It was dark and quiet in the bathroom, just like it had been the first time Ofelia had been forced to come to terms with herself, and an idle part at the back of her brain forced a bitter chuckle and the thought that maybe she always finds the abandoned bathroom. A further thought, a further chuckle, lead her to wonder if it could be haunted (which is why people avoided it) and then she cackled that it would be a wonderful place to train if ghosts constantly kept appearing.

The cackle stopped mid-throat though as there was no scathing rebuke, no mental level eyeroll of disappointment and annoyance at her ridiculous thoughts.

A shake of her head quickly moved her along, she had things to do like take a shower and wash off all the puke that had managed to cake itself to her skin. After cleaning herself up she'd go and clean up that room, unless someone else beat her to it (and she wouldn't cry over that happening), and from there go about seeing what else there was to do.

She could talk to people, see if they were okay? The idea seemed ridiculous, Ofelia honestly doubted she was the type of person anyone would want to see right now. The whole of Deus had bonds wit one another, some in a stronger way than she previously thought, and for those who had awoken from their pods together the first time the strength of those connections she could barely even fathom. did she have someone like that here?

. . . well, she did. Or she still did, if she wanted to think about it, seeing as Bix wasn't the only person she really could treasure. A fence between her and Jordan had been mended, not quite enough that she felt safe around him in terms of not being betrayed, but enough that she wasn't going to puke her guts up. Being a fellow sun didn't hurt, but then Bix had been a Sun. Rep was a Sun too but that wasn't going to happen. She could always go and talk to Before, but a thought at the back of her mind stung about what she'd done to Bix. Before and Bix had been best friends, much closer together than she was to either of them, and with her own hands she'd helped bring him down.

Everything kept coming back to Bix. Ofelia didn't want to think about Bix.

The group showers were empty, either people had used them already (and that's why the bathroom was semi-abandoned) or all the others just hadn't made it in this far. The faint drip-drip-drip of water let her know the showers had been used recently, or maybe not recently and that they just had a leak, and the teen reached an arm out to tighten the nozzle before she took any further actions. The sound of dripping wasn't pleasant, it made her think too much. Certain sounds always irked her, even if she tried to deny it, and the steady drip was starting to fall into that category. As her hand graced the knob she happened to catch sight of the marks on her arm, so faint against her tanned skin. An eyebrow was raised at the sight of them, Ofelia so unsure as to what they were, and she had to pull her arm back and raise her forearm to the level of her eye for a better look.

Fingernail marks. They were fingernail scratches, barely there thanks to the protection of her shield against whomever had been attacking her, and Ofelia did her best to scan her mind to figure out how she might have gotten them. She didn't remember clawing herself, as in having an itch she just scratched to the point of oblivion (and back), so she puzzled over it until the same marks were noticed on her other arm. The dots connected and something slid into place. These were from that witch, the Halloween witch. Her name had been. . . Belladonna? Ofelia was holding her down, or had held her down, when the girl's boyfriend had been turned into a weapon. Sure the boy had been saved, or at least there was something akin to saving before everything went to hell and back, but Ofelia had still held her down. Just as she had held Before down when he tried to attack that
Moon trainee as both she and the two males watched Bix's body crumble into nothing.

It always. . . it always came back to Bix.

Ofelia still didn't want to think about him, just even trying to imagine what had gone on during everything made her head pound, It could have been the smell from the vomit that was drying on her toes, on the shoes she wore, as well as on the hem of her overly ripped up shirt. She could blame her illness and pain in her mind on all of that and no one would blame her. Rue wasn't in her head to call her a liar, to point out that she truly was Cleopatra, Queen of Denial. The sun hunter had sadly believed that the river was indeed called "denial" and hadn't thought anything of it until reading about it in a book. Then, of course, she and Rue had it out. It hadn't ended well, she didn't get any sleep for a few days, and then they went on the mission to the festival to get minipets. Then from there they went on a mission to a haunted house. Then she helped kill Bix.

It went back to Bix again, and instead of just denying it off and switching her thoughts, Ofelia gave a cry of anger and turned the shower on full blast, hot water over cold. The small section started to quickly fill with steam, she could hear the hiss of the heat as it touched the cold tiles, and without a second of hesitation she stepped beneath the scalding stream. It burned at her skin, sending the sensation of thousands of daggers digging into ever inch of her body all at once, and even the parts of her that still wore clothing provided not comfort or protection at the source. If anything it was making it worse, she could feel the metal button on her pants start to sear into her stomach, but she didn't moved from beneath the shower.

She deserved this. She had killed Bix.

Ofelia was a murderer.

She deserved this.

Her body was shaking by the time she stepped out, everything blurry and swimming before her eye. Her skin was a fresh shade of tomato red, steam rising off it as she staggered forward, and she collapsed onto the tile before she could even properly clear the shower section. Ofelia was lucky she hadn't given herself second-degree burns, though the way she shook with a heat induce seizure-like motion, she wasn't so fortunate after all. The tile was cool and somehow she'd had an afterthought to turn the water to freezing, and as she lay shaking on the tile ground the cold water started to lap at her ankles. It felt like someone was grabbing at them, pulling her back into the dark waters. It was terrifying yet comforting, because it let Ofelia know the truth when her mind kept denying it.

She really wasn't the one who killed Bix, she knew this with all of her heart because she'd watched Rep take the hit, but she had cackled with glee and let Rue tear into the body of one of her best friends. She had used the FEAR that Bix produced to attack him back, her weapon's charge strong and true each time she swung. She had been so close to changing just like they had, the gray fingers of Insanity snaking all over her brain and letting Rue do as she pleased, but that was all just an excuse.

"Bi - " She stopped herself before she could say his name, a spasm accompanying the halt. Ofelia had no right to say his name, no right to think of him.

Ofelia had killed Bix.

She could not deny that.

Her hands carried the blood of a young man she once thought she loved.

No matter how badly she burned her skin, they would never come clean.

The sun hunter deserved this shower, and she would need all of them that came after. Until she could burn her guilt away, until she could understand truly that there was likely nothing she could do, she would destroy herself beneath the dark waters.

No one would be there to stop her.

Rue would have been so proud.