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Time was a relative thing. The longer Alkaid remained as she was, who she was, the more she came to such a realization. To a human that required sleep, that required food, it was important to know the ticking of intervals. Time was the master around which everything revolved - an hour for a break, seven to eight hours of sleep, food every four hours. She remembered every little mundane rule, though now it was hard for her to even say how long an hour was. As a creature that required none of the elements ingrained in human nature, time was fluid and slippery. Weeks passed in the blink of an eye or stretched out so long that she never knew what day it was at all.

As the tall, pale woman stared down at the glimmering face of the table-clock she had acquired, it felt like staring at something she once knew but no longer understood. The second hand ticked steadily, round and round, until all three of the hands aligned and the first peal of the hour chimed out. The sound was eerie and cold as it echoed through the bare room, through the empty hallway outside, ringing off of barren crystal walls and hollow walkways. The ascendant left the room behind with it still chiming steadily behind her, an escort as she slipped through halls and up staircases, until she was standing on the other side of a closed door.

The light of Ida was dimmer than it had been when they'd arrived, but it was there. She was a fragile bird, a dove of Order, crippled and locked inside a cage of chaos. It was impossible to miss the fluttering, pure energy among the overwhelming darkness. So long as it was strong enough to call to Alkaid, she felt confident that she had time left.

One strong hand pushed the door open, so that the dim light of the castle's crystal poured in, tossing the sprawled form of Ida into stark contrast. Alkaid hadn't given her much - a wool blanket to lay on, a pitcher of water in the corner that she rarely had the energy to touch. The pale dreads swung behind her as she crossed the room, making no effort to silence the click of her heels against the hard floor. A small bag in her hand was set down atop the table - no doubt some form of food, unappetizing but high in calories and protein.

There was the sound of plastic being ripped open, of water being poured, though she spoke to her with her back turned.

"Time to wake up, Ida."

A small, amused smile curled the corners of Alkaid's lips, even with her back turned to Ida. So long as the girl had enough energy for sarcasm, she had energy left to be used. A good sign, even if Ida thought she was being brave.

When the puppet finally turned back to look down upon her prone captive, it was with a glass of water and an open bag of some type of trail mix. She wouldn't tell Ida just how much trouble she had gone through to pick a balanced food with the right nutrients and low chance of spoiling - nor did she ever wish to take another trip to the supermarket with its incessantly nosy employees. The fact that she had exited the building without ripping out that sniveling man's starseed was a small, personal victory.

"I couldn't tell you, exactly." Or wouldn't.

She slipped carefully to her knees, kneeling before her dark-haired captive, in a pool of her cape's fabric. It shimmered in the dim, odd lighting of the castle that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once, giving her a more peaceful demeanor than she deserved. The small bag of nuts and fruits was set down between them, but the glass of water was held out, pointedly, for Ida to take.

"Drink this, I won't be taking you to the hospital if you get dehydrated."

The way her eyes watched the depleted Eternal was not with concern, at least not on a personal level. Her gaze was curious, intrigued, with the air of someone trying to figure out an equation - not someone who cared overly much about the ultimate health of their charge. She wanted to understand exactly how food was converted to energy for Ida and whether it would replenish the supply of that which she had already drained. How much of Transcended Ida was human, and how much relied upon her own world?

"I could," she answered, with a polite enough smile, "but it's harder to know how much of your energy is recovered if I don't oversee the supply and consumption."

As Ida took the water and leaned back into the wall, Alkaid pushed the surplus bag of trail mix toward her. Her legs were tucked beneath her in an impossibly proper stance while her hands fell to fold over themselves, resting gently atop her lap. Whoever Alkaid had been once, she had been proper and respectful. Even now, in the middle of what amounted to torture, there were echoes of respect between them.

Though it was hard to see any hope in her when she watched Ida so carefully, like a hawk watching prey, ready to catch them and rip them to pieces. Whoever Alkaid had been once, she was a shell of that woman, employing her mannerisms to benefit her needs.

"I suppose what I mean is that I don't trust you, Ida." There was a small laugh, short, amused. "I'll keep you alive because that benefits me, but I most certainly am not going to let you recover enough of your energy to challenge me again." Not that it would get her anywhere, at least not the way she had attempted it before. There might have been options Ida could employ to escape - in all honesty, Alkaid was actually very uneducated in the business of space travel. That wasn't an admission she would let slip, however, but it was the ultimate reasoning behind keeping Ida weak.

