Welcome to Gaia! ::

On her death bed, Christelle Marie de Valois had made her daughter swear vengeance against her son. That daughter, little more than a child at the time, inherited her mother's spite and carried the burden of avenging the de Valois name. He was a villain who had killed the head of the family and usurped his authority. He had driven Christelle out of the country in fear for her life. He deserved no less than that which he had dealt to his own parents. He would pay dearly, and the sad-eyed little girl of Camphoreon's slums was the designated instrument of his demise.

Aila had not been so sad-eyed or so little for very long. Absorbing her mother's will, she had turned from the world, her every movement a bid to further herself towards the only goal she knew. And she had very nearly attained it. She had come so close she could taste the blood, hear the final plea for mercy. And she had been exhilarated as the small life that was her own niece was extinguished. She could have wished for nothing more but her brother's own death, and the expression he wore, faced with his daughter's corpse, had been more than enough to make up for that failure.

It had been fleeting, though, and the gravity of it all had come crashing down on her without warning. The longer it set in her memory, the more pain the image of Leon's face brought her. Slowly but surely, that sad-eyed little girl had emerged from the shadows of Aila's heart.

Revenant flitted around her human worriedly. She had compressed herself into as small a shape she could manage and hidden herself in the corner of a little-used hallway, face hidden, shoulders shuddering, and the occasional muffled gasp escaping her. The Misdreavus was confused. Why was she in such a strange pose in such an out-of-the-way place making such ugly sounds? Wasn't she the one always lecturing that Venusaur on appearances? She could only conclude that there was something deeply and innately wrong with her trainer, and she set out in search of the nearest potential helping hand.

Ugh, it was That Man. Revenant remembered That Man. She didn't much like him, and if she recalled properly, neither did her human. But she didn't care nearly enough to go looking for someone better, so he would have to do.

"Dreeea." She drifted backwards a foot or so. "Misdrea." The little ghost turned and proceeded around a corner towards Aila, hoping he would follow. She really didn't feel like going back for him if he didn't, and she needed her human fixed as soon as possible.

The sound of footsteps seemed impossibly distant, and so it was all the more startling when she heard someone say her name. She instinctively raised her head in response, forgetting her tear-reddened eyes and distraught expression. She blinked in mild confusion, as if questioning whether or not Mau really was standing there in front of her. Better safe than sorry, she decided, and she quickly buried her face in her arms. She hoped he was just a hallucination. She didn't need the mortification of facing anyone in such a state, least of all Mau.

She tilted her head just enough to look at him from over her arms. He was still there. Still talking. Still not a hallucination. Brow furrowed, Aila accepted the gauze, if only to pull at it. It seemed that somewhere along the line, somehow, she had adopted a nervous habit of needing to do something with her hands.

"I don't know. I should be happy. I'm not." Her posture tightened, as though retreating further towards the wall behind her.

Her hands stopped working as the entire incident replayed in her head once more. There was simply no way to explain but to put it in blunt terms, but she despised the words so much. It was frustrating, and it was even more frustrating to think that the only person in the world who would have approved of those words had passed away four years prior.

She resumed her work on the gauze. "I killed my brother's daughter."

"It should." She crumpled the gauze in her hand repeatedly.

Aila had to think about his question for a few quiet moments before she could wrap her head around the events in their entirety. Everything had been jumbled in the midst of nightmares and memories. "Her name was Aila too." She remembered that. That was what had made her so angry in the first place. "It wasn't fair. She was living my life. I wanted it back."

"Yes!" She sprang out of her ball-like posture, pressing her palms against the floor and twisting her torso to face Mau more fully. It seemed to Aila a ridiculous question, and her distressed features identified that. "Everything! To have Mother back... and Father, and a home, and a future! Why wouldn't I?!" Distress was replaced by despair. "He gave away everything I had before I even had it, then gave away my name on top of it..." She bit her lip, fighting back tears with all her will.

His touch shattered her, and she could only bring her hands to her face to hide, the gauze discarded at her side. "No-" You can't understand. "That's not-" I don't want a future like this. "I just-" -want to have a home. She couldn't coerce any of the words to form. Her entire vocabulary was swallowed up by sorrow all at once. She fell back on the only thought that would surface on her voice.

"Je ne veux pas être seul..." They were the last words she had told mother, and they were the words on which she had carried her immense hatred for so long.