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"...Maybe." A small chill ran through her. "I'm not sure. I killed his daughter. I wonder if that's not enough..." It wasn't what she had promised. It maybe wasn't even what her mother wanted. But that was what was done, and it was a decision she would have to live with.

Her attention derailed by the bird, she called to him, brow furrowed, "Gui, cesse! À l'heure actuelle!" The Pidgeotto disregarded her; there was a Pikachu near his human and she was injured. Like hell that was going to fly! An angry hiss was the only warning Gui gave before lunging forward in a Quick Attack.

"Yes, it was." Broken window, shard of glass, little girl's little throat... The memory itself had lost much of its sway on her emotions, but the nightmares associated with it shook her. "A promise to my mother, whose life he ruined." And, by property of association, Aila's life had been ruined in turn - or this was the belief that she had lived on for so many years.

The reflective circles on the other side of the headboard... had vanished. Gui had provided just enough distraction - to the humans, at least - to allow the Thing to escape to a better hiding place. Well, not necessarily a better one, but a different one nonetheless. Gui, meanwhile, was aghast at Zeus's proximity to his trainer, and he screeched, approaching as near as he could without disturbing Aila and flapping his wings in what he intended to be a displacing Whirlwind.

"Arceus, Gui! Taisez-vous-- Agh, stop!" The flurry of gusts succeeded at least in displacing her hair and a number of the sheets from the bed.

Gui, satisfied that the Pikachu had been removed, took a perch on Aila's pillow, kneading his talons into the fabric and settling there with a steely glare fixed on the electric-type. He made a few angry clicking sounds before his feathers smoothed down and his disposition calmed.

"Vous devez arrêter de se comporter de façon irrationnelle," she muttered over her shoulder, though the words were shrugged off. A sigh. "I appreciate his efforts. I'm sorry Gui is so... overprotective." Understatement. "Yes, my mother. It's a bit of a complicated story..." Not that she had any less than all the time in the world, but no need to bore Claire if she didn't care for all the details.

Aila grimaced slightly at the thought, momentarily thankful that the Pidgeotto didn't seem to be able to evolve. He was enough trouble at three feet tall; she didn't even want to imagine the havoc he'd cause at twice that.

"Mm..." She considered the story momentarily, attempting to sequence it. She remembered the major events, but it was rare that she thought of them in their proper chronology. "Seventeen years ago, before I was born, my father was duke and head of Parliament. My brother, dissatisfied with the government, led a rebellion and killed my father as he slept. Taking advantage of the confusion, my mother fled the estate to save her life and mine. She boarded a ship and arrived in Kodo, in Camphoreon." She paused to murmur a restraining word to Gui, whose expression had darkened as the Pikachu once more began prowling about. There was nothing beneath the bed for Zeus to find.

"My mother sold the majority of the jewels and fineries she had brought with her to afford the expenses of raising me. This money began to run dry after a few years, though, and I learned to steal in order to bring her the food and clothing she wanted," her volume lowered, "because she was the only family I knew, the only family I had, and did everything I could to see that she was happy." Her right hand tightened slightly on the linens, her expression grave. "I once told her so... That I would always do everything I could. She made me promise then to kill Leon and avenge our family. I didn't understand, but I agreed. Not long after that, Mother fell ill. The money from the jewels was gone, and we had no way to afford treatment. When she passed away, I understood what she meant when she said that Leon ruined our family. I understood the promise. And that's why I can't give it up, regardless of whether or not I want to."

Gui, though quivering with the want to attack, stayed put at a sharp word from his human. The Thing had not returned to the dark crevice, though, and Zeus would find emptiness once again.

She nodded slightly, "Yes. He was my original target. I didn't particularly care about the girl, but when he said her name - my name... I was so angry. I wanted justice. He took the life I never had a chance to know away from me and gave it to her. So I took it away from her." A slight smugness had crept into her tone. She felt so justified when she spoke of her reasons aloud; why was it so difficult to hold onto that same justification in her inner monologue?

A thought struck her. "Actually, may I bother you for a favor?" The slight downward inclination of her chin betrayed her discomfort in posing such a request, but it was something that had been pestering her for a while.

That was... an odd question, one that caught Aila wholly off-guard. She had spent so much time stressing the fact that her entire life, name and all, had been given away that she hadn't stopped to consider why Leon would take her name. "I'm... not sure. Perhaps to try and pretend that he had never done anything wrong, as some kind of self-satisfaction." After all, how could 'Aila' be dead if 'Aila' were right at his side? Yes, that made good sense. His little daughter had been a desperate scrabble to push away blame and fault. That was her purpose. That was why she had to be killed. Dark hair shifted slightly as its owner gave a resolute nod of her head, approving of her inner conclusion.

And, in that same vein of thought, "I usually keep quite up-to-date with the various political dealings of Grande Ile and my brother. I stopped some time ago, though, in order to prepare for the mission. If I had a laptop..." She trailed off, fidgeting slightly with the sheet. Here she was asking for favors again, laying around helplessly again and letting others do things for her again. Hopefully she would be able to move around on her own within a reasonable span of time.

The dramatic removal of the curtain revealed a very startled wall and window, but nothing that would be of interest to Zeus.

"Thank you," she said, her disposition slightly brightened by the prospects of being able to catch up on news. "I keep a laptop in my room, if you think it easiest to just bring that... Mine is one of the last on the third floor; I room with Liam." She wasn't sure if Claire had ever met Liam, but it was at least another identifying factor.

Behind the other curtain, Zeus would find the same startled wall, now aghast at its abrupt and unceremonious disrobing. Were the wall capable of expressions and movements, it brow would be knit and its plastery hands would be upon its hips, an indignant "well!" emphasizing its displeasure. Fortunately for Zeus, the wall was capable of no such thing and merely stared back at him with a mockingly blank glare.

"Thank you," she repeated as Claire turned to leave. With the Pikachu removed from the room, Gui finally found it in himself to relax, deflating slightly and preening his feathers. Aila murmured a command to the bird, and, after increasingly stern repetitions of said command, he finally moved to retrieve his pokeball and drop it into the human's hand. She maneuvered the ball towards him and activated the return mechanism, sucking the Pidgeotto into it's confines. This complete, she returned the sphere to the bedside table, adjusting the sheets that the Whirlwind had tossed about. Properly situated, she took the moment of quiet to rest her eyes.

SomeThing else in the room took the moment of quiet to evaluate its options. The light was left on, so it was likely that the human and pokemon pair would be returning. It quickly came to the conclusion that staying put was the overall best choice, especially since it had yet to be noticed.

On reaching Aila's room, Claire would indeed find her laptop set upon the neatly organized desk, a white Apricorn logo glowing on the surface. She might also have taken notice of a Mismagius making use of the trainer's bed in her absence, her expression denoting that she might have been caught doing something she shouldn't. The only evidence of what this "something" might have been, however, was the yellow and black sphere cradled in the makeshift nest of bed sheets. Revenant glared at Claire with obvious - if not unfounded - disdain.