[ It stings then, cuts deeper than maybe anyone else could. Trusts Parker, so far as she clung to her independence and she thought of all people Parker would understand that, understand about getting make choices, about wanting to save others, even if they did it in different ways

But she wasn't -- it is just that, hypocritical, and if there was one thing she could not stand --

She stops leaning into her then, her back going stiff and straightening. Not pulling away from her, not yet at least but there's a sharp line to her. Choose her? She swallows stiffly. She will be calm, she was always calm, but that didn't mean that there wasn't something knotting in her chest tightly. Something so brittle there, able to shatter, there always has been between them. ]

Fine. [ Her hands are still set against her shoulders, her face turned up but there's something flat, flat, flat there. The crackle of heaviness to her words. ] I won't go -- [ she won't be pushed, she won't be guilted, and this feels so much like that. It turns over in her stomach, bile in her throat. ] -- when you try and spend some time with the rest of the brood instead of forcing us all away.