The chip thrown at Misha harmlessly bounced off her, having hit her cheek and fallen to the table below. Misha, however, flinched as if something much larger had been thrown at her with much more malice than the harmless act meant to convey. Once she realized what it was, and what the glowering eyes of the Laibe were telling her, a hot shame ran through her, and she turned her eyes down at the burger, hands moving to awkwardly hold the burger, about to force a bite despite the nagging feeling in her head telling her that it wasn't something she deserved.
Then Eliana ran her hand delicately through Misha's wartorn hair. Her hair was damaged, knotted and frayed, matted and broken in countless parts. It would be easier to fix it with a razor than a comb, and it was obvious that she hadn't touched any form of shampoo or conditioner in who knew how long. The only victory she seemed to have over her hair was that it didn't look as bad as it could given its length. She knew to fix it up before the day started, but not much more.
But the hair was hardly the concern, nor was the burger any longer.
Misha's mind went blank, and instead of thoughts, there were memories, feelings, moments that had happened too long ago to date properly. In the span of moments she was reliving those times, those feelings, that love, that fear, that rage.
That regret.
Nadia's hands cradling her, sobbing as she ran her hands through her matted fur. Why was she crying? Misha didn't remember. She just knew something hurt, and marks of blood traced her sister's arm, in the pattern of teeth. She didn't cry from pain though, and who bit her?
Hands gripped her hair, jostling her sharply as she heard yelling, both from her father in his relentless rage and from her mother. Where was Nadia? Nadia always saved her from this. Where was Nadia?
Hands smelling sharply of alcohol grabbed at her face, at her collar and ears harshly and roughly, only pulled back with curses as she bit the hands of her mother as they came too close.
A daur reaching into the broken closet that she slept in once, retracting as her teeth greeted it. "By the goddess, Alex, the girl's bloody rabid!"
Nadia, Nadia, Nadia. Why did the name rise her heart with fear? Or was it grief? She was not dead, but why did the two emotions feel the same?
To Eliana, the sight could be a briefly scary one, but the motion was unmistakable. It was desperation, fear, and animalistic instinct rolled all into one as the burger fell to the tray, Misha's head jerked violently and no doubt painfully, and her teeth seared the air to bite at the hand that touched her head. The look in her eyes was a foreign one, the looks of a thing that did not see, did not reflect, it only felt. It was a horrid, wretched thing, a vessel of instinct and response, filled to the brim with fear. Yet, all the same, it saw to bite the thing that riled it.
The bite, assuming contact, was a harsh one, but not one that could break skin. The motion seemed as if something resisted it, making the bite painful but a warning a worst.
And that's when she came back to her own head, staring in abject horror at her own actions, and the cold laced pulse of fear and shame buried her beneath its weight. She wanted to run, hide, find somewhere else to slap her name, another name, any name, anything that would put a thousand days between here and there. "Nadia I'm sorry I-" She choked on her own words, but neglected to even notice the fault of name. Her hands clamped over her mouth to hide her quivering lips, and she stared at the fallen, collapsed and broken burger with a gut that felt like it no longer needed food. Her eyes were hot, feeling like they couldn't close and burned with the need to cry, yet she knew she couldn't, not here, not when people would judge her and come after her weakness. "I didn't mean to." Came a whispered, small voice.
