Xaviers!

"You would not think my home was fine." she admits. It is but she doubts Katarina would enjoy washing herself in a frigid mountain stream. "But wherever I go, I persist."

"And you...persist...no matter what people say, yes? No matter what they would have you do?"

"No matter what they say. They can ask of me what they will, I do as I please." she says, but unlike normally with these kinds of statements from her she goes on after a brief pause. "The consequences of their laws bind me. Imprisonment. Taking my freedom from me. It makes me weak. But as an Agent the laws are lesser, so I do as they ask. Mostly." she pulls her little grin.

"It does seem like they're pushing me in that direction. Perhaps I am just tired of being pushed," Katarina sighed. "Perhaps I, too, should just 'do as I please'. It is a little tougher in my case, however."

"Not everyone who pushes means ill." she admits. "But those who have been pushed too much always attract the ones who see opportunity. Prey-fear. They smell it. And not everyone who is pushed can fight back. But there is always me."

"You would fight for me, Ryn?"

"Always." The word spills out before she can think about it, but that doesn't make it any less true. "I fight monsters, even if for now it lives only in your head." she says and touches the tip of her finger to Katarina's forehead.

"And anyone who would try to push you into it's claws will face mine."

"And if the monster...gets out?" Katarina said, looking deep into the reflection of Ryn's glasses, as if the answers to her questions could be found behind them.

Ryn's glasses really are black, to the point of raising questions as to how she sees through them in less brightly lit spaces. When she speaks her tone is clipped, harsher than before. It makes her glasses seem like black pools that could swallow the whole of her. "There is always me."

Ryn is glad to be able to hide behind her glasses in this moment. Her oath not to hurt Katarina had come easy but in the same breath as not letting her voice do harm. Her word is as absolute as her and thus she could not have uttered the former without the later. None gripped by evil are spared. That kind of mercy is not within her but it's lack has never hurt like this. Something they once spoke of her comes unbidden to her lips. "On Fate attendant, punishing with wrath severe, of deeds unjust and base. Fatal and horrid to behold, to whom revenge and tortures dire belong."

"...You have a whole mood to you, you know that?" Katarina said, slightly unnerved by Ryn's drama.

"Sorry..." she says and the shroud of darkness that seemed to have encroached on the room just a moment ago disappears and leaves behind an awkward woman with an air of contrition she doesn't seem to know what to do with, so she apologizes for the only thing she can actually define for herself. Having unsettled Katarina. "I eat monsters. Maybe they thought I'd just eat you when I asked them to be your handler." Her head tilts downward, somehow having lost the nerve to look at Katarina. Few people have won even an incidental staring contest with the dark sunglasses but maybe they're as much shield as they are intimidating. From the rumors it sounds like Ryn without her glasses is a ghastly sight to behold. Maybe she's hiding scars she's ashamed to show that are worse than the one's Katarina had seen on her that night in the woods.

"That must have been...hard for you, when you realized that's what you did," Katarina said, scrambling around to try to find purchase in the Very Strange World of Ryn. "That's a lot of...responsibility?"

"...I take it you're not planning on eating me," she said, trying for a joke (and almost hitting it.) "That Horsekiller lady might beat you to it, anyway."

"Despite what the Wyldclay insists, no, I do not want to eat you." she says on, which is, one might note, not technically a no.

"It's what I do. My purpose?" she tries, though that doesn't quite encompass the whole of it. Something inside of her hesitates to tell Katarina she does what she does because she enjoys it, though she doesn't know why. Guilt and shame are human things that don't apply to her. And yet even Katarina's uncertain words feel... nice. Like all her feelings about Katarina it's confusing and leaves her wanting things she can't explain. Compassion is not something she wants, much less deserves. "I've never known any different. I've always fought."

"You don't remember much about your early life, do you? You were just...here?" Katarina said, meaning the Agency.

"There hasn't been a time that I've been a child." she says in the definitely most normal way somebody could phrase a response to that. "But I've been fighting since long before coming here." A child-soldier maybe? Or perhaps she means fighting for survival? At times Ryn can certainly come across as damn near feral and lacking any real socialization. Every once in a while there's claims of children raised by wolves with varying degrees of believability. And she's certainly used to getting hurt to the point of having been more upset by the crowding and loss of agency than a broken ankle.

"That must have been very tough. I can hardly imagine," Katarina nodded, listening.

"It's what I do." she tries to dismiss it, but the way her jaw is set and almost quivering with tension tells a different story and despite not wanting to let any of the darkness that permeates her touch Katarina she finds herself wishing she would understand. "It is - was - lonely and cold. Not frost-cold but heart-cold?" No, that made no sense. Her heart burns with unquenchable fire so hot it shines from her eyes. "Star-cold!" she seems to come to some kind of metaphorical conclusion. "It was like being a star in the sky. That's why looking up at them reminds me of home. They burn bright all alone in the dark."

"Well, you're not alone any more, yes, Ryn? That's why you stayed," Katarina said, nodding. "People here going through the same problems you're going through."

Ryn looks at Katarina and her brow knits in puzzled thought. Her immediate response is how that could possibly be true. Here's a human, bathed in the light of attention and suddenly stripped of her dreams. And then there's Ryn, cloaked in darkness, doing the same thing she's always done no matter where she is. How is that the same, she asks herself. But Katarina is not stupid. She sees things that Ryn misses, subtle things, human things. Things that are more than they seem, like metaphor-words. She thinks she's sliding towards the same thing Ryn is, is being dragged into it by the scales on her back and the lure in her voice. Ryn's eyebrows shoot up.

