As she worked from rune to rune, her suspicions grew. By the time he answered her, one mark in particular had confirmed certain fears. So his words, at that point, came as no great surprise to her. After all, she'd seen these marks before. No. Not the ones on her own flesh.
But on Kaine's
Only once, at the hospital on Dosuun. Despite her fear and rage, her subconscious mind had registered them, and the work she had done with [member="Ashin Varanin"] made drawing them out from the depths, once she knew what to look for, child's play.
His had been tattoos, not raw and jagged wounds. But at some point in his ministrations, [member="Samson"] had subconsciously switched from carving the scars on her body, to carving the tattoos on Kaine's. There on his flesh was a melding of the two of them, and it made her stomach roil to find yet one more thing tainted by that man.
"You pushed the knife, Samson," she said softly. "But not the way it sounds."
She spoke while she worked, standing in front of him, her eyes on his cuts. Every now and then her voice would falter, but each time she pressed on.
The story unfolded from the beginning. She held back none of it, especially the parts she was ashamed of. At first, it would seem as though the tale could, in no way, possibly be related to him though. Occasionally she rambled, back tracking, explaining something that required further clarification. She spoke of Panatha. Of Braxus. Of Kaine. The narrative unrolled slowly but steadily, as she spoke of her research for the pair, of the growing manipulations that she had, at the time, been unaware of. Of the first hints that all was not well and safe, hints that she had disregarded because she believed in the affections of a certain man.
From the very first day to instant it had shattered utterly, she explained and left nothing out, told with frank and occasionally brutal self assessment of her own decisions. There was no trace of the blame she had once held in her own soul for the series of events, but she was not kind to herself or her own mistakes and unwillingness to see things as they were.
When she reached that night- the night where she had received the scars- she paused. He was missing one mark. The one that was absent on Kaine's flesh, but rode in prominence on her forehead, hidden by thick locks of dark hair. Even that then, was revealed, as she spoke, clinically, as a doctor would, of what had been wrought on her body that night.
The time after, of rebuilding herself with the help of certain others- that she glossed over. Not to keep any of it from him, but because, it seemed at least to her, that it was less important as far as Samson understanding was concerned. The story picked back up on Dosuun, the words Kaine had spoken there, and of her rejection of them. Of Doctor Vain, the copy he had made from her, from blood taken when he had tried to take so much else from her. Of the roiling, burning nausea she had felt when she had finally grasped how he had taken so much more from her. He had taken her face. He had claimed loyalty from a mirror image of her.
"It was easy," she said quietly. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, but she worked on the last of the extensive wounds that covered his body. "As a Doctor, it was surprisingly easy. To gain a sample."
Slowly, her hands dropped from the last line and for the first time during her recitation she met his eyes. There was real regret there. Not because he existed- perhaps for the first time, that wasn't the mistake she wished she could take back.
"You are the clone of Kaine Zambrano," she said finally. "I thought that turning the tables, I would figure out some form of revenge that would mean..... something. Anything. But what it comes down to, Samson, is that I am not like him. That they did not change me as much as he claimed to have. Because you are not him, Samson. You-" she paused, swallowing hard before continuing. Truth here. All of it. No matter how difficult. It was the only path forward from here that she was willing to entertain.
"You are his clone. The clone of a man I loathe more than anything else in this galaxy. Except for one other. And the reason it has been so hard for you to make me happy, isn't anything you have done, or failed to do. It is because you were cloned from one. And you look like the other. I did not expect that, and it was.... to call it difficult would be wholly inadequate. To look at you and see the eyes of a man who claimed to care for me..... but who would orchestrate what was done, looking back at me..... I still don't know why he did it. I may never know. But I need you to understand. Because this is your legacy. But it doesn't have to be your destiny. And I am promising you, now Samson, that you are not either of them. Or, at the very least, that I will try to stop seeing them when I look at you. I might not always be good at it. But you deserve better than being the goat that carries their sins for them. And I am sorry, because I was blind- to my own hubris and failings. You deserve better than that, too."
