lord is very clever at all." 

(...what is she even doing? She doesn't actually want to argue with him. She wants to make him scream.)

Acid Splash. She aims it at his broken fingers. There's lots of nerve endings in fingers, as she knows quite well. 

For the first instant it just feels wet, but then it starts burning at his skin, searingly hot, like boiling water that can't be removed. He yelps in pain and tries reflexively to twitch his fingers in the gesture for Prestidigitation, sending a shooting pain through his broken fingers. Where the acid made direct contact, his skin looks charred.

She hates him fucking so much, hates him for being a stupid fucking demon cultist, hates him for doing everything he did to her, hates him for being so godsdamned stupid, hates him for not even being any fun to torture.

She casts Acid Splash again, this time aiming for his face. She's sick of looking at it. (She wants to scream.)

Now he is screaming more loudly!

(The skin on his face has that same charred look. His left eye is scrunched up and quite possibly permanently blinded. He strains ineffectually against the restraints.)

Acid Splash. Acid Splash. Acid Splash. (She wants to throw up.)

He manages to pull himself together enough to cough out a "Go to Hell, diabolist bitch" between Acid Splashes, and screams some more, and by the time she hits him with the last Acid Splash the pain is bad enough that he blacks out.

......she takes his spellbook from the pouch and stabs him in the neck. (He did try to cast a spell, after all. A promise is a promise.)

Now his burned and bloody corpse is lying on the bed. 

The notation for his spells is vaguely reminiscent of the style they use at the academy in Ostenso, if she happens to recognize it. It doesn't seem like he's an especially talented wizard; he doesn't have anything above first circle, though he does have a few spells her borrowed spellbook lacks.

...Huh. Well, it's nice to have, even if there's nothing especially good.

She rummages through the room, moving slowly. (It feels a bit like a dream, like any second she'll wake up still in chains.)

It is not an incredibly well-resourced cult. The martials did at least have armor, not that it'll do much good for a wizard, and there are a couple scrolls of Protection from Good tucked into a scroll case, but apart from that the most valuable item in the room is a statuette of a goat perched on an altar in the corner of the room with two tiny gemstone eyes.

In terms of survival equipment, they're doing a little better: they've all got their own blankets, they have mess kits to eat, and so on. Their clothing is bloody and not in her size, but it does exist.

She won! They're all dead! This is great! Perfect! Exactly what she wanted! (She's breathing far too fast.)

She puts the scrolls and spellbooks into a bag, along with a blanket. She finds the clothes that are the closest to fitting her. She cleans them (and herself) with Prestidigitation. 

She looks around for an exit. She needs to get out of here.

Here's the door. (It's barred shut, but it opens from this side.)

Cool. Out she goes. So long, assholes, thanks for nothing.

(She keeps shaking. It's frustrating. Why is she so weak?)

Outside, the wind bites at her face. The ground is uneven and nearly lifeless. A faint odor rises from the dirt, and the few plants present have jagged leaves.

The building is in... the middle of nowhere, apparently? There's no sign of a fort in sight. But in one direction, the ground looks even more distorted, so probably she wants the other one?

Is she inside the Wound... obnoxiously possible.

She walks in the direction of less distortion, scanning the horizon as she goes. Maybe she'll run into a patrol before a demon or thirst kills her. Maybe she won't. Does it matter?

(yes, of course it matters, something deep inside of her screams, but she's been ignoring it for so long that she'd have to strain to hear it, now.)

The first sign of other life in the area is... a sleeping dretch!

It is not, to be clear, a stunned dretch, nor does it have any of the characteristic injuries that mark even the demons lucky enough to survive the Wardstone barrier.

Great! Fantastic!!

She gives it a wiiide berth and keeps going, forcing herself to hustle. No point in pacing herself just to die to a demon.

A demon?

...Like that schir approaching from her right?

...yes, like that!!