"Although I must hand it to him. I really did expect that boy to bring me someone much less.." there was a pause, a consideration of the word she wanted, "much less civilized."

Even before Ida opened her mouth to ask such a redundant, hopeful question, Alkaid saw the way the knowledge settled in Ida's bones. She knew his name, she spoke it like someone that had been hoping to use any other in its place, which meant she knew him well enough to doubt his part in her downfall. Too bad hope never changed anything.

"Is that his name?"

That dark humor in the stony, cracked face lingered as she added one more little detail to her compiled knowledge of Kamboja Vaiphei: brother, friend, lover, fighter.. and selfish, dishonest traitor.

"Don't look so surprised, Ida. Do you really know him at all?"

Very slowly, Alkaid pushed herself back up onto her feet, until the cape that had been pooled around her flowed long and unhindered down the length of her body. Her pale dreads swung with the motion, waving like the string of a scrying stone inches above the crystal floor beneath her heels.The bright eyes she turned down onto Ida then seemed impossibly dark despite the brilliant hue, like an inquisitor looking down into her soul, searching it for all the sin and filth the surface didn't show.

"I think, perhaps, that you thought so." The rise and fall of Ida's chest had become much less pronounced, a tell-tale sign of anxiety and doubt. She took a few steps closer, until she stood towering above the weakened form of the eternal. She leaned down, ever so slowly, until she could level her eyes with Ida's - close enough that the senshi would have felt her breath as she spoke, if there had been any to feel.

"How does it feel to know that he will leave you here to rot, I wonder?"

It happened in the space of a breath.

One moment Alkaid was looming over the weakened eternal and the next she had buried her hand in the front of Ida's rumpled fuku, using it to lift the weakened girl from where she had retreated and curled against the wall. The broken, cracking facade was deceiving - there was strength in Alkaid, power enough to pull Ida from her feet and slam her back firmly into the crystal slab behind her.

"You poor misguided girl." There was no mirth or humor in the words that she spoke then, there was no emotion in the syllables at all. "You think this is about becoming whole again?"

The corners of her bright, citrine eyes narrowed until the cracked visage pulled at the edges, exposing gaps where the planes of her face met. The hand that held her up by the front of her fuku shifted to slide Ida higher yet along the wall, until the gold tips of her white boots barely brushed the floor beneath them. Alkaid stared up into her dark eyes still, searching the depths for something she didn't know, willing the eternal to understand something she couldn't even possibly begin to fathom.

"That is all your wretched White Moon sees when they look at me - something broken, something not complete. You couldn't begin to understand the sacrifices I've made for the power I've been granted," as she spoke, the expression on her face grew feral, angry, and the grip on the front of Ida's fuku tightened. "You have no idea how far I've gone to erase every. last. ounce. of your Senshi filth from my veins."

The words ended on a sneer and her hand released, letting gravity claim the woman in her grasp so that she fell back to the floor without an ounce of cushion to break the fall.

The emotion vanished as quickly as it had appeared and left nothing but a blank face behind as the tall, broken woman stared down at her captive. If there was anything left to say, she didn't speak the words. If there was a lesson she wanted to teach, she didn't follow through. Instead she turned, crunching bits of glass beneath her shoes as she walked, seemingly unconcerned for the eternal where she lay on her bed of shards. There would be no first aid kit to be found on Alkaid's broken, barren world.

The door that had been left open closed behind her with a loud thud, shutting out most of the light that had been admitted into Ida's room and leaving her alone again. The walking doll left behind the water and food for the girl to consume as she pleased, but with no promise to bring more. It was a simple solution - ration it personally or starve.

Beyond the door, where Ida could no longer see, Alkaid paused and stared down at the glimmering crystal beneath her feet. Seldom did she find herself worked so easily to anger but Ida was more trouble than she had anticipated in the beginning - and she was nearing the end of her reserves to boot. If she wasn't careful, she'd kill her, and that served no purpose other than to calm her own frustrations. She turned and headed back down the hallway, feeling poorly about her own actions, but not enough to apologize for them.

Ida's feelings weren't what she wanted to spare anyway.