She fucking bit him. This Kalosian bitch really went and took a bite out of him.

The memory haunts her even now. When Dabella closes her eyes, she can still see her mother's blood on her hands, feel the warmth leave her mother's corpse. But she doesn't remember crying. She can't recall ever shedding a tear for anything, honestly.

There was anger, though - so much anger. A storm of fury brewed in her chest with nowhere for its lightning to go. She used it to survive. An eight-year-old alone on the streets, all that wrath was her secret weapon. It made doing what she needed too easy. She was no different than the bandits who'd wronged her, using strength from a place she didn't understand to put people down. But she never killed - never took a life.

She wasn't evil but broken.

before when they spoke, Xander's voice held a vacancy. Dry like the deserts of Orre, emotion had been all but absent. Now, as he looked at Melody, his golden eyes warm with passion, feeling drizzled in his tone.

Can they be? The way Lex's face is as solid as a brick wall and how her eyes burn with a confident flame. It's almost enough to convince him they can. Them against the world sounds so pleasant. A blissful dream instead of the nightmare he's been living in.

"Yeah..." Killian yawned, "Anything for you, Dove."

Anything but stopping, Killian couldn't do that. Not if it meant keeping her safe and protected. She'd hate him for it now, but when this all worked out, she'd see.

She'd have to see.

Everything required an exchange. You couldn't obtain without expecting to give a little. If you weren't willing to sacrifice something, you'd never gain anything; truth found in love and power. Killian's prepared to give. Everything, he tells himself. Because that's what Lex meant to him - what she deserved.

His ego refused to let him see that perhaps the price would be too steep. Banking on resolve and cliche notions of love conquering all to help him endure whatever Deoxys would ask.

"Yeah..."

From his peripheral, he can see her staring. Feel the heat that turned her amber eyes into lasers that seared a hole into his cheek.

"But we've grown inside a cage."

He's trying to break them free of it.