She casts Expeditious Retreat and retreats. Expeditiously. (If this doesn't work she is Just Going To Die, she doesn't have any other spells.)

Fortunately this schir has already used up its own Expeditious Retreat castings hunting down other prey! It shakes its halberd at her and curses in Abyssal as she vanishes into the distance.

She slows down to a more-maintainable pace once the spell runs out. (She'll still collapse after another few hours of this, but if she's more than a few hours from the edge, she's going to die anyways.)

Sleeping dretch. Sleeping dretch. Two sleeping dretches. Two schirs locked in a vicious battle and paying no attention to anyone else. Sinkhole.

...and eventually, as light begins to dawn on her surroundings, she can see a pale blue bubble straight ahead of her, with a walled town just on the other side of the bubble and about a half-mile to the right. There's a large river, too, but the bubble is positioned such that the river is on the opposite side of it in most places.

(River city with a wardstone... Kenabres? Kenabres.) 

Muvaki is struggling to stay on her feet, at this point, but she's almost out. She presses onwards.

The main gates into the town are located to the north and south, but the northern one is closer. Today it's guarded by a paladin with an Iomedaean holy symbol, a dwarven cleric with a holy symbol of Torag, and a few others in the uniform of Mendevian soldiers. 

"State your name and business," barks one of the unempowered ones, as the paladin and cleric attempt to detect Evil, Magic, and Fiendish Presences.

This woman is: not detectably Evil, not detectably Magical, not detectably Fiendish, and too tired for anything but the truth. (pathetic)

"Muvaki Gorm, Chelish worldwound soldier, fort #40. I was taken captive by Baphomet cultists several days ago. I killed the ones keeping me last night." Her voice is flat. 

Oh no, the poor thing!

 That sounds really suspicious, she's probably a cultist.

  It does sound suspicious but if she's with a Chelish fort their treatment of her touches on the treaty. "Understood. Baten and Kern, escort her to the Chelish outpost. You know where it is, yes?"

   "Down Ashwood Lane, near the big statue of Lariel?"

  "You got it."

She follows. (She's so tired and still so wound up. It's obvious how little trust her. She probably deserves worse. She thinks about what she's done today. She wants to throw up.)

"So how're things at Fort 40? I heard up north they figured out a way for wizards to cast Cure spells, is that true?"

 Snort. "Sounds about right. Leave it to the diabolists to think of 'teach wizards to heal' before 'bring in some clerics with the good channels.'"

"Infernal Healing heals more than a Cure Light Wounds," she says, before she can stop herself.

 "Infernal Healing? Do you have to sell your soul to cast it or something?"

"No. It's called that because it takes a drop of devil's blood to cast." And only Evil clerics can get it from their patrons.

 "Wow, yikes."

"Hey, at least they're helping."

 "Sure, but you've got to admit, the diabolism is kind of concerning, let alone the wizardry. It's not safe to dabble in that sort of thing."

"Nothing's ever safe," she thinks with considerable vitriol, and it isn't until they turn to look at her that she realizes she said it out loud.

 "Sure, sure, you can cut yourself on any sword. But there's a difference between that and, you know, Areelu Vorlesh."

"Areelu Vorlesh was a witch."

 "Same difference. Either way they're getting magic that's not from the gods or the land."

"Witches are given their magic from extraplanar entities with unthinkable power and usually become a pawn for those entities in exchange." She pauses. "Just like clerics, really."

 "—Huh, I think it's pretty different even for diabolists but I see why it'd sound like the same thing."

"Aren't there witches on the western border, anyway?"

 "No, that's a myth. There are witches in the northwest but they're not protecting the border, there was some kind of miracle to make smaller forts that can walk around and defend themselves without needing any people."

None of that was directed at her or obviously wrong. (Which is a shame, the distraction was actually kind of nice,)

"Man, I wish someone would do a miracle like that here."

