God, it might have been an hour she sat crouched there, staring into the dark. The room was silent as the void beyond the walls, broken only by Quinn’s breathing, and the cacophonous banging of the words [color=ffe63d][i]I love you[/i][/color] bouncing around inside her skull. Quinn had long since let go of her hand, but Besca held firm, like a corpse in rigor mortis. How long had it been since she’d heard those words? How long since she’d said them? Years, easily. She had the distinct feeling that everyone saying or hearing it was dead. But, it occurred to her that it had not been very long at all since she’d [i]felt[/i] those words. Eventually Besca stood, wobbling only partly from the ache in her knees. She left the room as quietly as possible, and left the door cracked as she stumbled into the common area, where her legs finally buckled beneath her, and she crumbled against the base of the couch. Hands to face, fingers pressed into eyes—still dry, not today—Besca sighed her lungs empty and tried to calm her mind. [i][color=ffe63d]I love you.[/color][/i] Every ounce of her wanted to warn Quinn that was a bad idea, but she knew she’d break her own legs before she let herself try. Instead she tried to reason; what did this change, really? If she was being [i]truly[/i] honest with herself, was she really going to treat Quinn any different? Did she feel any less protective of her before? The answer was yes in a roundabout sort of way. The truth was that protective feeling was always there, it had just been growing steadily stronger with each passing day. And it was a mistake. Anyone in any program anywhere in Illun would say as much: [i]don’t get involved, don’t get attached, they drop like flies.[/i] Dahlia had spoiled her on all that, though. Hovvi had been a cold reminder, but here she was again. She asked herself if there was any reasonable expectation she might ignore it, or pull away, as she ought to. The answer was a very visceral [i]no[/i]. Her foot kicked against something, and she remembered Quinn’s phone, discarded on the ground. Sluggishly, she stretched out and pulled it close, snatched it up and shut it off. But, in that last second before the screen went dark, she saw [i]familiar[/i] names. The screen flashed back on—bless Quinn’s heart, she didn’t keep the phone locked—and there it was, the article speculating on the disappearance and possible deaths of Sansean and Locke Loughvein. Suddenly, things were beginning to make a bit more sense. Her own phone buzzed in her pocket. Right, she’d left business unattended. “[color=gray]For your sakes,[/color]” she mumbled to the screen, before setting Quinn’s phone aside. “[color=gray]You’d better be fuckin’ dead.[/color]” It was the bridge buzzing her, she took her call out into the hallway. “[color=gray]Yeah, hey, sorry. I’m coming right back up, tell Toussaint…what?...what do you mean [i]settled it[/i]?...the Board? I was only gone…yeah, I know I walked out, it was an emergency. Can you just…they can’t just [i]not[/i] answer the phone…no, the matter [i]isn’t[/i] settled!...well I don’t give a shit what the Board said, get…fine…fine…no, don’t do anything…yeah…okay.[/color]” With a frankly saintly-degree of restraint, Besca managed not to torpedo her phone into the wall. She didn’t have time for a meltdown right now, she had duties to perform, and while she wasn’t sure she could handle any more crying today, something told her she wasn’t going to have to worry about that. The walk to medical felt brief, but she’d managed to cool off by the time she reached the room of their foreign ward. It was empty, of course, as it always was, except for the brief drop-ins from nurses and visits from Quinn. Besca had promised to do better, or try, and she had made considerable efforts in private, but the idea of coming here as…what? A friend? Hardly. Not an ally, either. In fact, whatever personal grievances she might have had with Ms. Tormont, one of the things keeping her well away from visiting was the fact that it would have made her feel like a spectator. Like someone visiting a zoo to see some rare, miserable animal languishing in a cage. Laying there in her bed, turned away from her would-be audience, Roaki looked exactly like that. “[color=gray]You awake?[/color]” Roaki’s head rolled over to see her, and there was definite surprise in her eyes. Their last meeting was the night they’d brought her here, and while Roaki had withered considerably, Besca was no different. “[color=ec008c]What do you want?[/color]” Besca shut the door, came over to stand beside the bed. “[color=gray]Are you, uh, doing…okay?[/color]” “[color=ec008c]…What do you want?[/color]” she repeated, somehow with even less patience. Looking down at her now didn’t feel much different than it had in the cell. She was…small. The sheets lay flat where her legs ended, her one hand held the fabric in a tight fist. There was no shortage of malice in her eyes, but it was only a look. Besca knew what it was like to be afraid, to feel threatened. Roaki afflicted her with neither. But she was not some broken child. Besca couldn’t see her like that, and she doubted the girl wished to be viewed as such. Were she anyone else, that might not have mattered, but because they were enemies, and because Besca could not treat her with the contempt that often warranted, she decided instead to give her honesty, untampered. “[color=gray]It’s about you,[/color]” she said, not kindly, but not unkindly either. Like she was speaking to a colleague. “[color=gray]Your situation. It’s over. Casoban is done waiting, they’ve given us a week to deliver you to them, and we can’t put it off anymore.[/color]” She waited. Roaki took it well, which was to say, she didn’t react at all to being told they were handing her over to die. She just stared up at Besca with that same impatient vacancy, like how dogs looked when their dinner was an hour late. Eventually she just huffed. “[color=ec008c]Why Casoban?[/color]” “[color=gray]Have to,[/color]” she said. It was a fair, if odd question, and she saw no point in hiding things from her anymore. “[color=gray]If Casoban leaves us for Eusero, Runa’s fucked. World can stonewall us out ‘til we, I dunno, close down RISC, hand over our Saviors, whatever they decide they want.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Think this’ll make’em stay?[/color]” “[color=gray]Nope. But it’ll buy us time to think of something else. Right now that’s all we got.