A/N: Kind of based on one of my realllyyy old headcannons that Kohata Arata's Otherself was the Underworld Vulcan. :U Sorry if there are typos! This was written quite hurriedly, and on my tablet...
Underworld Vulcan knows a lot of things for a 'child'.
She knows how to navigate the slimy, treacherous walls of her area. She knows how to hide away in the craggy rocks and caves so any passing Others don't see her. She knows how to draw creatures of fire out of the thick streams of lava that crisscross the black rocks. And if there's one thing she knows how to do, it's to fight.
Underworld Icicle, the raven-haired girl who lives in the area a few kilometres away from hers likes to visit Vulcan often, despite the fact that she knows that Vulcan despises her.
Icicle has long black hair and wears a baggy black hoodie. She likes skeletons and zombies and things that stay dead and cold. She's sociable and snide, and she idolizes Dragon Slayer and Dead Master. She fights recklessly with a massive black sword with a blade as cold as ice and she moves like the wind, fast and furious, taking out her enemies in the easiest, least violent way possible. She acts mature to hide what she really is: a joker.
Vulcan's hair is pink and tied neatly into two braids. She wears a black dress with a white apron over it and a black glove on her left hand. She likes fire and jumping around and things that make her feel warm and nice. She's hostile to all those who enter her area, and she knows no one and loves no one. She likes to plan out her attacks carefully and then attack with a massive scratched machine gun with a huge silver blade attached to the front. She enjoys being violent, enjoys the splattering of blood, enjoys her victims' screams when she abandons her cute, innocent persona and calmly rips them apart limb from limb. She acts innocent to hide what she really is: a killing machine.
(She's hostile and horrible. No one would miss her if she disappeared, and she's okay with that)
They are polar opposites, yet Vulcan cannot grasp as to why Icicle keeps visiting her, blowing playful kisses and spouting out indiscernable strings of sexual innuendos as Vulcan chases her away, fire minions in tow.
She's never been that bright when it comes to understanding things.
When the rumors start circulating, rumors of a black-haired Other named Black Rock Shooter who is determined to kill any Others that it encounters, Vulcan huddles up in her cave and hopes that this Black Rock Shooter doesn't find her.
When the rumors grow stronger, spat whispers of a dead Other named Chariot, Vulcan begins to plan.
Black Rock Shooter finds her in the end. She looks almost like Underworld Icicle if Vulcan concentrates hard enough, and that helps her state of mind, if not barely.
Black Rock Shooter tears through her area, using a massive black and blue cannon to knock down walls of rock and tall spires of semi-dried lava- almost as if she's looking for something. But the cautious way in which Black Rock Shooter searches convinces Vulcan that she is looking for someone.
After two days, Black Rock Shooter leaves her area, blue eyes blank and emotionless except for a slight sheen of sorrowful disappointment. She leaps over a bridge of rock and a thin stream of lava, and just like that, she is gone from Underworld Vulcan's life.
Underworld Vulcan falls asleep easily after that.
She dreams of a girl with brown hair in two measly bunches and brown eyes that are wide and shining with mischief and anticipation. "Kohata Arata," says a tall girl with short black hair, "You can come in now. How's life been lately?"
Vulcan doesn't know who this girl (Kohata Arata?) is, doesn't understand why she keeps appearing in her dreams when Vulcan's never laid eyes on her. She doesn't understand why Black Rock Shooter seemed so intent on picking her area apart, doesn't understand why Underworld Icicle follows her around like a lost puppy, doesn't understand why the roof of a faraway apart of her massive cave area sometimes lights up in orange, as if hit by a firework.
Most of all, she doesn't understand why sometimes she feels as if she is a mere puppet, that each one of her actions are determined by someone else's. She hates the sharp, sweet sting in between her eyes whenever she kills an Other who wanders into her area, as if her actions had caused something else entirely.
But for now, she pushes the thoughts to the back of her conscious and explores her constantly-expanding lava cave.
She's cuddling one of her fire minions when she hears the groans. She instantly freezes -much like one of Underworld Icicle's zombie minions when she got bored- because the groans sounded human, not like a wounded animal or straying minion that had somehow fallen through the ground and into her cave (as ridiculous as it sounded, it happened on an almost regular basis).
She drops the small, living ball of fire abruptly and stays very still.
"Ughhhh..."
