The darkness is comfort, soothing in its undemanding quiet, its loss of place and time and feeling, but something strained and anxious pushes through the fog, calling him back. ‘Albrecht!’ He turns his mind away from the voice, loath to abandon this moment of peace. Just let me be, his consciousness rumbles, but the voice insists, pouring an unexpected fear and concern into the final syllable. ‘AL!’ His ears twitch, brow furrowing. Who…? He silently wonders, but there’s no response from the void and his features fall slack again as he lets himself be pulled back into the dark.

The touch of cotton to his wounded shoulder doesn’t even register, so light are the lips that place it there. It’s not until a second sensation comes barging into his consciousness that he’s spurred back to awareness, this one cold and suddenly wet where it meets the heat of his swollen rib cage. He jerks awake, head rising and tilting his body onto his sternum with a breathy grunt. “What the fuck are you-“ He starts, the words out of his mouth before his eyes can even take in his surroundings and cutting off abruptly when they do. He blinks up at the Weaver and unknown cream colored mare, confused, then turns to look at himself, the wad of blood soaked cotton still clinging to his shoulder and half melted snow now dripping down his ribs.

“You’re not healers.” He states more than asks, already knowing Johnny is not and judging the cream by her lack of herbs and flowers and other pungent things, the usual accoutrements of the medically inclined. “I guess I’m not worth a real one.”

He means it self-depreciatingly, but he can hear the insult in his words and knows the comment will be understood that way. It’s how he usually means things after all. It's how he’s trained everyone to hear him, but looking up at the Weavers familiar face and recognizing by the distress there that it was his voice that called so anxiously from the darkness, his cotton flimsily staunching the blood of his wounds, his scarf still wrapped around the black's thin, maneless neck, the elders armor of hate and resentment quivers, ashamed of itself for the first time since being erected all those months ago in the wind and the snow.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, staring down at his dirty, folded knees. He hadn't thought he'd ever say those two words in conjunction again, but who else in all of Helovia ever gave him something for nothing, ever gave him a second chance, ever showed concern instead of disgust or morbid humor? None but the Weaver. He begrudgingly acknowledges that the cream colored mare is here to help him as well, but she's a stranger in his eyes, still susceptible to his hostile temperament and ultimately untrusted, though the ice on his side is having a desirable effect on the painful swelling, just barely suppressing his conditioned hatred of the substance.

Embarrassed, confused, lost in a way that he's never truly been lost before, he avoids meeting the others eyes. He'd thought deserving the hatred and cruelty pointed at him would make it feel right, make the world right. He'd thought, when everyone around him responded as expected, that he'd found a new rule to live by, a new identity, a new way to make sense of the world. If he was wrongfully hated for being good, then he'd be crass and unfeeling and rightfully hated instead, but little Johnny-two-shoes doesn't hate him. The Candy-corn doesn't cringe and pin his ears and snap his teeth at the elders barbed words or rude behavior and his refusal to do so breathes life back into the painful truth: that he doesn't want to be hated, deserved or not.

Maybe it's just that he's feeling sorry for himself, maybe it's that he's so recently been knocked down to nothing for a second time in his life, a fall made more painful by the haunting memories of his former heights, or maybe it's just a matter of the effect of blood loss on the brain, but he's not sure who he is anymore, who he should be, who he wants to be. He only knows who he's not and that he's not any of the things he's been trying to be lately. “Guess I'm not much of a spy."



OOC // This went everywhere, I don't even know. @Johnny @Zyanya