Malleable Chapter 4

[Emily]

Short today, I procrastinated and ran out of writing time:

On the way back it was explained to Samantha that they were usually only cornered and attacked like they had been when they left certain districts. Some parts of the city were so openly and obstinately rebellious that soldiers and police didn't often venture into them. When they did heavy casualties always resulted on both sides and the entire city would be even more volatile than usual for weeks. As a result it was a little-known fact where, exactly, their group lived. Nothing more than the general area of their home was known by most, and that most importantly included those who would gladly waltz in and shoot them all. It went unspoken but understood that this was an equilibrium that couldn't be maintained much longer. Equally untouched was Samantha's change in demeanor. Her brash, sarcastic confidence wasn't pointed out or questioned, and neither was the sudden change back into her normal quiet self once The Voice grew tired of running through the woods. She'd never again be so thankful this was a group of people used to recognizing and keeping secrets. Like Alex and Felix's easy cover- up with the gun.

Night grew as they jogged through the forest, most of the time just barely seeing the path ahead. It was only natural the lighthearted energy they'd started out with deflated and took the conversation with it as their exhaustion grew. The woods darkened as the sun set, then brightened as the moon rose. Through it all the temperatures constantly dropped, ensuring Cormac didn't take off his jacket again. Breath turned to fog the second it left their bodies. Heavy breathing and heavy footfall became the only two sounds to reach them in this stingily muffled world they'd been transported to.

These, The Voice noted, were the inglorious moments the movies always skipped over. Served her right for living in one.

"One what?" Samantha mistakenly breathed aloud.

Unexpectedly, she received a direct response. /One that's none of your business, kid./ If not a particularly helpful one. Cormac, being a few feet ahead of her, glanced back in curiosity and suspicion at her private whisper. Oh yes, she was going to be interrogated once they got back, people who understood secrets or no.

Their loop around the city had been leading uphill for a while, so Samantha breathed an inaudible sigh of relief when it peaked at a sharp and rocky cliff. The jut overlooked the city perfectly. It would have been a tourist spot were it not so out of the way and, well, almost- wartime. Felix went straight out of the shadows and into the moon bathed resting spot. He plopped himself onto the ground with a dramatic sigh and swung his legs over the edge with more flair than strictly necessary. The others followed suit in a more subdued manner, Alex sitting down next to the blond and Liam claiming the spot next to her like someone was willing to fight him for it. Cormac took one last precautionary look into the woods before lowering himself next to Felix. Just barely she caught him mutter something about how Felix had better not think of pushing him over as a prank, and she smiled slightly as he received a playfully shoved shoulder in response.

Feeling like she was invading on a private moment, Samantha lingered in the shadows before Alex waved her over. Her spot on the rock next to Liam was unexpectedly cold, but smooth enough to be considered comfortable. From that spot she could even make out a few stars that stubbornly shone through the light pollution. A happy and contented sigh came from a couple of spots over. "It's so /pretty/ up here! I almost wish we had more chances to come," Alex said wistfully. She seemed fully taken in by the view displayed below them. Just for that moment the city serenely twinkling in the valley between two mountains seemed for all the world like it wasn't an evil cesspool. Odd.

"If it means having to repeat today's events, forgive me if I'd rather not," Cormac said in a surprisingly playful voice.

"I dunno, I don't see the problem with hiking up here once in a while when we have days off," Liam decided. It seemed like he never just made suggestions; what he said went. Alex "hm"ed her thanks towards him, wiggled a bit closer to her right, and lowered her head onto his shoulder. At her not- really- a- complaint that it was cold his arm went around her waist. Felix, Cormac and Samantha did their best not to remind anyone that they were still in the area, but a glint in Felix's eye said the two would hear no end of it later.

All of them rested in that position for a long time. Only once did anyone speak, and surprisingly it was Samantha.

"I can see my house from here." It sounded not so much like an excited kid picking out something they could claim in an alien, admired landscape so much as Ebenezer Scrooge recounting his experience with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

---

They made it back to the small house just as the sun was rising. If the dark circles around each and every open eye was any indication, all of them were exhausted. The second they piled into the house three of the five occupants made a beeline upstairs to their bedrooms without further consideration. Or any consideration at all, really. A look from Cormac was the only thing that kept Samantha from doing the same, or maybe collapsing right there. The overwhelmingly bright pastels of the living room decor struck her again, seeping away some of the sullen mood that came so naturally with sleep deprivation.

