I’d heard him shriek like that before—so I guess that’s why I shot to my feet so fast.

I was still dizzy, though. And clumsy and weakish and weird and my bones felt thick and it felt waaaaay too comforting for Mr.Archibald to stand over me like that, protecting me from something and letting me be…a little girl for just a moment.

But—but then he…he screamed.

He did.

And there was nothing for it but to scramble to my feet (even though my side was splattered with something smelly and awful and hot and weird that burned into my skin), my eyes wide and searching for the big white ass that snared me so easily. You saw him first; I looked through your eyes and your hammering heart and all I saw was—

--was this huge white figure falling to the ground—

--and I was already running for him (“LEE!” I think I was screaming, “LEE, LEE--“) before I recognized another pale figure, this time lying in a pool of—

(--red, red, we’ve all got veins and they all beat and we all have a heart and even though it hurts and it sucks to have one that’s the point—)

(It hurts, doesn’t it?)

And he was still screaming and I was to scrambled to figure out why, so I kept running for him—because laying there like the idiot child I was, he could’ve been hurt, or killed, or maimed, or some shit and I had to get to him, I had to I had to I had to I had to I…

…I…

…oh shit.

And he was mumbling now and…and I had run close enough to hear the words that poured from his mouth (so like blood)…

My baby girl.

His baby girl.

His…

….oh shit.

And…I was already there wasn’t I? Had had hurried to him when I heard the misery clawing out of his throat—and so I gave myself a front-row seat to his pain.

A pain that hit way, way, way too close to home.

It was…he was…I couldn’t…

What the fuck could I have done?

I stood there, my sides heaving, my breath shaking as I watched him clutch the body of what was clearly his—his daughter (we could’ve been the same age, she was a woman--) and the shock of learning that this icy bastard had a family paled in comparison to the realization that he had—lost it.

What could I do but cry? They fell thickly, way too fast to stop them; huge, fat tears sliding from my eyes, out of shock and the hurt that emanated from him in grueling waves. I had seen that heart of his already (the heart I told him he had, the heart I made him acknowledge) and I had seen in frostbit in the north, shaken in a grove, tentative and soothing in a crystal cave somewhere. I was seeing it now. I was watching it shatter.

(Not break, but shatter)

My cheeks were soaked and the tears weren’t gonna stop coming and I was just standing there stupidly (uselessly, of course) with a sword strapped against my side and my whole ass filled with a spark that couldn’t revive the dead. (And his daughter was dead, his daughter was dead, his daughter, his DAUGHTER, his daughter—)

“…Lee,” I whispered, or croaked, or groaned or something, whatever, it was a whisp of his name crawling out from between my tears, “….Lee.” And I wasn’t really sure what I was trying to do, or…or what to do, what to say, what the fuck do you say to someone when their heart is laying shattered in pool of their daughter’s blood?

He had touched me before, when I had been broken from Toto’s death (and my failure to prevent it—). I stood there and wondered if I could ever have the balls to touch him, to ground him to reality like that (but why would I ever want to bring him back to a place where his daughter was—) My muzzle fell somewhat, lowered near his body, near the heat of his anguish—but that’s all that happened, because it turns out I didn’t have the balls after all and it felt sick to remind him that there was still a whole wide world of blood just waiting to be shed.

“…Lee.”I’m sorry.