She slowly creeps to the area where the noises are coming from. And then she gasps, because lying in the middle of a decent-sized crater is what looks to be a teenage boy. Maybe older. She isn't quite a minion. Not an animal. An actual Other (at least, she thinks he's an Other. What can he possibly be if he's not an Other?)
She slowly walks forward, quickening her pace when he makes no move to get up and attack her. From what she can see, he has red hair, red eyes- well red eye, because his left eye is covered by his hair and a strange black ornament that looks like a spine- and pale skin tinged with grey. His clothes are red and black and burnt and bloody, and there are cuts and bruises all over his skin.
Underworld Vulcan considers handing him over to Underworld Icicle -after all, her expertise was in dead things, and she might get a kick out of having a new servant without having to fight for it- but just as the thought enters her mind, he sits up with obvious difficulty, and then collapses again, the grey tinge becoming even more prominent. He was still alive. Fine then. All she had to do was boot him out of her area and wait for Black Rock Shooter, or Death Scythe, or someone to find him and take care of him. Just as she's about to leave, she feels a strange pull at the empty space where her heart should've been that makes her double over and hiss in pain. The feeling intensifies with every step she takes until it's an overwhelming net of agony that throbs and spikes with pain.
She sighs. She may as well take him with her.
She summons two of her minions and they pick him up and float away to another, safe cave, where he will have time to recover without being bothered. She catches a glimpse of her face as they take him away and it makes her stop in her tracks.
She doesn't understand why the waves of ice-cold pain stop and are replaced with a comforting, fluttering warmth.
At first, she thinks that he is an annoyance. The groans start up again every sixteen hours or so, loud whines and muffled complaints. It's almost impossible to ignore them, and so she stomps up to the entrance of the cave, four fire minions hovering around her. The moment she sees him, some of the anger dissolves.
She never thought about food.
She's never really 'hung out' around the Others that come by her cave whilst exploring. She mostly just kills them and leaves them outside of her area for the girl with the white hair and orange eyes to find them and dump their corpses into the black pit that marks no going back -a dead life- for any Other that is foolish enough to challenge an opponent who is stronger than they are. Or she drags them kicking and screaming into the massive fissure etched into the ground of her cave, tossing them into the swirling golden-orange mass of lava where they scream as the fire slowly devours them.
(Sometimes they keep screaming as the liquid fire wells up around them and into their mouths, cutting off their vocal chords abruptly as the magma scorches and disentegrates any hope that they may have had left. They surface in the end, however. They crawl out of the lava as hulking beasts of flame, born to serve her and protect her for all eternity, lacking the mental capacity to rebel)
She's never had to entertain any of the Others who stumble into her cave. She's not exactly sociable. But then again, it's hardly her fault.
They always mocked her when they first saw her. Called her weak, a loli, jailbait. Then the fight would begin and the scales would tip in her favour as they always did, and soon they would be under her heel, begging for mercy.
They never got it, of course.
But back to the subject at hand, she never really thought about food. Why would she? Why would she have thought about a substance that she did not need to stay alive and certainly did not want? There was no time for spoiling herself with optional treats like food.
But alas, it soon became obvious that the male 'Other' slowly wasting away in one of her rooming caves needed nutrition, and if he did not get it, he would be the next body to be dragged across the desolate wasteland of the Otherworld and tossed into the infinite, swallowing darkness that was the pit of death. And as irritating as he was, no Other deserved that fate, no matter what they had done to her.
So the next time an Other falls into her area -a tall, inexperienced female with blue hair who had fallen in as the result of a dare and had decided to make a name for herself upon seeing Underworld Vulcan- she does not immediately pull out her cannon and let the bullets rip the girl to shreds. Neither does she force her into the lakes of magma that she herself is impervious to. Instead, she drags the girl to a rock wall once she has been exhausted into unconsciousness and bashes her head against it until Vulcan is quite sure that she is dead. Then she ties the girl to two stalactites hanging over a particularly unforgiving pond of magma and waits.
She returns six hours later, and is pleased to see that the girl's body now resembles nothing more than a large black hunk of meat. She unties what's left of the cocky little idiot and using the blade attached to the front of her cannon, with some difficulty, manages to cut the body up.
She decides to take the 'food' to him herself. May as well watch him if he chokes to death.
Unfortunately, when she goes to him, he is still alive.