"So it can't wait until morning?" Her voice was softer than she'd expected too. It was polite, even, and she felt a little like she had when she was younger and learning to deal with the obnoxious and pretentious that came with her father's line of work.

"It is morning," Cormac pointed out both unhelpfully and impatiently.

"But you know what I- fine. You're tired as the rest of us. What is it?"

"You can take a guess." He crossed his arms.

"I'm sorry, but there are plenty of things that I'm sure you'd love to know about me. You'll have to specify." Polite, calm, and level. A little like approaching a skittish animal.

"You keep changing," he scowled. "I mean your personality. Which one is the real you?"

"Oh good, you picked an easy one. This me is the real one, of course. I... explained it to Alex already, and would rather not do it more than necessary. If it makes you feel any better I'll answer all kinds of questions when we're all well rested, and until then I promise I won't kill you all in your sleep." Maybe. It depended on the exact level of psychosis of The Voice. "You can glare all you want later, but for now... Sleep. No one's rational when they're exhausted." He said nothing Samantha turned around and went up to her room. She just barely made it to the bed, barely, before collapsing into complete unconsciousness.

Later that afternoon she woke sore and reminded of several different injuries acquired from the adventures the day before. But the energy in the back of her mind was barely there at all, and it almost looked like she'd gained a little trust from those who didn't give it easily, and things might have been almost... /good./

[Emily]

Later that afternoon she woke sore and reminded of several different injuries acquired from the adventures the day before. But the energy in the back of her mind was barely there at all, and it almost looked like she'd gained a little trust from those who didn't give it easily, and things might have been almost... /good./ Samantha, having had neither the means nor the willpower to change out of her clothes into something clean before falling asleep, rolled out of a bed she'd never even unmade. The action stirred up the dust the room was veritably coated with and made her head jerk forward in a sneeze. /That/ sudden action irritated a swollen injury she vaguely remembered sustaining the day before. But then, she hadn't even really felt it at the time, so remembering it was even harder without whatever possible brain damage it had caused. It explained her moment of weakness causing her to explain so much that shouldn't have been said to Alex.

Self-depreciating theories of injuries' side effects aside, the question had to be begged of why no one had asked about it before. Not that she was going to start demanding they tend to her every need, but no one in the group particularly seemed liable to ignore something like that if they noticed it and could do something about it. Then again, why hadn't /she/ thought about it either? Standing, Samantha glanced at the dusty mirror on the other side of the room and her first question, at least, was answered. Black hair fell in just the perfect place to conceal it, and the bleeding must have not been too bad because any liquid had been soaked up by the now-matted strand in front of it. The adrenaline rush from the escape could have been enough to distract her from it afterwards (for a several hour jaunt through the woods?), and most everything was accounted for. Upset at being forgotten, a sharp throb from her arm called forth the memory from the perspective of a passenger where a bullet grazing her arm just below the shoulder.

Silently swinging the purple door open, she padded into a dark wooden hallway lit by windows letting in the afternoon sun on either side. For the first time she turned away from the stairs and investigated the rest of the hallway. Had it been a bathroom she'd glimpsed on her way down the stairs before? Ah, there it was, with the door slightly ajar as if to invite her inside. Gently she flipped on the light and shut the door behind her. Running the skink tap would be plenty enough to clean her cuts, even if there was a tub behind her. Bathing in that felt just a little too comfortable and intrusive. In any case, it was no great ordeal to rinse out the cut where the gun had hit her head and knocked her out even if it stung a little. Her hair didn't wash out very easily, but the sink was dyed with enough red to make her think she'd at least gotten most of it out. The place where the bullet had grazed was a bit trickier, but nothing an awkward angle bending over the sink couldn't fix. Miraculously neither wound looked infected, though they were still tender and liable to reopen. Another miracle they hadn't already. She'd have to bandage them soon.

Twisting off the faucet, Samantha shook off as much water as she could because retrieving a towel without asking and possibly staining it was another thing that was entirely too intrusive to try. She swung open the door, then blinked in surprise when she saw a redhead leaning against the wall opposite the door. What was Liam doing just standing outside the bathroom door? Wait, stupid question. It was really only her fault for making any kind of a line to use it.

