and it's all in my head

"Why fix what isn't broken?"

She hummed a soft tune to herself as Julian spoke, comforting her more than her hands which she had actively stilled at the moment. A head of them Toby let out a bark wagging his tail and coming back towards them out of the darkness. Now that his mistress and her friend was walking again, he was content with walking at their pace.

"But I stopped saying no. I just-" she silenced herself, wiggling her lips as her gaze grew distant. When she spoke up again, her voice was hard and cold, "Monsters need to be slain, and I'm not a storybook princess. I shouldn't have needed to hide away in a white castle and let someone else do it for me. I should have- I should have done something before he even had the chance to do anything to me."

She continued to hold his own gaze, her walls falling down for half a moment so the gratitude she felt actually shown through. Her voice was completely sincere, not a hint of sarcasm, bitterness, or pain when she spoke again.

"Thank you."

"You tell me. You're the one who dyed her hair pink for almost a year," he hummed, raising an eyebrow towards her. He had to treat her as normally as he could. He felt like if he didn't, he'd be treating her as if she was a child.

And the worst person possible to treat like that was Ninette Fontaine.

"Don't we all wish that?" he said quietly, brushing his hands through his hair, his gaze rooted firmly on his feet. "We all wished we'd done something different, made them stop..." Julian broke off, his voice cracking. Closing his eyes, he sighed softly before continuing. "But we didn't. They won. And we all have to live with that."

A tiny smile flitted across his face at her words but mostly at her tone. When was the last time she'd been sincere? He couldn't even remember. "You're welcome."

"That's because the blonde hair was broken. It most definitely needed to be fixed." Ninette's tone stated that there would be no arguing on that point. There had in fact been something very wrong with her blonde hair, very wrong indeed.

Aldric - among other people - liked it too much.

Wrapping her arms around herself she gave him a smirk, "I am living with it Rousseau, I'm merely answering your question. These are all the reasons why one could, hypothetically at least, think its my fault."

"And it's not broken anymore?" he asked, tilting his head towards her long locks. He frowned slightly. What was wrong with her hair, anyway? To him it was fine, but then he'd never claimed to really understand everything the girl did.

He glanced sideways at her, shrugging his shoulders. "I never said you weren't." He supposed that she was living with it. If no one had noticed for a whole year, didn't that say something about her ability to hide it?

Julian frowned. If that logic was right, then didn't mean he was dealing with everything his parents had thrown at him - sometimes quite literally? And he was sure that hadn't happened. There were days when he didn't think he could.

Maybe she could deal with what had happened to her and could live with it, but he didn't think he ever could.

"Hypothetically," he repeated, nodding. "Because I don't think anyone think it's your fault. The only person who does is you."

Letting out a soft breath Ninette cocked her head to the side, a frown crossing her face as she thought through the question. The truth was, Ninette hardly knew when the change had occurred. She had changed her hair into a halo of pink in a fit of rage - disgust really, with herself, with her world - and when she had changed it back it had simply... felt like the right thing to do.

"I suppose it did." Ninette had just felt... like she wanted to be pretty again. She couldn't explain why, or what for, but that had just been what she felt like doing.

A slow and bitterly amused grin began to spread its way across her face. "I'm sure I could think of at least one other person. Who's more than a little bit ready, to point the finger of accusation at myself."

"If you say so," he said, glancing sideways at her. "For what it's worth, you look more human with blonde hair." Julian smirked. Pretending that everything was normal, he could do that. He'd been doing that for years. So he could pretend that her life hadn't been turned upside down, if only just to make her feel better.

Julian shrugged. "I did say person, didn't I?" He matched her grin. "Aldric Moreau's a special kind of evil. Doesn't deserve to be called human. Nobody wants to be considered the same as him."

Ninette rolled her eyes, "Am I supposed to be relieved with you approval? If only you had given it to me ages ago, Rousseau, then I would have rushed off and changed it right back." She batted her eyelashes at the boy, "You know I'd do anything for you Juli-darling."

Letting out a snort, her façade fell, and she watched her beloved pet run before them, turning a corner and disappearing from sight. Ninette wasn't worried, for all his trouble and excitability, Toby was a smart puppy. He already was heading their way home, or at least back to where they had started.

"I don't know if evil is quite the word I'd go for. Vile and monstrous, perhaps. But evil sounds just a tadbit juvenile. Besides, he was still a person for all his unpleasant traits. "

"Of course you should," he said, smirking in her direction. "Do you know how many people would just faint if I approved of something they did? You should appreciate this, Ninettey." Julian grinned at her. "It's why I keep you around."

Julian shrugged a shoulder. "Sometimes juvenile works." It'd worked long enough for him. It was just like what he'd told Lisette. He didn't want to grow up. What was so wrong about staying the same.

"Though I suppose all those adjectives work as well." He frowned slightly at her. "All his traits are unpleasant. I can't think of a single nice thing about him."

Snorting, Ninette ignored everything that Julian said about himself - like she cared what mindless first years thought was praise from a god - and picked up on the one thing that she felt was relevant to herself, "What is with everyone 'Y'ing me these days. Netty, Ninettey, Nin-" she didn't finish the last one, and instead moved on with her argument. "Do I really looking like an 'y' sort of person to you?"

Despite everything that he had put her through, Ninette could still think of the things that had attracted her to Moreau in the first place. They were all still there, with the childish infatuation she had had. That personality may have died, that almost innocence may not have existed any more, but in some place of her mind the ghost still dwelled.

"How about his hair? His eyes? That body? The confidence - there was something about his obnoxious, cocky ass that was just... he wanted himself so much, that you thought you needed to have a bit of it too." Ninette let out a breath, ran a hand through her hair and gave a small smile, "I'd call all those things nice. I did then... still can't not do it now."

His gaze skating over towards the stores they passed, he paused for a moment longer on a music store. How long had it been since he'd actually done anything musical? And then he'd have to go back to school and of course Professor Skydancer would expect that he had practised. Frowning slightly, Julian gave his head a small shake before glancing back at Ninette.

Raising an eyebrow at her, he smirked, amused by her inability to even say that nickname. But he supposed if just hearing it made her go off, hearing herself say it wasn't something she liked.

Giving her a cursory look over, he nodded. "I do, actually. It suits you."

Julian rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure." But he got where she was coming from, still being able to find Moreau attractive. Didn't he still, despite everything, manage to not hate his father? Though he was as terrible as they got, he was still family and still related to him.

Snorting Ninette just shook her head. So long as he didn't use the name that he knew better than to use than Ninette didn't really in the end care what he called her. Ninettey or any other version he decided to be in the mood to use was tolerable. She still felt it entirely ill-suited to her own personality, but it took more effort to shut down the use of those nicknames than she cared to give out. People thought that she was just always angry. Always like however she was, but being this angry, exhibiting enough rage to get people to leave her alone was exhausting.

Some days she just wanted to give up, but there was nothing she could do for it now. As tiring it was, it was a habit. A habit that she just didn't know how to kick.

Stopping at a corner, Ninette whistled for her puppy, waiting only a moment before the over excited creature was there, jumping at her legs. Leaning over she scooped him up and held him close to her chest.

"I'm sure someone will have noticed my wanderings by now. I'll see you around Rousseau." Giving a half nod, she spun on her heals disappearing down the street. Her voice echoed over her shoulders the last reminisce of her words reaching him before she was gone, "Thanks for the chat."