thecapitol | something that can wash all the pain

Entry tags:

something that can wash all the pain | OTA

Who| Nill and YOU
What| Drinking and possibly crying
Where| Tribute center lounge/bar
When| Way backdated to just after Week 2
Warnings/Notes| Typical post arena warnings + alcohol warning. References to hard drugs and suicide in Linden's thread.

Nill opens her eyes, and the first thought that goes through her mind is that she wants to cry. She can't tell if it's because she's relieved or bitterly angry, but it sits like lead in the pit of her stomach, like fire, and she pulls her knees up to her chest to drown the heat of it, or else she knows it will burn through to her bones.

It may be a good thing that the Tributes don't seem to wake up in their own beds, because if they did she's not sure when she would actually find it in her to get up again. Even with where she is it's a long time before Nill can muster the energy to actually sit up again, let alone to pull the blanket from the cot around her shoulders and stand. When they let her she stumbles her way out of the room, wings folded down and blanket still held tightly around herself as she slowly makes her way up through the tower.

There's no physical pain, and that's probably the most jarring part. There are phantom aches in her skin and joints, the unmarked patch of skin where a xenomorph had stabbed a hole into her side burns, and the long stretch of her forehead that was still horribly bruised for most of the Arena throbbed, though it was completely and utterly okay now. There's not a mark on her but everything hurts, and the ache in her chest is by far the worst of it. She feels sick, and Nill wants nothing more than to sink down and not move again. She does a good job of avoiding this base instinct until she gets to the lobby, and on one of the screens there's a flash of small troll with nubby horns, thoroughly miserable and beat up but alive, and Nill freezes before she can take more than a few steps.

She gives in to the instinct, though not where she stands. Nill makes her way to the bar, gestures to borrow a pen from the bartender, and writes out an order on a napkin. He seems to tel her that she can hold on to it, and once Nill has a hot coffee that smells very much of whiskey she sits in a seat far off to the side, where she can watch the monitors.

To say she looks miserable would be putting it lightly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It had been difficult watching that gentleness on display in such a brutal environment. Though she'd done well, she wasn't ruthless enough to win, and it had been tough to witness. Not so tough as living it, perhaps, but there's a special kind of helplessness that normally accompanies watching the Games when someone you care about is competing, and this particular Arena has eliminated audience participation completely, increasing it doublefold. And the fact that Nill had been mercy-eliminated scarcely made it better.

The grumbling bartender had been on his way to call a District 6 Escort to come and fetch their wayward, disruptive Mentor, in what's quickly become a "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" situation, but he actually does stop when Nill holds up her hand. The major reason is that it seems like she's volunteering to handle Linden, which saves him the trouble and is massively relieving.

He reaches for her hand when he sees it's her, clearly shocked to see her here in person. He knows, intellectually, that the Tributes come back more often than not following a death in the Arena, but years of accepting the finality of death aren't quickly erased. Especially when drunk or high, he has a difficult time witnessing the Arena casualties, because he's seen so many that didn't come back. Temporary, fleeting relationships that are extinguished before they have a chance to truly form; that's the fate of a Victor in Panem.

"Nill?" he asks, shaking his head, rubbing at his bleary eyes as he straightens, turning and attempting to align the tables and chairs he knocked into. Unfortunately, the attempt basically makes them worse.

"I'll buy you a drink. Bartender!" he calls, holding up the whiskey bottle with the hand not holding Nill's.

"Not in your wildest dreams, Lockhearst."

Linden glowers. "Can you believe how he's talking to me?" he asks. "This is all wrong... all..." he closes his eyes, taking a deep swallow of the alcohol. "...are you OK, Nill?"

She is indeed volunteering to keep an eye on Linden, and though she doesn't quite manage a smile when the Bartender doesn't try to call for 6's escort her expression is nonetheless grateful.

Nill lets him take her hand, and for him at least she manages the slightest flicker of a smile, more ghost than real, but it's there nonetheless. He's barely holding himself together, but Nill had been afraid in the Arena that if she made it out Linden might not actually be around anymore. He'd done horribly the day before the Arena, and she hadn't been able to really make sure he was okay before the Peacekeepers came. It only takes one overdose to kill someone. Seeing him is the closest she's gotten to real relief since she woke up.

She gives his hand a very gentle squeeze, and spares the bartender a glance, when Linden tries to get yet more alcohol.

