Oh but that stings. He couldn't hit her any lower and she wants to hit him in return, maybe less than metaphorically. It's clear on her face before she smothers it down, twitching like a live wire, an exposed nerve like he'd bared it under a blade. Hurt, bitter, angry, and she snaps back to the metal in her hand, knuckles turning white around it like she might just anyway.

Because she's trying to think of something to say. Something sharp and half as mean as she wants it to be. To tell them they're all fools, all idiots. She's a Queen of a dead kingdom. What hope can she give them? What on earth can she do for them that she didn't already do for her own people, a long time ago, only to watch them burn?

It wells hot, and angry and bitter in her throat, stings in her eyes, the choking on smoke that she's tasted for years that she had to devour in order to avenge them as they screamed and were slaughtered down to the last child. Her people, her people, her people and she's lying to herself, she knows, if she doesn't already think of this group as just the same. Hers to care for, to do everything she could for. Like she's spent every hundred years since then trying to do what she couldn't to start with.

She can't, she can't, she can't.

Galahad, Tesla, Devi, the men and women of Jhansi, her little boy in her arms, her impoverished of Whitechapel and the soldiers at Normandy. All hers, all looking to her, all dead - and she cannot -

The breath she pulls into herself is wet and sobering. "No. I will not."