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Mmh.[/color]” Roaki looked down at her lap, scowl curling up into a crude smirk. “[color=ec008c]Guess I’m dying in Casoban after all.[/color]” Besca nodded absently, walking around to the empty chair at the end of the bed. She sat quietly for a while, followed Roaki’s gaze out to the faux-window. “[color=gray]Quinn told me she loves me.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Gross.[/color]” “[color=gray]Like [i]family[/i] you little creature.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Yeah, [i]gross.[/i][/color]” “[color=gray]I’m worried about her. Can I be honest?[/color]” she asked, rhetorically. She'd already determined to be honest. “[color=gray]I don’t…like that she comes to see you. I’m afraid she’ll end up like you. Think like you.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Yeah, well, I didn’t tell her to do it.[/color]” “[color=gray]Do you want me to ask her to stop?[/color]” Roaki glanced at her, lips twitching. She looked back at the window. “[color=ec008c]Do what you want. Least I won’t have to hear her crying over her stupid fucking parents.[/color]” “[color=gray]She’d come anyway.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Don’t be so sure.[/color]” “[color=gray]I [i]can[/i] be so sure. I can be sure about a lot of things with her, so much so it’s almost scary. I’ve met a lot of people—a lot of pilots. I’ve never met anyone like that. She’s special.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]She’s a moron.[/color]” Besca looked over, but Roaki didn’t meet her. “[color=ec008c]The way she talks about you guys, it’s pathetic. She has no idea what you’re gonna do to her.[/color]” “[color=gray]We’re gonna love her back.[/color]” She said. Roaki shook her head, but didn’t say anything else. Eventually, Besca stood back up. “[color=gray]I’ll try and delay things to the last day, give you more time.[/color]” “[color=ec008c]Could just do it now. Drug me, airlock me, put a fuckin’ pillow over my face.[/color]” “[color=gray]Sorry, deal is that Casoban gets you alive.[/color]” She had to stop herself from making some vague, empty promise like, [i]it’ll be quick[/i] or [i]it won’t hurt[/i]. Truthfully, she doubted either was true. Instead, she just said: “[color=gray]Goodbye.[/color]” She made for the door, hand on the handle when Roaki reached out with a surprisingly small voice. “[color=ec008c]Do you…[/color]” the girl said, grunting with frustration. Besca turned to find her staring at the ground, working the sheet with her fingers. “[color=ec008c]Do you think…I’m disgusting?[/color]” “[color=gray]Disgusting?[/color]” Besca balked inside. It was an absurdly childish question, which would have been perfectly acceptable coming from any other child. For a moment, she [i]did[/i] see Roaki that way, and she felt sympathy burgeoning within her. “[color=gray]A few weeks ago, I…would have said yes,[/color]” she said, finally. “[color=gray]Now, though, I think you deserve a better person to answer that question.[/color]” Besca knew what it looked like when someone was about to cry—better recently than ever, really—and Roaki was indecipherable. Silent, stony, she just nodded and said nothing. One might have been forgiven for thinking the girl had been lobotomized. But Besca knew better, because she also knew what it looked like when someone wanted to be alone, so they could cry without feeling ashamed about it. She couldn’t feel for her the way Quinn seemed to, she tried, but she just couldn’t. Not yet. There was an instinct in her to stay, and talk, and offer her comfort the way she did to her pilots, but it was distant and buried in a lifetime of hateful fog. She was right, Roaki did deserve a better person, who could give her the compassion she was evidently too late for. All Besca could give her right now was respect. She nodded goodbye, and left Roaki alone to cry. -- The world rocked around Quinn, even with her eye closed. It shook the senses from her, left her fuzzy-headed and drifting, and where usually the arms of her dreams swooped up to snatch her, this time they were late. She hung in somniatic limbo for an indistinguishable time, a mind in a void, not quite aware but not yet truly asleep. It was soft, and gentle, and there came with it a feeling of profound safety. Her fears and anxieties drifted from her like mist until she was a single-minded missile, hurtling ever-onwards to rest. Then, as if suddenly reminded of her, she was caught and cradled down deep. Dark became darker, the last lines of her consciousness were plucked. She rocked end over end until there were no directions to know. Her eye opened, or was already open and had been for some time. The sky was above her, a dark smear of black and abyssal purples and blues. Here and there were haphazard clusters of stars, like pinpricks, twinkling with random brightness on and off, in and out. The moon was far-flung and in an uncharted phase somewhere between full and waxing, but committed to neither so it hung in the air like a great silver-white bean. The world rocked slowly beneath her. Wood beneath a soft towel, the deck of a boat swaying softly upon the waves of the lake. Hovvi’s lake. Her lake. The water was a similar sort of black as the sky, but the reflections were ridiculous. The stars were nowhere near the same, and the moon was a waning sliver, hanging upside-down like a white grin. The waves and ripples did not disturb it. On the shore the details were fuzzier. There were impressions of a forest, dark, vaguely tree-shaped things stretched off into the distance at varying heights. [i]Ablaze[/i] still sat limp upon the shore, legs in the water as if there were no shallows to speak of. Quinn’s awareness wasn’t quite sober-sharp, but she had a significantly firmer grasp on her thoughts than she had while awake. It was as if something had drained most of the alcohol from her, or perhaps, more accurately, was shouldering some of its burden. “[color=black]What…[/color]” came the familiar voice of her small companion. “[color=black]…Did you do to us?[/color]” [color=black]Quinnlash[/color] sat upon the railing, or inches above it. Her hands rubbed her face, pulled the skin low around her eyes. She blinked hard once, twice, and then hopped down from her impossible perch to stand on the deck above Quinn. She looked down at her hands, shook them, and snorted. “[color=black]Feels…fuzzy. Are you sssssss…sure we did this right?[/color]”