 "It's because we're braver and stronger than whoever lives out west, so we don't need as much help. ...I guess maybe that's why Cheliax is willing to put up with having wizards?"

"Someone being a wizard doesn't have to be a bad thing."

 "Then why are there so many wizard cultists, huh? Or do you think they're all witches or wicked sorcerers?"

Muvaki sighs. "Anyone can become a wizard if they aren't stupid and can afford to learn. Cheliax has more wizards because we check everyone for aptitude and pay for schooling when people do." She doesn't know why there are so many wizard cultists, since it's a stupid fucking thing to do.

"How do they even pay for all that?"

 "They're Evil, so more of them are rich."

"—what, all of them? No way that's true, you've got to do something really bad to be Evil. Murder or being a demon cultist or torture or something."

She frowns. "No? Most people are Evil. Cheliax is more Lawful than average."

"I don't know a single person who's Evil who isn't in the Condemned."

 "Didn't Prelate Shappok used to burn people alive?"

"It's like executions, it's Evil and illegal if you just do it yourself for fun but it's not Evil if it's part of a criminal sentence."

She snorts. "You wouldn't know if most of your friends were Evil. If mortals aren't touched by a God they don't show up to Detect Evil unless they're strong."

"I have eyes, I'd notice if they were doing anything terrible!"

 "Are we allowed to talk about that with the Chelish guys?"

"Come on, we both know there's a good chance we'll show up at the depot and they'll tell us 'sounds like a cultist, take her away.'"

 "Sure, but we've got to follow the rules just in case."

Her head snaps in his direction, snarling. "I am not a cultist!"  Her fingers twitch - How dare he -

He sees her fingers start to move and reaches for her hands—

And suddenly she sees Snare's face instead of his, reaching out for her, and she's still in the cell, because of course it was all a dream, she's still trapped trapped trapped and he's going to - "Don't touch me!" she shrieks, springing back, eyes darting around wildly, looking for any chance of escape,

They're in a town; the street is fairly open, or she could veer off into a narrow alleyway about ten paces away, or a larger side street further back.

...She'll have to be quick about it, though, because her escorts seem to be treating this as a sign that she really is a cultist after all.

she runs through the open street out the jail cell door into the narrow corridor alleyway in a burst of sheer terror and desperation, looking out for obstacles to make doors to close in Snare's terrible face, she needs to not be here 

They pound after her, slowed by their armor.

There are plenty of doors in this alleyway but they're all attached to people's houses and shops. Or she could try to tip over that barrel, or pull down that clothesline, or squeeze between those two houses with a tiny gap between them...

She tips over a barrel slams a door shut and takes the chance to slides between the two houses into the tiny crack in the walls of the fort (they don't feed her enough, and she was small to begin with) and keeps going, moving deeper and deeper into Kenabres the natural cave formation.

They are not small enough to follow her! Their shouts recede into the distance as she runs.

She keeps going for a while, but eventually she runs out of breath, and then her tired mind snaps back to the present.

Fuck. Fuck. She's - she's so stupid - why did she - 

she sinks to her knees.

Here's an elf girl, coming around another corner with a large black bird on her shoulder. 

"Are you hurt?"

(Her tone is purely concerned, with no hint of mockery.)

She flinches, pushing herself up into a crouch. "What do you want", she says, exhaustion and pain and bitterness dripping from her words. (She's wearing stolen clothes too big for her. She has a small bag. She's Chelish, she's underfed, and she's got an alarming variety of bruises on her neck, face, and arms.)

"I want you to be okay! I have a little healing magic, is it okay if I cast it?"

(The elf is young for an elf, though it's hard to pinpoint her exact age. She's wearing a tattered brown dress, and her arms are covered in burn scars.)

What? "....why?" She looks and sounds so confused.

"I like it when people are happy! It makes me happy too."

Her crow makes a pipping sound.

"Soot says that if you don't want me to get too close, my healing spell will still work if I stay here and she flies over to you."

