Kyris hung her head a little bit.<span style="font-style: italic">I know it's pathetic. But I don't know what to do, and I'm frightened. I just want this to end...</span><br/><br/>She startled a bit as he offered his hand, and a way out. Kyris had tried running away before, when she was fourteen, and M'lady had cured her of the desire for freedom.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Kyris had been hanging there for weeks. No food, barely enough water to stay alive... Every bone in her body protruded from her skin, and she felt like her arms would disconnect from her body by the shoulders at any moment. The metal of the cuffs that held her aloft on the side of the building dug mercilessly into her wrists. The sun had burned her, and last night it had rained terribly. She had shivered through the night, and now, in the humidity of the morning, the mosquitoes were taking their share of her. The sun rose high, drying her, and she heard footsteps approaching. Likely a security guard with her daily cup of water. He always made sure to spill most of it.<br/><br/>But it wasn't the guard. It was M'lady. She gazed at the girl before her disdainfully, a key in her hand. Kyris could only whimper.<br/><br/>"Know this feeling well, Kyrisa," M'lady had said, a threat in her tone, "This is what the world would make you. There is no place for you out there. Only here, with me, will you be safe. Only I can accept you for what you are, my beautiful, vicious butterfly.<br/><br/>Kyris had never had the desire to run again.</span><br/><br/>But this was different from that time, wasn't it? She wasn't alone. And she knew that M'lady was wrong; what real reason did Kyris have to return to her? Normalcy would never be within her reach, not now. Only a painful death waited for her there. Kyris knew, although perhaps a part of her thought she deserved to die-- it would be easier than this, after all-- that there was another option.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">What is easy is not always what is right.</span><br/>Kyris took the fortune from the shop out of her pocket and gazed at it,<span style="font-style: italic">If you can't beat them, join them.</span><br/>Her gaze shifted to Toshi's outstretched hand, then to his eyes as she smiled weakly and grasped his hand lightly in her own.<br/>"You're right. I don't have to go back... So I won't." She stood, but trembled like a leaf, "Is it alright to admit that I'm terrified?"