I closed my eyes to the sound of her voice. Her voice--it’d been years since I’d heard it, now that I thought about it. My throat caught at the roughness of it, but it was to be expected I guess (because Toto was--). I sighed something really heavy, my whole chest rocking with the weight in it. I didn’t want to look at her for some reason--I delayed it, procrastinated, my lids shut but my eyes darting everywhere underneath, as though they were trying to look anywhere but the image of her in my head and there was no way to escape from it. I bit the bullet; I tore my eyes open, I turned on my heel to look at her and oh god oh god oh god--

--oh god oh god no please no no no no no no no no no no no no--

--it was like there was a flash in my mind’s eye and I was watching lightning streak across my vision and shoot right for her and I could remember the laughter the laughter the laughter and the rage I had felt when I had tried to--

--tried to hurt her--

--but I was so sure that it hadn't have been her, it couldn't have been Jiji saying those things, shoving the shank further in--

--stabbing me--

--hurting me--

--and maybe I was right. Maybe it hadn’t have been her.

Maybe it was like Hotness, that guy who had set me on fire during a fight, the guy who had been put under a spell of darkness (that I had seen, that I had seen) that forced him to commit those heinous acts. Maybe it was the same thing, and Jiji had been put under a rancid influence that caused her flesh to die away and the words she spoke to be even more rotten and unforgivable.

Which didn’t matter.

Because it had still used her mouth.

It had still used her body.

(That I had scarred.)

It was a long, angry looking thing that jagged its way down the length of her left side, as healed as it was ever gonna get. My eyes bugged as I saw it; I took a step closer, completely stricken dumb, my mouth hanging open and my throat croaking things that made no sense but no no no no no no please no and a pain that was dripping from the leave and and the water and everywhere and I’m not sure how much more of these reminders of my failure I could take but here they were, the world seemingly built out of them, the underworld full from it, my poor Jiji scarred and her brother dead by--

--by someone I couldn’t forgive.

“Ji…” I croaked, and even I wondered what I meant by it.