This is confusing and she doesn't like it and it's probably a trick and she can't see the trick and also she's out of spells and out of breath and out of her depth.

"i-if you really want heal me, I-I won't stop you. Doesn't have to be the bird."

She walks over to Muvaki and smiles gently. "Cure Light Wounds."

(She is not, if Muvaki is looking, wearing any sort of visible holy symbol.)

(She flinches at the touch, reflexively. She doesn't seem to notice that she's doing it.)

The magic sets in. Her bruises fade. Her eyes widen as pains she hadn't even noticed she was feeling disappear.

She looks at the elf girl properly for the first time, confusion still plain on her face. 

Smile! "I'm Ember! It's nice to meet you."

"...Muvaki."

Muvaki looks like she's trying to figure out a complicated puzzle. "...you do know I'm Chelish, right?"

"I wasn't sure where you were from! But I didn't heal you because I thought you were from somewhere in particular, I healed you so you wouldn't be injured."

"...it's - it means I'm a Diabolist. Evil. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" she sounds confused, frustrated.

She tilts her head. "I don't think that means it's good for you to be hurting. Do you?"

How is she supposed to explain - oh.

It's quite simple, actually.

"Do you want to know what I did today, Ember?" she asks, with a sort of false sing-song quality in her voice. 

She bites her lip. "...You can tell me if you want to."

"I killed six people, one by one, and I went out of my way to make their last moments painful, when I could. I tortured the last one to death. I c-cuffed him to his bed, broke his hand, threatened him with a knife, mocked him while he tried to plead for his life, and t-t-then I t-threw acid on him w-while he screamed until- until-" She starts out in a hard, bitter voice, but she can't stop stuttering as the memories come back in unwelcome flashes. (Her eyes move wildly, like she's seeing something that isn't there - her hands grip her arms tight. She wants to throw up.)

She rallies. "That's what Evil means, Ember! It means I'll do horrible things, and I w-won't feel bad about them!" 

Ember is, through visible effort, managing not to cry!

"Why did you do that?" she asks eventually. 

Her tone isn't judgemental, or scared, or angry. She mostly sounds confused, and a little bit sad.

...This is really not the response Muvaki was expecting!

"I - what? Why would that matter to you?" She says. She doesn't understand this girl, and that's scary, because - because -  

"...You're in a lot of pain right now, and one of the things that's painful is what you did to them. And — I want to help you stop hurting, but right now I don't understand why you did it, and that makes it harder to know what to say. But if telling me would make it worse you don't have to."

"What? I don't - it's not hurting me that I did that to them," (fascinatingly, she pretty clearly believes this!)

This is a stupid waste of time. Why is she doing this. (Why is she so tired.) (why does she feel so horrible)

...Whatever. Ember is - weirdly hard to argue with. Maybe it'll just be easier to tell her what she wants to know.

She breaks eye contact, and it's in a quieter voice that she says: "...they were Baphomet cultists. They captured me while I was out on patrol. Kept me in a cell. Hit me or fucked me, when they were bored." (She's shaking.)

Now Ember is crying!

"I'm so sorry that happened to you." Pause. "It sounds like you were very scared, and angry with them for hurting you, and you thought if you hurt them too it would make you feel better. But hurting you more because of what you did to them wouldn't make anything better, it would just mean you were hurting even worse."

What? Why is she crying - it doesn't make any sense. She feels so confused and overwhelmed.

(She curls in on herself and tries to actually think about what Ember said.)

"I - I was angry, yeah. Anyone would be angry! I'm still angry! B-but..." she takes a shaky breath. "I wasn't scared" (that's not true, she knows that's not true,) "because they were stupid, it was obvious they were stupid, they let my hands heal and they didn't watch me close enough and they deserved it, how could they not have deserved it, they would have kept me like that until I died," and now she's having to fight not to cry. 

"It was wrong for them to do that to you," she says firmly. "I think a lot of people would have wanted to hurt them, after what you went through. But hurting them didn't make you stop being in pain."