She places the meat at the entrance of the cave, but he does not move. He looks much healthier -her minions must've taken some sort of liking to him- but still extremely malnourished. He definitely looked strong enough to at least stand.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
He doesn't stand. Only when she inches just a little closer does he make an effort to show that he's still alive.
Only when she is standing right above him does he sit up. Yet he still does not eat.
Dear God, what do you even want from me?
He looks her in the eye warily, as if expecting her to do something. Holy shit, what do you want?! I haven't murdered you out of routine! What else could you possibly want?!
He points at the slab of blackened meat, then at her, then at his mouth- and wait, is he smirking?!
She barks a command and in a flash of light and heat, four of her smaller minions are at her side. She points at him and they understand. They circle around him, somehow carrying the meat with them as she stomps out of the cave in a huff- much more childishly than she would've liked to admit.
She'd be willing to bet her cannon that she heard him whine "Come baaaaaack," as she left.
An hour later, the four flaming servants circle around her, telling her in short, broken hisses that he has eaten. Underworld Vulcan wonders if he knew what the meat was. She doubts he would've cared if she had told him. She thanks them and waves them away, and they hop into a small pond of lava, patiently waiting for the next time that she will need them.
The next day, she exits her cave to look for more Others to feed him with. She hasn't been outside of her area for so long that the dull light is almost blinding. She soon realizes that she had missed nothing. The rest of the Otherworld is nothing but a dull, grey, dead landscape crisscrossed with chains hanging from nowhere and reaching up to a dull grey sky that casts little light over the wasteland that stretches on endlessly aside from the slight cracks in the ground and shimmering in the air that means the entrance to an Other's area.
She walks for a while before she finds a small boy lying near the edge of a cliff- Ah.
The Executioner's Pit visited frequently by the white-haired girl to deposit bodies into lies before her. She glances at the boy. Dead. The girl must've fled before she ended his life forever. Why?
Underworld Vulcan shudders involuntarily. She'd better get back to her cave before something, someone came out. She grabs the boy by his arm and drags him back.
This routine goes on for a month. She finds an Other and roasts them in her cave. Her minions take the food to the male Other who is still not healthy enough to leave, report back to her, and dive into the magma, waiting for the next day. Meanwhile, Underworld Vulcan waits outside the small cave until she is sure he is asleep, and then walks in to check up on him.
She kneels in front of him. He is fine. He is fine every time. Yet she still feels the need to just see him every day, to check if he's okay.
She's really quite surprised when she kneels down and he suddenly turns over, making her hand brush his cheek and making a strangely pleasant, almost electric jolt run up her arm.
She turns and flees, wondering why she's suddenly so nervous.
The next day, when she sends out her minions to feed him, they return almost immediately, telling her that he is refusing to eat. She rolls her eyes and decides to accompany them. If he is really refusing to eat, then he will starve and she herself will dump him into the pit of darkness.
The funny thing is that he starts eating the moment she enters the cave. She tells herself that she's disappointed at the fact that she doesn't have an excuse to end his life yet, but she doesn't really feel it at all. He watches her, amused, as he eats, and she leaves the cave. He's beginning to disturb her. This time, she really does hear him laugh when she leaves, followed by a loud "Ow! Fuck!" which was probably caused by one of her minions hitting him.
She starts laughing, nearly falling over a bridge of rock. She laughs so hard that she actually falls to her knees wheezing. She hasn't laughed like this in- She stops laughing abruptly.
She hasn't laughed in forever. She doesn't think she's ever laughed before, actually.
The male Other is beginning to make her feel emotions that she's never had to feel before. It could weaken her, but strangely, she doesn't mind.
Huh.
She accompanies her minions when they go to feed him for a few more weeks until she takes over the task completely. When she first enters the small cave without the small orbs of flame behind her, he quickly sits up. He stares at her for a few seconds, disbelieving, and then snorts, as if holding back laughter. However, she refuses to dump the food at him and flee.
She walks up to him and bends down until she's at his eye level. She opens her eyes and smiles as wide as she can and then bluntly whispers: "Eat,"
Her own voice scares her for a second, because she hasn't talked in a long time either. It does the trick, though, because he hurriedly starts eating.