Katarina is right. Somehow Ryn has missed the obvious. She's so set in her ways, so unchanging, that she did not consider Katarina could be anything but who she sees before her now. Because she judges those around her by the taint their deeds have left on their soul. She should have known better. Humans change and even a sliver of what Ryn's power has wrought would taint Katarina's soul. Ryn has never been anything else, has no lost innocence to mourn. But Katarina does. Ryn is free to be remorseless. A monster. Sin-Eater. Katarina feels the sting of loss and now, finally, so does Ryn.

"The same... That's why you think we're the same..." she whispers her horrified realization. "That's why you tear at your scales and why you're afraid. You think you might become like me."

"What? Ryn, no, I'm sure you're doing the best you can. You've reached some kind of...understanding with what you are. That must have been hard-fought and hard-won; over years of working to define what your role is."

Projection, thy name is Katarina. And the quick 'no' didn't do much to dispel Ryn's thoughts that Katarina imagined herself becoming someone else. Becoming something else.

"I do understand what I am." she nods ever so slightly. "But the path to what I am leads all the way through the scales and the voice. And you don't want that and I finally understand."

"But I will still try to help you. And I do know one thing. You cannot fight it with pain. The scales, they come back, do they not?"

"...They do, yes. The speed varies based on...a number of factors. We're working on ways to slow it down..."

"The Wyldclay does know more about changing shapes than I do. But be careful about trusting gifts from Fae."

"Well, that's more the medical team. The Wyldclay is..." she paused.

"An acquired taste, at best. Though his creams do tend to sooth the irritation."

"Hrmp." Ryn makes a non-committal grunt. She might have to take a look at that concoction. Not that she has any alchemical knowledge but she doesn't trust this trickster spirit. "Did the doctor tell you to rip them out?"

"It was suggested that more scales could cause them to grow faster," which was a very careful way of not saying either yes or no outright.

"So you started ripping them out." This thought process made perfect sense to her. It was straight-forward and clear-cut and she could not fault Katarina for it. If it wasn't for the fact that it was probably painful and would only get more-so. If there's one thing Ryn knows it's what inflicts pain on a monster.

"How bad does it hurt?"

"Well, I don't think it'll replace roller blading as the latest fad anytime soon," Katarina sighed.

"I can help. If you want. Do it faster. Cleaner." The idea almost feels like anathema alien but if she knows how to hurt then she knows how to avoid it. But when she looks at Katarina and the avoidance to even talk about it it feels a little less wrong.

"That...might be nice. Some of them can be hard to reach," Katarina admitted. "Though it can be a bit...grody. Then I suppose you would know, if you were watching."

At that Ryn awkwardly stares at the ground. The sight of blood and viscera doesn't bother her, but Katarina can just say words a certain way and crumples. She must have used her Voice, it's the only explanation for how words can have this much power over her and bring the same heat to her cheeks as the moment itself had. "To learn." she mutters defiantly, but she can't help but feel a strange kind of excitement that goes beyond simple satisfaction about Katarina agreeing to a plan Ryn believes to be practical.

"Why now?" Katarina asked, leaning in. "What made you start investigating me now?"

"The Wyldclay said maybe I was missing something." she mumbles. She doesn't have to tell Katarina anything, she tries to remind herself but then the other woman leans in closer and that's just not fair. "You were upset when it was me who stumbled." she says as if the word itself was sacrilege. "I didn't understand because I don't understand a lot of things so I watched to see what I'm missing." she says knowing full well she's watched plenty of humans and that has furthered her understanding very little beyond the surface. In truth part of her enjoyed watching Katarina but she could hardly explain that to herself so even Katarina's word-tricks and closeness wasn't going to wring that out of her. Of course unbeknownst to Ryn, she's blushing and her body language is squirmy enough that it probably speaks volumes.

"So, the Wyldclay put you up to this, did he? Took advantage of your confusion and sent you on a little mission of his own?" Katarina said, entirely mis-interpreting Ryn's squirming. "Damn rude of him, wouldn't you say?"

Katarina isn't wrong. He might not have said so directly, but the Wyldclay had a particularly confusing way with words. Half the time she had no idea what he was really talking about.

"He always is." Ryn agrees. "He woke me up to tell me how to prepare seafood."

"I suppose we ought to check to make sure none of those creams and salves are secretly tartar sauce."

"Oh I will find his spawning pool and..." she's not actually sure she could finish him off even if she wanted to. She'd have to find his essence to devour it and while the flames inside of her burn away souls to nothing, they don't do the same for mud and there's a very human limit to how much she can physically ingest. Plus who wants to chew on handful after handful of mud. "...and fill it with lye and saltpeter!" she grumbles.

"Hrm. Perhaps there's something more...expedient that can be done," Katarina said, starting to walk towards the Wyldclay's office.

"I could tear off his arm again, but he does not seem to mind." Ryn helpfully supplies, her repertoire not particularly equipped with the creativity required for dealing with the Wyldclay.

"You could wh...no, no, I suppose that makes sense," Katarina sighed. "You kind of have one method of solving problems, hrm? And they don't work on him..."