There's no honest way to answer the question, and with his eyes closed he might feel her shrug more than see it. But she's quick to carefully tug on his hand after and gesture towards a table further from the screen. Sitting down would be a good idea, maybe. Minimize interaction with the Bartender, if staying here is what Linden wants to do.

The bartender's expression is what could be called "deflated exasperation." He relaxes, but is nevertheless at the end of his rope; he is a citizen of the Capitol and true to his nature as such, he appreciates volunteers in all things. His eyes and the dismissive wave shake of his outstretched hand says he's all yours, and he turns away, busying himself polishing some glasses while still keeping an eye on them through the barback's mirror.

Linden's not drunk yet; he hasn't reached the point where his eyes are unfocused and his speech is slurred and imprecise. But he's agitated, quick to flinch and snap, and it's a frightfully good thing that Nill and her reliable gentleness have intervened. The squeeze she gives his hand is responded to with a tighter one, as if he's gripping a lifeline. The last time they saw each other, he hadn't properly known what he was seeing, and had awoken, sober, with the Arena already in full swing. His guilt had stung him then, and driven him promptly back to the behaviors that had fueled it in the first place.

The shrug makes him open his eyes, because even though they're bleary, and they're hurting and hungover, her answer is going to require more searching if he wants anything like a complete one. He averts his glance as she starts to pull him toward a back table, suddenly embarrassed.

"You're not," he says hollowly as they walk. "Of course you're not, you... I can vouch for you, if you want to be a citizen. A petition... you could be. I could help..."

Edited (This time it was a typo. SORRY) 2015-01-06 06:53 (UTC)

After that Nill doesn't pay the bartender much mind, save for making sure that she heads to a table a little more outside his line of sight. Though she has nothing to hide she's not a fan of being watched, especially not so obviously. She goes for a booth, both for more privacy and so that if Linden is inclined to move around much, it'd be harder for him to fall out of his chair.

If he lets go of her hand then she'll take a seat across from him, and place her hand on the tabletop if he wants to hold on to it again. If he doesn't she'll just scoot in next to him, a little similar to how they sit on the rooftop.

The last time Nill saw him he was probably passed out in her room before the peacekeepers came. It's better if he wasn't awake for it. She really hopes he wasn't.

Nill has never heard of petitioning for anything though, and it shows on the confusion that cuts through the weariness in her expression. Nill frowns, and once he looks at her again she tilts her head, making a gesture for him to go on, hopefully to explain. How could she be a citizen without having been born here?

The irony of not liking to be watched but keeping company with a Victor who is well-known for the mind-altering drugs he injects and the scenes he causes cannot be overlooked. He is used to privacy being a long-gone thing of the past; even behind closed doors, someone might still technically own his time, because technically, President Snow owns him.

His fingers do slip away from hers; he's not been terribly aware of his body's dimensions and extensions for a couple of weeks, now, and that numb heaviness makes it difficult to gauge where things begin and end. He slides into the booth across from his long-suffering source of help and care, and dark, haunted eyes meet her clear blue ones.

He doesn't remember the last time he saw her terribly well. Feelings are associated, images, but they're disjointed and unclear. And whether it's for better or not, he regrets that he wasn't conscious when the Peacekeepers came to take her away. He'd awoken back in 6, questioning whether his time in 9 with her had been a dream or not.

"They do it sometimes," he presses on. "They give the new Tributes immunity from future Games if they can prove their use or value to society and get existing citizens to vouch for them in a panel. It's difficult but it can be done. You have to try before they send you in again."

No one ever said that Nill made the best choices in the world when it came to the friends she made or the people she cared about. Linden is probably a good example of that, not even because he's an addict or a train wreck, but because he's so easily someone she could care about that it's almost without a doubt going to cause problems for them in the future. She can only hope that if it does he'll be the least hurt between the two of them.

Nill doesn't know what to do with this new information. For a moment it actually makes her look a little lost, and she pulls her gaze away from him to look down at her hands. For a moment she idly traces a few of the scars on the edges of her hands, her palms, before lifting a hand to the back of her neck, fingertips brushing where another scar rests at the top of her spine. The body is a good imitation, if nothing else. She's pretty sure there isn't anything else of her physically that exists at the moment anyway. This body, and then another after the next Arena, and then another...