She leaves the cave with a definite spring in her stride. She feels strangely triumphant. Funny. Triumph is normally a battle thing that she feels when she defeats a particularly powerful opponent. Triumph doesn't seem like an emotion to feel when you make someone eat a roasted person. She chuckles to herself. Who even cared. Triumph was a nice feeling.
Besides, it was good to know that she could still actually feel.
Later, she asks him his name. "I'd like it if you would tell me your name, please, so I will know to boot you out if I get a sudden warning that you are actually a psychotic killer,"
"Oh boy, look who's talking,"
Despite herself, Underworld Vulcan grins. "You're hilarious," she holds out her hand tentatively, wondering why the urge to smite him for that little comment has completely vanished. "My name is Underworld Vulcan, otherwise known as Maid Vulcan."
He shakes it. "My name is Mazuma,"
"Mazuma?"
"What's wrong with it?"
Underworld Vulcan throws her hands up in the air as a sort of 'oh, you know!' gesture. Another thing that she cannot ever remember doing before. "It- it sounds so weird!"
"The girl whose name is Underworld Vulcan has no right to judge me for my name being 'weird',"
She laughs. Wait, she actually found that funny!? "Welcome to the Otherworld, my friend. I know a person named Bone Sprout. You do not know the meaning of odd names," He laughs at this, and she feels satisfaction well up inside of her that she managed to make him laugh.
It takes a while before she becomes comfortable with the sudden floods of emotions. The panic when one of her minions had told her that he might be coming down with a fever. The joy when it turned out that he was just tired. The pride when he managed to get up and walk around for the first time in three and a half months. And the panicked rage when he wanders out of the cave and an Other who had been sneaking around behind Vulcan's back saw him.
The Other in question is named Maid Gunner, and Mazuma must have had something to do with angering her, because her eyes were blazing with cold fury as she held out her hand and a massive cannon that greatly resembled Vulcan's appeared in it. Mazuma is cowering. He never cowers- and god, he's still not strong enough to fight- and nononononononononojust fight him later, go away please-
The grief and rage is like a volcano waiting to erupt -he can't die, he can't die-. Quite unexpectedly, she screams, and that alerts Maid Gunner's attention. There is another, much shorter, girl standing next to her with black hair and green eyes. There are glowing chains tied tightly around her neck, and that is what makes Underworld Vulcan realize that she is one of Dragon Slayer's servants- and she's standing right next to Mazuma with a shining black machete in hand, just waiting for the command from Maid Gunner to slice him open.
The volcano is close to erupting, rivulets of lava steadily flowing from the sides of the volcano in the form of tears- Underworld Vulcan is crying and the volcano is calming down, if only a little. "Please...I beg of you...don't fight him...he can't fight...please...you can't kill him...he's. All. I. Have...you can't take him away from me...Don't touch him.." the words surprise her, shocking her when she realizes that they're her own. She worries when she realizes that she's not lying.
She takes a few steps closer, still crying, and she sees Maid Gunner's eyes light up with pity. It's infuriating to know that Maid Gunner considers her pitiable, but she does not care.
Maid Gunner gently pulls her into a hug.
Slowly cooling down, not going to erupt yet-
And while doing so, turns around-
Dormant to active, dormant to active, oh no, oh no, please no-
And draws her finger across her throat.
The volcano erupts.
Underworld Vulcan doesn't feel herself move. The next thing she knows, there's a weight in her left hand, and wetness over her arm and face, and something bloody in front of her, and something with their mouth open in shock, lips forming soundless screams pinned underneath her foot.
Underworld Vulcan looks at her left hand, and sees, much to her amusement, a bloody severed head with black hair and dead green eyes. The lump of redness is the girl's decapitated body- and why is it bleeding so much?! She's going to have to make a new dress. The face of terror underneath her is Maid Gunner, and now she's crying, eyes wide and pleading for mercy.
It's honestly funny how quickly they change.
As an act of mercy, Underworld Vulcan decides to let her go.
Bad idea.
The fear in Maid Gunner's eyes is instantly replaced with fury and Vulcan realizes that Maid Gunner must've been much more fond of the little servant than she had originally let on. She draws the machete from the cold dead hands of the girl's body and grabs Mazuma, holding it to his chest.
Oh.
She's planning to hack him open while I watch.
...
No.