"Hey, I was waiting for you to get out. Came up when I heard the water running and figured you'd probably need a basic tutorial of where things are." Or maybe not. "Cormac's up too. He said something about you making a big reveal to the rest of us once we were up, not in those words, but Alex and Felix are both still out. You have some time to mentally prepare or whatever it is you need to- Hey, your arm the only thing that got hurt yesterday?" He went from casually making one- sided conversation to angry with little to no warning, something flashing in his eyes as he noticed the rolled up sleeve revealing her arm. Then his eyes flickered up to her damp hair and he put two and two together easily. The revelation did nothing to help his sudden mood swing. "I swear that they're gonna get what's coming to 'em." He started to pace a little and ran a hand through his short hair. "It should've never of happened just because you were /near/ us and if they touch Alex one more time then-"

Feeling it was time to intercede before he punched a wall or decided to go shoot the first thing in uniform he saw, Samantha said, "Hey." Soothing again, like the tone she'd used for Cormac the night before. "It's okay. Everything turned out fine. I believe that if you can charge in that place guns- a- blazing and have everyone walk out in one piece you're better at what you do than anyone else I've ever met. If nothing else is sure, there is really no question you four are incredible at taking care of each other."

Liam sagged in defeat. "You should have said something yesterday. They could get infected, and it isn't like we're not used to patching up things like that."

Samantha shrugged, then tried not to wince at how the gesture pulled on scabbing skin. "I didn't think about it yesterday. They're not that bad."

He gave her an incredulous look. "Yeah, yeah, heard all the self- sacrificing junk before. You should at least take a shower though. Cormac's picking up the stuff we dropped off rather involuntarily yesterday. Luckily we were close enough to a friend's that we didn't have to abandon any of it in a random person's house. Some of it was toiletries and clothes and stuff for you."

She blinked and made a noise that almost turned into a coherent response. Was that supposed to be taken as she was going to be sticking around, or-? The croaking was mercifully interrupted by Liam's explanation. "We hadn't decided on anything yesterday, but Alex insisted that at the very least if we were going to kick you out in a couple days it might as well be with a few basics. She seemed convinced that was the kind of thing you didn't have, anyway. I dunno how true it is, but..." He searched her face for any kind of reaction beyond the mild surprise she was letting herself show. Seeing nothing, he cleared his throat. "Anyway, it wasn't a ton of stuff. But you should probably use the shower. No offense, but we all need to, really." He laughed. "There're towels under the sink. Happy scrubbing!"

He was gone down the stairs before she could say anything at all.

Her shower didn't last long, but by the time she'd emerged with hair relatively disentangled and smarting cuts reddened from the water there was a plastic bag placed just against the bathroom door. It turned out to contain a hairbrush, t-shirt, jeans and toothbrush, all of which were cheap but definitely appreciated. Once she was dressed and relatively presentable the sounds coming from downstairs cued her in that Alex and Felix were definitely awake. It was the smells that really led her down, though. Something sweet and syrupy that could have been pancakes or waffles declared its presence by infusing the whole house with the smell, and to someone hungry as she was just then it was irresistible. Even if it was about four in the afternoon.

She was greeted with relative inattention when she arrived in the kitchen, most of it being focused on the table where Alex was placing the fruits of her labor and glaring at the guys surrounding it as if daring one of them to jump a plate before they'd all sat down. Felix glanced up at her for just a second, breaking into a wide and relieved grin. "It's about time! Can we eat /now,/ Alex? I think I might wither if I'm not nourished soon," he whined.

Ignoring him, Alex let out a million watt smile at Samantha's entrance. "Pull up a seat! Fresh made pancakes aren't going to last very long around here." Samantha complied, seating herself near the edge of the long table. Once everyone had been situated Alex picked up a fork and plate, daintily considered them, then at the last second dropped both and grabbed a top pancake from the stack with her hand and shoved it in her mouth. She made a taunt of some kind, but it came out "oosherz ee-ers" more than the intended "losers weepers." Liam cried that that wasn't fair and the fight was on. In between the chaos Samantha managed to pull out two or three pancakes for the plate in front of her. Cormac was surprisingly active in the battle, though not as vocal about fighting for the food.

The whole scene made her feel kind of fuzzy. Sadly or perhaps thankfully it didn't take long for the stack of food to be completely gone, and everyone was happily enjoying their conquests of a second before, Alex doing so only after making sure Samantha had all the food she wanted.

Even if two pancakes wasn't the most filling thing in the world she wasn't about to complain about it. Conversation was minimal, bland, and consciously avoided anything that could even possibly lead to a darker topic, a fact everyone seemed perfectly happy about. Samantha watched in relative silence at the scene around her, feeling for all the world like she might cry if things didn't stay exactly as they were at that moment forever.

