She holds Ajax’s head as she continues to cry. She wants to rip out her wrist veins, she would like nothing more than to bleed to death with him beside her, but she would only heal. Perhaps that is all that is keeping her from immediately seeking death.
The fact that she is now closer to immortality than mortality. The futility of self-harm while she lives in this new prison tying her to consciousness.
That, and the fact that even now there is still a very real possibility that Ajax is alive. Even if he's not healing like he normally would in other situations, he might still be alive. He might be healing more slowly because there is so much more damage to repair. Though the possibility seems slim, it remains a small hope in her deteriorating state of mind.
He might be out of energy to heal. Shaula knows that their healing factors can slow down if they have less energy within their bodies and can speed up if they have more. Her mind swings back from her pit of morbid thoughts to a possible solution to his lack of healing.
"Energy. He needs h-heat, right? He’s always said that if he absorbs heat, he can heal faster!"
A ray of dim hope. She perhaps should think twice before putting her mental energy into a deviously easy fix. Hope that doesn’t bear fruit only breeds greater despair after all, it's not a difficult thing to understand. For Shaula however, in her current state of mind, blind optimism and faith is all that she can cling to.
She immediately gets to work. She uses her right hand to cover Ajax's eyes. She doesn't want to see his unfocused expression, his deathly gaze. She wants him to return to her with clear and focused eyes. Living eyes.
Shaula forces an immense amount of heat through her right hand and out of her palm in an effort to flood Ajax's head with the heat energy that he can use in order to regenerate. Her right hand shines bright white to bright blue. Before long, the slowly burning hallway is filled with light brighter than the sun.
She keeps feeding him her reserves of strength, slowly but surely depleting them without care.
"More… He must need more…"
Shaula grits her teeth as she floods Ajax’s head with all the heat that would be safe to provide without killing anyone on this apartment building floor. The tears staining her face slowly evaporate. She prays to whatever god will listen, even to the Lord of Hosts that her foster family had worshiped, that Ajax’s family worships.
She wants him back. She needs him back.
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But, he doesn't heal faster. He doesn't heal at all.
"Come on… Come on!!" She shouts in anger and frustration.
She still has more to tell him. She still hasn't told him about her secrets. Her foster parents, her step-brothers, the man who killed her parents and got away with it.
The fire.
She had wanted to unburden herself. Was she afraid that he would reject her? Would he abandon her for having done what she needed to do in order to rid herself of her foster parents, those devils wearing human skin? Is he a person like that? Would it not be conceivable to Ajax that she would seek her own justice and revenge when the world refused to act on her behalf?
No. No. No, no, no, no. No! He would have been on my side. You would have been on my side, Ajax… I still have to tell you the truth. I still need to prove to you that I trust you. I still need to. Was I afraid of how you might think, how you would look at me differently? How could I have ever been so gutless in this new world? Ajax, please…
Shaula stops her influx of heat. Her clothes were starting to char because of how much heat she expelled. She wasn't all that worried about her clothes or appearance specifically, but she did have the “human bomb” alchemical vial that Dzan had given her under them. She didn't know if it was flammable but it might react in a powerful way to intense heat sources.
She won’t lose her rationality entirely. She wouldn't put the lives of the people in this building in danger like that, not after how hard Ajax had worked to protect these same people. Nevertheless, she continues to fail. He's not healing. Her jaw clenches as she looks towards the corpse of Ajax's enemy.
This evil piece of shit. He didn't come here for no reason. He didn't put Ajax in so much pain without an instigator. It was the guards force. They had brought the Twin Moon terrorists here.
They had been the ones who started it all. The ones who killed her friend.
Her breathing hastens as she realizes how easily the Captain of the guards force who started it all had died. Although she would have killed him faster if it meant she could save Ajax from this final destination, she would also have spent several minutes, even hours, torturing him in an ideal world where no one needed her protection.
The man who was the reason that Ajax is here in this condition. The man who had been responsible for the Twin Moon terrorists coming here in the first place.
If it wasn't for Ajax, several hundreds would have died. Thousands even, long before Shaula would even know what was going on. He was even the one who involved Dzan and Sigvor which resulted in a woman and her child being saved from a violent, fiery death.
He is the reason why Ajax might be dead.
"I should have… done more…"
Thoughts of rage and hatred flow unfettered through her mind. She should have killed all of them. She should have done it so much earlier. She should have just killed all the city guards in the middle of their statue march, before those racist pricks got the idea to call radical extremists out here to do their dirty work.
She shouldn't have stopped there, it would be utterly meaningless to stop there. She should have targeted the nobility who was supporting these pigs. The ones who hired them and paid them to continuously terrorize poor people and demihumans.
She should have killed them all.