After taking almost half a minute to consider, she fishes for the pen she got from the bartender, tucked into a pocket on her jacket. The table has a napkin dispenser and Nill pulls one out to write on before sliding it over to him.

vouch for Karkat and Clementine first

Like most rampantly self-destructive people, Linden is likely fated to hurt everyone who cares about him by dying someday, senselessly and preventably. Hell, if the Capitol ever wants to assassinate him, it will be as pathetically simple as waiting for him to pass out, injecting him with a fatal dose of his go-to habit, and leaving the needle in his hand. That's the easy way out for him, should the kindness Nill shows him ever become a problem... and, sadly, probably the hard way out for her.

He watches her run her touch over her various scars; he thinks that scars have come up before, either her own or his. It must have been hers, he thinks... he never would have spoken openly about where Scorpii had sliced open his throat, but the scar tissue still prickles and itches when he thinks about it, as though it did come up. Perhaps the morning she was taken by the peacekeepers and he woke up, startled and shaken, to a note explaining where he was accompanied by two cigarettes to ease the sting of missing her departure, he had brought it up at some point.

He takes the napkin and reads what's written there, even though he could have guessed, without too much trouble, what Nill's first thought would be at his suggestion. His fingers curl around the napkin, not quite crushing it, but they twitch with the effort of restraint.

"Has it occurred to you that you might be able to better help them outside the arena, rather than in it? This last Game was terrible... sponsors couldn't do anything, but that's not usually the case. If you could get citizenship, you'd be safer, and you could send them items to ensure that they're safer, too. If you go back... you'll just die again. And when you have, they will too."

He keeps his mouth set in a straight line, and his eyes hard and steady, but it's so difficult.

I'm not even strong enough to walk away from my Morphling habit. I'm barely strong enough to see people I care about die once. More than that, I... don't know.

She's trying to see how good an imitation they made her. She was self-conscious about her scars for a long time, and still is in a way, but it's duller now, muted - even so, sometimes people end up drawing more attention to the things they want ignored by being incapable of ignoring those things themselves. So far the scars feel the same under her hands.

For some reason Nill isn't quite expecting the way his fingers curl around the napkin, the way it's obvious he's trying not to do more with it than that, and she certainly isn't expecting the way he carefully schools his face into something that is either for her sake for the sake of the cameras.

It's then that she realizes that somewhere along the lines she messed up, and the suddenness of the revelation is like a knife through the chest, a xenomorph tail in her side. Much like when Karkat asked her in the Arena what would make her happy Nill can't hold his gaze, and she ducks her head slightly, just a little more pale than she was a moment ago, just a little worse for wear.

This whole time she'd been thinking in terms of what she could and couldn't do, what she could and couldn't handle. She couldn't handle sitting out during the kid Arena. She couldn't handle watching friends die and being useless. She couldn't handle winning, because the alternative was so much worse, she could never do what Linden had been doing for most of his life at this point. Sure, she had thought of it in terms of what her friends could handle within the Arena, but not the ones outside of it. She never once considered that watching her die might actually be horrible for Linden. She didn't realize that maybe that one thing was too much for him, even after he asked her to try. She didn't even realize when she was in the Arena and trying without any luck to contact him with her telepathy, because she was worried he might not still be there when she got back.

It's only with very great restraint that she doesn't start crying. She blinks hard for several seconds, the tears there in her eyes but not falling, and her hand trembles faintly when she reaches for another napkin.

I cant watch
Im so sorry

She could make excuses. She could hide better than they could, she was bigger, she knew how to use the most easily-accessible weapon in the Arena. They took enough of her soul that it didn't matter anymore, but they didn't get to have more of Karkat and Clementine. She'd been in two Arenas before this in a way, and she could still get up in the morning. But none of that really matters right now, because knowing those things wouldn't make it easier. She became Linden's friend and essentially forced him into watching a friend he spent time with every few days fight and die in every Arena.

Once again the Mirth Core proves right about her.

Edited 2015-01-07 15:36 (UTC)

The process of regeneration in the Capitol is unknown to most citizens; either they are replacing bodies or repairing them to the point where the damage was never done in the first place. Either way... it's understandable to Linden why a dead Tribute would feel something like an identity crisis when they were restored to life.

He's disappointed that she won't try, and a little hurt, but he can't pretend that he is surprised. When she is so bent on protecting those who are younger and weaker than she is, there's nothing worse than being forced to watch without being able to do anything about it, which has been Linden's lot since he won the 63rd Games.