The Powers That Be heard her and decided to make fun time fly. The food was completely gone soon enough, and Liam declared the warm fuzzy moment with one question. Well, like everything he said it was more of a statement. "So Samantha, Cormac said something about you explaining things when we were all together?" It wasn't even really a question at all.

To Samantha's eternal gratitude, Alex spoke up first. "She actually explained things to me yesterday. We had a lot of bonding time you know." Liam scowled at the attempt at being lighthearted. He didn't seem the type to laugh at the memory of her being anywhere near a cell. "Oh, stop that brooding already Lee. Do I have to give you the 'sulking solves nothing' speech again? Or do you want the friendship one instead?" That seemed to do the trick, and he lightened up a degree large enough to satisfy Alex almost immediately.

The tense mood broken in by Alex, Samantha continued with a guarded and blank look on her face. "I... am actually rather well acquainted with that place. I spent the last few years of my life there, as..."

"As an alchemist," Felix finished. At the surprised looks he shrugged. "What? I took a look at the gun I supposedly made in my sleep and Alex stole before I could find it. There's no question I don't have the ability to even pretend to make something like that. It's way too natural. Like a bunch of metals grew into each other naturally and created a functioning plant more than a weapon, except nature was in a big hurry. It's really elegant in a put- together- last- minute sort of way. I think I'd love you forever if you gave me the basics that went into making something like that. We could even perfect it."

"I- yes, um, thanks?" Samantha blinked. She hadn't excepted the admittedly mood lightening interruption.

"If I may chime in," Cormac offered, "I'd like to ask about how that ties in to your multiple personality disorder." Alex shot him a glare. "I apologize for having priorities."

"Waitasecond," Liam said, sounding lost. "Multiple... I just assumed that was you loosening up or something. Wait, so does that mean I'm the only one that didn't figure out at least apart of the Great Samantha Mystery ahead of time?"

Cormac smirked. "Pretty much."

[Emily]

Stuff happened and I only made it to 750 words today. Sigh.

"So... what does the multiple personalities thing have to do with the alchemy thing?" Liam wanted to know.

"I, well, I suppose you'll see in a minute," Samantha said quietly. Though it hadn't bothered her quite this much when it had just been Alex, for some reason the idea of going into her... experiences, no matter the lack of detail, put a lump in her throat. She swallowed and continued haltingly. "I was born with the natural talent for alchemic magic, which is kind of a sub-category, but that isn't really... important. Um, my family was kind of rich, I practiced it a lot, it developed into something actually useful, and then... you all know what happened a few years ago." Drawn looks covered the faces of everyone at the table. The mysterious thing that had happened a few years ago was that a sudden law was instituted out of the blue that all people with any signs of alchemic, magical, or Nergish abilities were to go to the Coalix Headquarters to be "given the proper and extensive training the exceptional men and women in their fields require." In other words anyone with any abilities remotely supernatural were rounded up inside the big, imposing building and never seen again.

"I got out of the worst of it because of my family influence, but that didn't help much in the long run. Long story short they did... something. A lot of things. To me. And now I cough up black goo and have a voice inside my head that takes over whenever she thinks there might be a gunfight."

"She, huh?" Liam asked.

/Hey, don't go making me sound like some war- obsessed psycho here! Is that what I get for covering your skinny little butt in the extremely *common* gunfights you keep getting yourself into?/ Samantha ignored the voice.

"Yes, most definitely she." There was a thoughtful silence, which was eventually broken by Alex.

"You said yesterday that you were familiar with the Compound, though. All of the people should have been in the Headquarters, not in jail. It doesn't make any sense for you to have been in there!" The Compound, for the record, was a jail most standard prisoners went to. It was too big to be within even the expansive main HQ boundaries, so it was further back in the woods. That was the only reason they'd managed to get in and out the day before.

"That would be part of the long story. Essentially I screwed over a couple of people with the free reign I'd gotten from my parents." She remembered her relative free reign in the Coalix Headquarters well. The place was one huge carefully controlled, high- security white box of everything to science labs to government offices. The people in charge thought it best to have everything in one tight, maintainable place. "They deserved it, I promise, but the end result contained less escaping than I'd hoped."

"And it probably turns out prisoners make great guinea pigs," Felix noted darkly. He was glaring at a few crumbs on his plate like that might make them combust. Samantha nodded.

