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Roan shuffled mutely past the old woman muttering cryptic nonsense on the porch and into the cottage close on the commander’s heels, eyes cast blindly at the floorboards as images of his burned and beaten comrades and a million other horrors monopolized his mind. Still shackled by the ward his captors cast on him to bind his magic, he may as well have been deaf, too; the only thing he really noticed when he entered, aside from the notable lack of blood and other fluids on the walls, was the sharp pang of hunger that hit him when the smell of fresh bread hit his nose. 

It was the second time in as many minutes that Roan wanted to cry. He couldn’t honestly remember the last time he’d eaten something that wasn’t half-rotted or otherwise unspeakably foul, and the prospect of real food, like all of the night so far, was too good to be true. But while he was in here drooling over bread, poor Marie was abandoned in the holding facility, and Dylan was outside, dying on the grass. 

It was too much. It was all too much, too fast. As quickly as his hunger came, it was gone again, morphing back into a familiar ache of nausea, his stomach twisting itself up into well-practiced knots. Roan couldn’t even bear to look at the pot on the stove; instead, hurried into the next room at the commander’s order, eager to distance himself once more from the others. 

The cottage living room was as quaint and homey as the rest of the place, but Roan wasn’t overly observant of the decor. Instead, he focused on the lone occupant, a woman with short graying black hair and similar features to the man in the kitchen, who paced about the floor with a metal rod in her hands. 

[color=396BD4]“Hey,”[/color] Roan croaked, skipping the pleasantries to seat himself on a couch. He gasped quietly as he sat down, both pained and grateful as he sunk into the first soft thing he’d touched in months.

But the pleasure was short-lived. He didn’t look at Diana. If he did, he knew he’d lose what little courage he had left. They both knew what was coming next, and that it wouldn’t be pleasant. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his unburned temple, gesturing to himself with his free hand. [color=396BD4]“Just fuck me up.”[/color]

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