Underworld Vulcan squeezes her eyes shut and gathers every memory of every single Other that had ever mocked her, tried to take something away from her, tried to defeat her, and had made her angry. She felt the rage bubbling up inside her again, but this time it was more controlled, more steady, because now she knows what she's going to do, and my- won't this will be an interesting display. She catches Mazuma's eye and smiles, mouthing the words, "this is going to be much better than your little fireworks displays,"
Then she pours it all into her head until the world is fading in and out, turns to face Maid Gunner and screams:
"BURN!"
When Underworld Vulcan wakes, she feels comfortably rested. Mazuma greets her warmly with: "You're such a stupid little bitch," and she laughs. She closes her eyes and sees Maid Gunner shut her eyes as if peaceful as geysers of lava erupt all around her and swallow her whole. The memory makes her head hurt, so she turns to Mazuma and says:
"Did you like the fireworks?"
She doesn't understand why that one sentence was so funny to the both of them, because suddenly they're cackling madly.
Life goes back to normal for the both of them after that.
Underworld Vulcan had been sleeping for a month and Mazuma can finally walk completely normally. He still can't draw up enough energy to use any abilities that he claims to have, but it's definitely a start. When she goes to her minions and asks what had Mazuma been doing for that whole month and why had he been there when she had woken up, they start giggling (how did balls of fire giggle, anyways?) until she dismisses them. Her minions have never really talked to each other, but now they do, and if she listens carefully, she can hear snitches of their conversations.
"...Loves...him?"
"Def...nitely..."
"Not...so...conceite-"
"Waited..."
"For a whole month!"
"Never left!"
"...cried...cried,"
"Loves...her?"
"...Cu...ute..."
"Loves...h...er?"
"Loves her,"
"What...Mis...tress...said,"
"Truth-"
"The real truth-"
"No lying!"
"Loves...him!"
"Loves...her!"
"Yes! Loves her!"
"Ha...hahahahaha! Loves her, loves her! Loves him, loves him!"
Underworld Vulcan tells herself that she doesn't know what they're talking about, but it's so painfully obvious. She tries to wipe the conversation from her mind (not that it works) and decides to patrol her area. She isn't going out. Maid Gunner was probably sent by Dragon Slayer, and she has no intentions of fighting or trying to fight the queen-like goddess of the Otherworld.
Neither her nor Mazuma speak of what was spoken when she was pleading to Maid Gunner, but the fire creatures can't stop talking about it. At least two months had passed, and they would still hoard in little groups, giggling and whispering instead of diving back into the magma. Mazuma had taken to swatting them back into the thick orange fluid whenever they tried to talk to him with a large gunblade that he could pull out of nowhere. He had been quite proud of this. Vulcan had not been impressed at all and had summoned her cannon and then proceeded to chase him around with it.
It was funny how over the space of six months she had gone from wanting to dump him into the pit of the dead to accepting him as a member of their twisted little family in the caves.
Although, says the treacherous voice that is Vulcan's subconscious, You'd like it so much more if you were a little more than friends, wouldn't you?.
For once in her life, Underworld Vulcan tries to ignore what her mind is telling her and goes back to shepherding her minions around her area out of boredom.
What she may or may not have felt for Mazuma suddenly didn't matter, because the next day when she wakes up and goes to the cave that he spends all of his free time in, he is gone.
She does not panic, only calmly searches through the rest of the massive cave. When she does not find him, she searches again. And again. After her sixth circuit through the cave, there's no mistaking that he's gone.
(And probably never coming back)
For once, Underworld Vulcan recognizes the throbbing pain spreading through her chest as sorrow.
Underworld Vulcan gets along surprising well after that. Her minions still whisper when they think she isn't around, but it's easier to ignore them now that he's gone, now that none of it matters anymore.
She goes back to her daily routine of loitering around her cave when she suddenly realizes that she's bored. The cave seems so empty now, and she remembers how hostile she was to all of the Others that she had met during her life. She supposes that this loneliness is some sort of divine retribution, but she lets the thought go quickly. She doubts Dragon Slayer has the time for punishing unknown Others for hostility of all things, and this makes her laugh to herself.
Underworld Vulcan stops laughing rather quickly a few days after that. No laughter, no speech, no hunting for Others to turn into food.
Life is quite definitely back to normal, and Underworld Vulcan is slowly returning to who she originally was.