It was Cormac who asked the first really skeptical question. "So how did you get out? Unlike when you got lucky yesterday they knew what to watch out for and how to keep you from molding materials."

Blood. Lots and lots of blood. None of it hers. It had been her first time killing. "That is one facet I would rather not explore." He glared at the wilting girl unrepentantly. She looked up, met his eyes, and sighed. "They keep underestimating me, it seems. They didn't know the side effects of... whatever it was they did. I still don't know what. Or remember what happened very clearly." Just red. Red from the others and black from her. Almost Halloween colors, at an earlier stage in her life.

That was enough for Cormac, who sat back and nodded. With that Alex decided the mood had gotten gloomy enough, loudly scraping back her chair and collecting the dishes with unnecessary clatter. She beamed forcefully at Samantha. "You'll have to let me look at your head and arm once I'm done cleaning up. I'm sure the boys have something they all need to go do right now anyway." It was all the prompting they needed to clear out, not wanting to push the redhead when she seemed to be getting protective. "Now if you'll grab the bandages, I can probably fix you right up without making it look like you got shredded up worse than you did..."

[Emily]

While Alex patched her up Samantha listened to the noises coming from the upstairs. Only Felix had gone up that way, the other two choosing to vacate the premises entirely. Alex only seemed amused by what sounded like small explosions, occasional cursing, and tools being used to construct... something. Or repair something, more likely. They had just waltzed out of a battle zone the day before, and it wasn't likely all equipment and weapons had survived the onslaught. The makeshift medic hummed something help soothe the somewhat tense silence as she worked with precise movements. It was likely she did that kind of thing a lot.

Unsurprisingly she eventually started her own private interrogation session. "So... you really don't remember how you got out?" Whether it was suspicion, curiosity, or simply information to use for future reference that drove the question was up in the air.

"I remember a lot of gunfire. And not much else," Samantha replied.

"I see," Alex spoke in a way that said she didn't. "So if they were shooting at you, and you're not dead, that means what exactly?"

"Whatever it means that your friends can take a casual stroll into a heavily guarded area, be outnumbered, be shot at by the best marksmen in the city, and still make it out in one piece." A bit of bitterness crept into her voice that had no source in her own emotions. The Voice was starting to influence what she was saying again.

Rightfully, Alex seemed taken aback by the sudden abrasiveness but lightened her tone to reply. She seemed to actively fight conflict, which was odd considering her skills in a fight. "I guess we're all just blessed with the dumb luck of the ages. I swear, sometimes I wonder how it is we're all in one piece. I guess that means you're just under whatever weird protection we are, right?" She dabbed a salve onto the cut below Samantha's shoulder and the girl winced, though it had nothing to do with the medical attention.

/HAH! She's so freaking self-aware, I love it! Never thought the little airhead would one day grow up to make a pertinent observation. And you, yeah, the only one that can hear me scream in here, do you realize how easily you could turn this whole thing around and milk her for information on pretty much anything you wanted? She's already rambling like the brain dead valley girl she is and has some *very* misplaced sympathy for you. Use it! Didn't your momma ever teach you to twists people around?/ Almost playfully she lunged for control like a backseat driver that had lost patience and was diving for the wheel. It was only natural the vehicle swerved a little.

"I'm sorry! Did that sting? It really shouldn't, but that could mean something bad about the cut...." She was ignored.

"/Don't you dare,/" Samantha seethed into space. Looking up to connect with the real world for a brief second she was surprised to see Alex seeming worried. The ensuing "not you" was cut off by another lung for the controls. In a very rare occurrence, the black haired girl cussed out (what seemed to be) another human being with all she had.

---

Holy crap, the kid had a backbone. Who knew. First she starts resisting me taking over for a joy ride, which is a novelty to both of us in itself, and then she starts using the most colorful language I've heard since I screwed with those kids from Leonine a while back. The first hallway was blocked with a huge invisible forcefield that shocked the crap out of me if I so much poked a finger at it, the second I'm pretty sure had spikes at the bottom of a huge pit a few feet into the darkness, and her own rooms were suddenly lined with a huge padlock.