He sighs, shaking his head. "Don't be sorry. I know. It's OK. You have your priorities... and your values. It was wrong of me to ask you to change them. But you're right, it's... so very hard to watch."

He uncaps his alcohol, starting to pour it down his throat. It'll all be better soon.

If this were her first arena in every regard, she might think that helping from the outside was the better option. That not being able to help this time was a strange fluke. It made sense, given how long some of the previous arenas had been. Shorter Arena, fewer things to help you along the way. It couldn't be the kind of thing that lasted. And as far as going in, it was indeed her first Arena.

But she was here when the kid Arena happened. She sat in the same room all the other tributes did, and she smoked until she felt sick, and then she kept smoking, because no matter how awful she felt, every time she glanced at the screen there were still children dying, and her attempts to help didn't save anyone, not really. Nico still died. Kankri made it out, but she has no delusions to make her think that was because of her. It was all pointless, and she doubts being a citizen would be any better. She couldn't even be a mentor if she won. No one listens to a girl without a voice. How would she ever get them sponsors?

Watching him uncap the bottle this time is almost worse than needing to turn down the blatant offer to try to keep her from dying repeatedly. And maybe it's just that coming back is particularly hard if a part of you hopes you won't when you die, or that the walk up the stairs was taxing, or it's too cold, or because her conversation with the Mirth Core is still fresh in her mind. But that gesture, putting the bottle to his lips and drinking, is the thing that does it. The dam doesn't break, because it has only done that in the Arena and on her first day, but the cracks begin to leak again as tears start to fall from her eyes.

She's quiet about it. She doesn't sniffle or wipe at her eyes, for now. Instead she reaches for the last napkin since he didn't pick that one up, and writes under the last note.

please dont do it because of me

Drink. Further destroy himself. She could watch it if she needed to, if it was what he was that desperate at the time, and she'd rather someone kept an eye on him when he was spiraling, but not if it's because of her. She's seen too many awful things in the past few weeks that adding his destruction on top of it is near unbearable.

Edited (ugh repetitive sentences) 2015-01-13 12:36 (UTC)

Her reaction to what has become such a practiced and automatic response to pain for Linden catches him off guard. He lowers the bottle slowly, no sooner than the acrid burn hits his tongue.

"Nill..."

Don't take this from me. It's all I have, ALL I--!!!

He suppresses the panic and anguish, both of which are crying out for a numb reprieve. He's gotten good at quieting them, even if only temporarily.

"It's not you. I swear it. If anything, you've... given me a reason to..."

NOT intentionally OD.

"You drink too. I thought it was a coping mechanism we shared. It's difficult for you to watch?"

Clearly it is, but he wants to know more. Perhaps it will explain why Nill has taken such a doomed interest in a ruined man like him.

She can already tell that that was probably one of the worst things she could ask of him. She wouldn't expect him to do it either, not all at once, and certainly not just because she asked him to stop. Her expression morphs into something like shame, though it doesn't stop the tears at all, and she's quick shake her head.

Despite the head shake, it takes her several long seconds before she manages to pull a napkin out of the dispenser with fumbling fingers. It takes even longer to actually write something down, and she noticeably pauses in writing between lines. Especially the last two. Her wings tremble against her back as the voice of the Mirth Core bounces around in her head, pounding against the inside of her skull, destroying all in its wake. It might as well be a wrecking ball.

Im sorry
youre right
we do
all I ever do is get the people I care about killed
I dont want to be another thing that hurts you

He was scrawnier than usual the last time she'd seen him, but he seems even smaller now, the bags under his eyes darker, his skin paler. She might be imagining it, but if she's not then she doubts whether he was sober at all during the Arena so far.

It's difficult to see the clear signs of suffering in someone he has genuinely come to care about, and even more difficult to know that she's probably trying not to shed these tears. They aren't present with the intent of manipulating him; she cares to the extent that they fall unbidden, for him. Automatically, he reaches into his jacket, where his wrinkled pocket square has been stuffed out of sight. He sets it on the table, nudging it toward her, hoping that it doesn't make her self-conscious, the fact that he has blatantly acknowledged the fact that she is crying by this point.

He is patient as she writes, and he tries to be kind, though there aren't words that feel appropriate, somehow. So he remains silent until the napkin is within his sight again, at which point he shakes his head slowly back and forth.

