She couldn't live like this, Temperance thought, watching disinterestedly as a thin vine tried to surreptitiously twine itself around her arm. The washed out green of it moving sickly against her equally pale skin. Shaking it off, she scooted a little over on the damp bench, wood scraping against her legs. Everything was damp here, not enough to soak, but enough to discomfit, enough to be a constant reminder of where she was. Temperance couldn't believe she sought refuge here, in this place fraught with danger and ill-will... But there was no other way to feel alone enough. Here she wasn't bothered by her fingers twisting wetly against each other; it was only the misting rain and nothing else. Here she could escape the ghosts that dogged her steps, the ones she couldn't save. It would only get worse. There would only be more and more people - it was a fact of life, but an unwelcome one, brought to head by her incompetence.

She couldn't live like this, but she refused to die like this, either. What would be the point in that? No one did any good when they were dead. They haunted memories and sometimes locations and held no agency. Vivien hadn't been able to change anything; she hadn't found her answers even though the man she had sought stood so closely. Temperance hoped that when he smelled lavender, he thought of Vivien. The dead do not deserve to be forgotten. Was that why Noor had joined the court - for love of her, for trying to find a way to save her? If so, they were both the same flavor of fool. Temperance doubted it, though. He was a man of closed motives, of desperation, but not that kind. The grass rustled under her bare feet. As it grew colder in Ashdown, it warmed here. Some days were worse than others.

Lacing her fingers together, she pressed her forehead into her hands, the rain softly tickling the nape of her neck. Her own thoughts tumbled around in her head and instead of coming out polished and smooth, they developed even sharper edges. It was ******** hilarious that she couldn't even remember the dead woman's name, wasn't it - if she'd ever known it. The dead do not deserve to be forgotten - but there should be a balance. Remembrance without an ever-present shadow, maybe. The unnamed nurse, Adoelle - for a part-fae creature, her blood had felt the same. If Temperance had been quicker, better, maybe both of them would have managed to live. That nurse had struggled until the end, her death long and drawn out. Adoelle's had been quicker. Nothing in her clinicals, in her classes had ever prepared her for the guilt. It was different - a sense of personal responsibility versus the sort of team burden of a hospital's staff. 'Everyone loses people; it's just something that will happen, Temperance.' But she couldn't tell anyone she went to a fairy ball and watched a girl die and saved another that everyone wanted dead. She was just so, so ******** tired of death. If that made her a bad person, if saving someone's life - viewing them as nothing more than a patient in distress - made her a bad person, Temperance guessed she was some caricature of evil, then. She didn't have to make peace with her decision since she'd never regretted it, but the idea of ow it made other people feel was uncomfortable.

But Temperance regretted failing Adoelle and that nurse. She regretted her slow legs, her clumsy fingers, her lack of goddamn magic. Melany might have died if not for Autumn's magic. Would have, and there'd be another stain on her hands, another notice of how much she wasn't. She regretted deaths, but she could not regret Melany's life. Temperance knew she had not saved a good person, but she was still a person. She was still someone who had needed help. She was still alive. Those nobles hated her, and Temperance didn't think she could blame them (she could, however, - and did - blame Algernon and Shun for their actions). Was the blood on her hands any less than the ones that had stained Professor Noor's as he neatly, efficiently, sliced Adoelle's throat? Temperance swallowed. There was only one solution for everything. She had to be better.

'The things I'll do in the future are terrible.' 'It's natural to hate your patron. You must, so you'll be strong enough to survive.' She wanted to be strong; she wanted to stand up without feeling her chest might cave in, to know that she'd be able to save someone instead of scraping at the blood seeping out of their wounds. Temperance didn't agree with the court, with any of it that she had heard. The tithe happened every twenty-two years and the average human lifespan was seventy-nine. She'd be alive for two more and she wanted to stop them. Maybe it was foolish to think so far ahead, but a phase tickled the hollows of her ears. It didn't mean exactly what she wanted, but it was easy to believe it did, to think she could use this to become stronger and to sabotage from the inside. Temperance almost laughed; that made her sound like a spy when she was only a girl who couldn't do anything on her own. Still, she'd gotten the idea and it wouldn't leave her alone. There was no guarantee she even could, that she'd be wanted or useful, or whatever was needed, but what if... what if...

"If you can't beat them, join them."