Her breath hitches. "But - but I - but it did, I'm not trapped, I escaped, and, and, and -" 

and now somebody is crying and it's confusing and distracting and she can't see properly.

"It's good that you escaped! You were in a terrible situation, that should never have happened to you, and I'm glad you aren't stuck there any longer. But — just because you're out, doesn't mean you aren't still hurting."

She inhales sharply. The elf-girl sounds so far away - the crying is so loud and - and it's her that's crying, she can't, she can't show weakness like this, people hurt you if you do that, they hurt you or they leave -

"please don't leave," she whispers, because apparently some part of her is stupid enough to think that Ember actually might mean any of the things she's saying and her rational brain is on strike. 

She sits down on the ground next to her. "I'm right here, I'm not going to leave."

She's crying harder than she has since her first year in school. (...she was always worse about keeping it in than her peers. Crying isn't safe - she's not stupid, she knows that. She's never understood why her body can't get the memo)

...the way she's curled up and has her arms around her head it might be clear that she's on some level she's expecting to be hit. 

"s-sorry," she whispers. 

She tucks her hands underneath her legs so she's sitting on them. "You don't need to be sorry for crying."

Muvaki rocks back and forth, trying to calm herself. She manages to stop sobbing, eventually.

She tries to think. It's hard. She's confused. and she's in so much pain

"I don't - I don't get why you're being nice to me," she says quietly. "What - what's in it for you."

"I like helping people!"

(People like that aren't real, they always want something)

(It has to be a trick, she just can't figure out the trick is)

(Where was she when Muvaki could have actually have been helped)

She looks away. "...Seems dumb."

Head-tilt. "If I decided not to help people, even though I wanted to, I don't think that would be very clever of me."

"No, I mean -" what does she mean? 

(It's so loud in her head. it hurts, hurts, hurts)

"...it's stupid to try and help me."

"Why?"

"Because it's a waste of time! You can't really help me, I'm broken and I've always been broken and when I die they'll keep breaking the pieces forever! And that will still happen even if you heal me or tell me that part of what's wrong is that I'm sad about having killed the people keeping me as a fucking toy-" (Her vision is swimming. It's loud loud loud and the buzzing won't stop)

(and the worst part is that some stupid part of her still wishes she could be saved)

Now Ember is crying again!!

"If I cast one of my healing spells on Soot right now, it wouldn't do anything for him, because he isn't injured. The people who are hurting the worst need someone to help them more, not less."

why is she crying augh.

She tries to ignore that, tries to focus on what Ember said, instead. She doesn't think the logic makes sense? But also - "I - your healing wouldn't do anything to a corpse, either, though, it'd be too late. I - I -" why is this so hard

"Sometimes when you're hurting very badly it can feel like nothing will ever be alright again. You might even be right that it's too late to fix some of the ways you're hurting. But you're still alive, no matter how badly you're hurting, so I don't think it's too late to fix all of them."

(can that actually be true though)

(why does it hurt to even consider)

She looks up, making eye contact for the first time since she told Ember what happened to her.

She takes in a shaky breath. "I - It hasn't seemed like things could ever be alright since I was ten years old, okay? I don't - I don't know how to -"

"What would have to be different for things to be alright?"

She tries to actually consider this.

- she breaks down sobbing. (It's worse than before. Her breathing is ragged. Her entire body shakes. Her hands are gripping her arms so hard her knuckles have turned white.)

Oh no, did she say something wrong?

...She's going to give the girl a few moments, in case that helps.

It doesn't. (If anything, she seems like she's getting worse with time?)

"—It's okay if you don't know yet. ...Would it help to pick just one thing that you wish were different?"

"...I don't want to go back," she whispers through her tears. "I don't want to go back to the army. They're going to make me, but - I don't want to." 

"...do they know you're here? Could you just... not go back?"