"You take too many burdens on your shoulders," he sighs, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Even if there are people you can't save, it doesn't mean that you are killing them. There... is a distinction."

She doesn't become self-conscious, though that's in part because she tends to cry somewhat easily. She is frustrated with herself, however. He was the one that had to sit out and watch, and not do anything, not her. She'd at least kept Karkat alive. It feels like one of the only things she's managed to to do right in a very long time. She takes the offered square and dabs at her eyes, and for a few seconds at least her cheeks are dry.

Until she grabs another napkin and writes another message, anyway. She dabs at her eyes again as she passes the new note over.

all of my friends are dead
I dont want you to die
can I have some of that?

If he seems confused by the request, she'll gesture towards the bottle. She can't stop him from drinking, and would feel bad if she so much as implied it again, at least for today. And not being sober sounds so much better than whatever she is now. Her own drink has probably already been taken and disposed of by an Avox anyway.

The life of a Mentor is to reluctantly straddle two worlds, acting as a spectator while knowing all too well what it's actually like in the arena. Nill's not wrong, it is difficult, but this destruction is a slow burn. Nothing that's falling apart now hasn't been well on its way for years already.

He accepts the note in his slender-fingered, tentative grasp, reading it several times, dark eyes lingering on the second line each time. Then he slowly nudges the bottle her way.

"Go for it. As much as you need, no judgment... openly or clandestinely."

It says a lot for how much Nill honestly likes Linden that even though she's pretty miserable, on top of fresh out of an Arena, that the reassurance makes her smile a little. It's brief and fleeting, but it's still there, sincere despite the shortness of it. She sets her pencil aside, and grabs the bottle by the neck, pulling it to her side of the table.

She takes a sip straight from the bottle, probably a larger one than she should have, because almost as soon as she's set the bottle down she grimaces and coughs and shudders all the way to the tips of her wings. She hasn't drank anything straight since the Kid Arena, and since she died even that was reset, so it's been ages. She's not really made for the hard stuff. At least it doesn't last long. And hey, it's strong.

She's certainly nowhere near Linden's ability to drink it like water though, and she pushes it closer to the middle of the table for now, in case he wants it before her esophagus recovers.

Linden winces, knowing even as she starts to tip back the bottle that she's going for it too eagerly and recklessly for a palette that is undoubtedly at least a little bit more delicate than his own. When she coughs, splutters and shudders in response to the acrid taste, he automatically slides the glass of water at his elbow toward her, essentially trading it for the whiskey she is returning to him.

He doesn't drink more, though, simply turning the bottle in his hands and staring at it while he waits for Nill to recover somewhat.

"It's horrible, I know. I stopped drinking for the taste a long time ago... the downside of tolerance is that the higher it gets, the more it takes."

Nill is all too grateful for the water when he passes it over to her, and she downs a third of the glass in a few moments, setting it down with a hard clink when she's done. Her expression is something a little close to embarrassed, but even that doesn't linger for very long.

it never takes very much for me.
not even when I drank a lot.

Which is probably a little obvious. Even with that one mouthful, it probably had more alcohol in it than the entire drink she left behind at the other table, and now that the coughing has subsided it's easy to see the tips of her ears are already a little on the red side. Though Nill is about average when it comes to her height, she's also a small slip of a thing, most definitely on the underweight side of things. It doesn't take very much of anything to hit her hard. She regards the bottle in his hands quietly, and instead of asking for more she takes another sip of water.

do you know how long it's been since I died?

Nill's embarrassment is obvious, but Linden tries not to let her dwell on it for too long. She's a lightweight, and honestly looks like one, though that isn't actually particularly reliable; Linden himself is living proof of that, with a tolerance much higher than his wasted frame looks like it can contain.

"That's OK. Probably better, in the long run..."

Drinking less meant less of a chance of getting alcohol poisoning, passing out, and never waking up.

"Sorry, I... don't. I don't even know what time it is, now..."

He's been on something of a bender, and this has been true for quite awhile.

She spares the bottle a considering glance, but decides to stick with the water, at least for the moment. While her body is totally fine, that last week or so in the Arena she'd barely had anything to drink or eat. Though her throat no longer feels like sand paper there's something sort of soothing about something that doesn't burn on the way down. For now, anyway.

Nill tilts her head a little, unsuprised for the most part, and manages another small smile.

I don't either.