(Cold and distant, harsh and hostile)
It is a cold day for deciding to wander out of her cave, she decides. She had wanted a change of pace, a break from the boredom. Outside, it is snowing, which only happens around every seven hundred and fifty years. Some consider the flakes of white to be beautiful. Vulcan considers them irritating and wishes they would go away.
Underworld Vulcan is just finishing off a redheaded female Other who wields a cutlass when a massive icicle drops out of nowhere and impales the girl through the chest. The girl drops to the ground, orange blood pooling around her and soaking the snow. A guzt of wind blows by, and when it has cleared, the corpse is gone. She hears the distant, muffled scrrfffff of massive metal arms being dragged across the snow and grimaces. She can already hear the dull thud of the body as it hit the sides of the pit.
She looks up, scowling when she sees Underworld Icicle hop down from a bundle of chains.
"Hey Vulcan,"
Vulcan says nothing, but this is normal, so Icicle grins and claps her on the back. "You okay? You seemed kinda...different, lately, I guess... For like six months... You been feeling okay?"
...
"That is none of your concern, counterpart," she says, her voice blunt and sharp and cutting through the silence. As she walks back into her cave, she does not see Underworld Icicle's face fall and hear her mutter: "I just want to see you happy again,"
A few days later, she is reclining comfortably on a throne composed of rock when the whispers start up. They are not the broken, humanoid murmurs of her fire minions, but of a different creature entirely, creatures with deep, rumbling, breathy voices that can barely form words-dragons?
She ignores the incomprehensible words and tries to sleep.
Over the next weeks, different whispers start up again, whispers carried around from every corner of the Otherworld.
She begins to listen.
"Black Rock Shooter..."
"Angel of Murder...blue flames...killed...kill...ing..."
"...Boy..."
"Not...Other...not from Otherworld..."
"Something...else..."
"Al...i...en...?"
"A...pos...tle...?"
"Elder Caster says...Elder Caster knows all..."
"Boy...not...Other...A...l..i...en...boy...Apostle ..."
"Black Rock Shooter...Black Rock Shooter knows...boy..."
"Black Rock Shooter hates..."
"'This is for killing Nana'...who?"
"Boy...of...flame...gun...blade!"
"Screamed...screamed so loudly..."
"Crying..."
"Black Rock Shooter...killed...died...boy...died...Black Rock Shooter-"
"Black Rock Shooter killed...him..."
"Threw him into the pit..."
Underworld Vulcan calmly excuses herself and leaves her cave.
She hasn't gone back to her area in a week.
She's been standing here for a week.
Underworld Vulcan stands before the pit where the dead are thrown away, with it's smooth walls spattered with dark red as far as she can see. It seems to go on forever and ever, lined with all-consuming darkness.
The pit is the final stand. Once you enter, there is no going back. No one can be brought out, and no one can escape.
Underworld Vulcan screams.
A loud, shrill scream is what alerts Underworld Icicle to the fact that something is wrong. She can easily communicate with her counterpart's minions, and they tell her in worried tones that she is gone.
Shit.
(She always liked to joke that Underworld Vulcan's process of emotions would be to let her feelings and conscience rot away, and then attempt to stitch them up again. Rot, repair. Rot, repair. Rot, repair. In the end, it wouldn't be enough, and her world would fall apart around her.)
She can't die yet, thinks Underworld Icicle as she runs through the thick but rapidly melting snow, I haven't told her. I haven't told her anything.
Temperature has always been on her side, so why does the coldness make every step heavier? Why does she feel like time is slowing around her?
She tells herself that it will all be okay, that nothing bad will happen, that she will be fast enough.
She doesn't get there in time.
Underworld Vulcan catches a glimpse of Icicle's face as she throws herself over the edge and into the pit.
The dark-haired girl's eyes are wide and crazy and filled with tears, a confession that she'd never be able to say now on the tip of her tongue.
Huh, thinks Vulcan as she falls, it seems that someone would miss me.
In another world, Kohata Arata wakes, panting heavily. She realizes that it was nothing but a dream, but she still cries, loud gasping sobs that, surprisingly enough, do not wake her mother. She does not understand why she is crying. Perhaps she is crying for someone else- feeling someone else's pain for a change? She laughs at the thought and the falling feeling and tears are cut off abruptly.
When she wakes up in the morning, she cannot recall her dream.
Although, it's strange how she feels empty inside, as if someone else had used up all her emotion.