Well, maybe I should back up a little. See, the mind of a human being is usually just, well, their mind. A room or rooms of varying sizes full of all kinds of symbolic junk that makes up or represents who they are. It's directly connected to the body; its control and all of that stuff is pretty much linked with direct metaphorical tubes. The stuff can be messed with on occasion to change them externally, or even put them under puppet- like control, but it's both only temporary and takes an extremely specific skill set. A skill set I'm fairly sure no one alive actually possesses. But it's *feasible,* so moving on. In my particular case there's two rooms because there's two people in one brain, so to differentiate and keep us from blending into one person there's a hallway in between them. All of those direct tubes are no longer direct. In fact, at the far end of the dimly lit hallway there's two pathways instead of direct tubes. If I go down one I can stake out and feel everything the kid does, hear everything she thinks, and so on. I can also add the occasional comment, which I only do when I'm unbearable bored. Otherwise I just get a bizarrely specific idea of what's happening in the outside world. The other hallway leads to direct control over the kid's body, but I don't want her looking for a way to pull me out or making a hugely calamitous deal about my existence just yet, so I've done my best not to make her PO'ed. The other end of the hallway leads into dark ambiguity. I've tried following it a couple times and pretty much just ended back where I started. Which makes sense, because keep in mind this is all purely the physical manifestation of something I'm sure would be beyond my mortal understanding.

So about that "trying to make her not hate me" thing. Yeah, it sounds good, but not when I'm rotting from the inside out from boredom. Seriously, I've only been camping out in her brain for a couple of days and in that time there have been more gun fights and kidnapping than I've seen since the last time I left my house. And yet I'm irredeemably, incurably bored. Sure I spend a lot of time down the first hallway with thoughts to listen in to and roll my eyes over, but they're so freaking dry. Being in the mind of someone who was raised to be extremely fact-based and literal and emotionally unstable as a rock is seriously not fun. Sure she's been loosening up a little bit, but it was out of pure desperation that I started messing with her a little. Besides, I've been watching these people interact around me all this time, I should at least get the chance to talk to them.

Which may not happen if the kid keeps being so freaking stubborn. Well, at least it's interesting. The most interesting thing she's ever done, really. Everything else that happened was because of me, really. Poor kid. I may have had other motivations though. The conversation was being all heavy and dramatic, which is fine as long as I'm not directly involved, but it was also prodding into what the landlord remembered. I did my best to make sure she was suppressed enough then to not remember it well, but there's one fact that might have come out had the line of thought continued. I sort of didn't pop up until right before she made her grand escape, and that's a connection that could very well lead to plenty of other revelations. Stupid free will simulation.

So anyway, I'm basically waving around a huge sign that reads "Hey look distraction!" that's working like a charm when Alex decides that enough weirdness is enough, abandons the task of wrapping up the kids arms, and starts *shaking the kid by the shoulders* from behind. Very gently, albeit, but it's still obnoxious. There's a very entertaining personal war going on here lady, you can just move along. At least this distracted the kid, which piled on top of the fatigue creeping up on her to keep me locked out. She didn't even know the latter would start up at all, and it was just enough for me to slip past the force field with minimal manifestation- of- metaohorical crisping involved. If that made any sense at all I think I deserve a gold star, because explaining this purely inside the mind stuff is a lot harder than it sounds.

The first thing I did when I could finally move and touch and feel was grin. Partially because I was just a little bit sadistically happy to have won the war of wills, but also to signal to the redhead that she was no longer continuing the conversation with the same person. She seemed to get the message clearly enough, pausing for a tense moment before resuming her wrapping of my arm as if nothing had happened.

"So you do come out when there's nothing to shoot at."

"I dunno honey, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to take all kinds of verbal potshots at you right now."

"Why are you out at all?"

"Aw, c'mon. You've gotta understand that just sitting around and waiting in someone else's brain is the most boring thing I've ever done. You gotta allow a little bit of freedom here!"

The front door swung open with impeccable timing, letting in Liam and Cormac. The former noticed how tense poor Alex was first thing, the slightly obsessive sweetheart.

"Alex, what's going on?" He glanced at me, and I think I should mention I haven't stopped smirking like an idiot with the sheer joy of being able to interact with people that don't ignore me in uncomfortable fear like the kid had the tendency to do. Cormac's face darkened and he crossed his arms, closing the door behind him and stepping in front of it like I was about to shoot someone and bolt. Which was silly, because despite all appearances I really did have my reasons for sticking around.

I spoke up. "What, I can't poke out my head for a little bit of fresh air now and again without getting all this hostile energy? You're find with the landlord hanging around, what's wrong with me? I haven't even talked to you all enough yet to have said anything *too* soul- crushing. I think. You never know with me, maybe I mumble in my sleep."

None of them were amused. Prudes.