For different reasons, obviously, but it could almost be considered a joke. And maybe if he doesn't remember when it happened, he doesn't remember seeing it either, if he did at all. The Capitol probably didn't broadcast all of it - it was a pretty long thing up until the end, and constant, ever-worsening pain.

He laughs, a harsh, broken sound. Another consequence of the Games that changed him forever is that it's changed the way he expresses mirth, and turned him into someone who can't affect it in a way that doesn't sound just a little tortured. Sometimes, if he thinks he needs to, he can come close, but when it takes him by surprise, as Nill's maybe-joke does, he has a much harder time controlling it.

Especially since he does remember seeing it, far more than she probably knows or expects. Though it takes a lot of effort for him to be present and attentive in the world, he has a lot of focus when he does apply himself. Sometimes too much.

"That's one of my favorite things about drinking," he confesses. "If I lose track of time, maybe I'm outside of it, and its passage doesn't change me. Even if I know that's not logically true, the feeling is so good. There's no pain."

It does sound tortured, and Linden looks it even as the noise escapes him. For as odd as it sounds, Nill's fairly certain it's not an inherently bad reaction, though she's also unsure if it's a good one. But the joke did it's job though, at least in part.

She seems to consider her pen for a moment, before reaching for a new napkin. She gestures for him to pass her the bottle again, and trades him the napkin for the bottle when she's done writing.

I was in a hospital after I got the scars on my back.
it hurt when I moved but it was really nice if I was still. nothing hurt at all.
drinking is almost as nice.

The drugs they'd had her on then were pretty fantastic. She's not sure what it was, but morphine would be an easy enough guess. At the time she hadn't abused it, and was too exhausted and hurt to really consider doing so, but even at the time she remembers thinking it was about the best she'd felt all year.

If he does trade her for the bottle, her second swig goes down easier. She's more careful, and it mostly results in a grimace and a brief cough. She chases it with water, and then she's fine.

Not inherently bad, no. The lines get so blurred that it can be difficult to keep track or tell, but she has given him something better than any normal joke: she's given him, as she so often does, a sense of camaraderie, and of not being alone.

He exchanges his bottle for the napkin, glancing it over, understanding the implication that she was on harder drugs following her procedure. Just thinking about it on that level is enough to draw him in and make him want to know more, because this is the world he is the happiest to inhabit.

"Have you tried Morphling?" he asks, trying not to seem too eager to talk about what might be his favorite ever topic.

Nill smiles, and though it reaches her eyes more than the last one did, it's also just a little sad. She's more than happy to give him something that actually lets him feel connected to the world when it seems like so little else does, but she's more than a little bit conflicted that it's about shared methods of self-destruction and escapism, because she knows that's what it is for him, and that's what it is for her, too.

no. I haven't been injured here.

No means to start it, and she hasn't gone to seek it out. At the few Capitol parties that she's been to she's mostly kept to herself. The two pulls from the bottle are the most substance abuse she's done since she arrived here (unless you count cigarettes; she doesn't).

Her pen has stilled against the napkin though, and she doesn't pass it over to him yet, though he'd probably be able to read what was there if he looked. After a few long seconds she reaches for the bottle again and downs another mouthful, cringing again, and she cringes again, but there's no coughing. She writes and passes it over.

there was someone that I loved very much who did everything he could get.
he probably would have tried morphling his first day here.

The on-label use of Morphling isn't quite what he was implying, and in a way, he's glad. It's bittersweet; on one hand, it's something he can't connect with Nill over. On the other hand, isn't that a good thing? Morphling is a useful painkiller, but it absolutely destroys looks, health and lives. He likes Nill enough to not want that for her, and it overwhelms the fleeting, instant-gratification aspect of wishing she could experience the endorphin rush and the lush, heavy numbness that wraps a person's mind and body when they're under the influence. He nods to show he understands, not pressuring or congratulating her one way or the other.

He does glance at the paper towel, anxious to see what's written despite her hesitation in passing it over to him. When she drinks again and finishes writing, he is glad to accept it and read the rest of the message, and it... actually doesn't surprise him. Conversely, it explains a great deal, up to and including her incredible tolerance for existing alongside someone as self-destructive as Linden for any significant amount of time.

"That's difficult," he says, biting his lip, trying to keep his words from slurring. He's not sure what to say, whether it's his place to judge or justify the behavior of a man he doesn't know. "People like that... tend to have a lot of demons chasing them."

I know.

"What were his demons?"

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