the world comes crashing down [[Kaine]]

[adifferentlife]

Arriving back in Darrow had been a relief but jarring as well. Sybil had cuts on her arms, bruises around them, all hidden by the sleeves that she's pulled down to her wrists. She can't help but look over her shoulder, peer around every corner in suspicion.

She's promised Elizabeth she'll go to the hospital to have her injuries looked at, but the hospital is the last place she wants to go. They'll know her there and if they see her wounds they'll want to know how she came by them. That isn't something she's willing to share with the people she works with.

Sybil is at the only place she can imagine going. Standing outside Kaine's door, she knocks quickly, the taps urgent. "Kaine are you there?"

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[adifferentlife]

It's a surprise to hear that, but she doesn't start. Sybil exalts all of her control as she doesn't say a word, as she holds still for Kaine to bandage her arms. Once they're done she pulls them back into herself. "I think I should go home."

[badtotheclone]

I clench my jaw in frustration. I don't know if she wants to go home because it's really what she would prefer or if she feels awkward being here knowing that Cass and I live together.

"If you think so," I say with a nod. "I'd rather you stay here but it's your choice, obviously. Can I walk you home? Please?"

[adifferentlife]

Both, likely, not that she would admit it to Kaine or even to herself. Sybil nods, helping him to tape the gauze down over her wounds in order to avoid meeting his eyes. "I would appreciate that."

[badtotheclone]

"Good, because I'd just follow you anyways," I tell her. I know she wouldn't appreciate it if I followed her if she had said no, but I figure at least telling her made it not quite as creepy. I may be a jerk, but I'm trying to be honest about it.

[adifferentlife]

"I know, and that makes me glad in ways you might not believe." She reaches out to squeeze his hand, her wounds covered and hidden. "Thank you. For that and for helping tonight."

[badtotheclone]

I smile and give her hand a squeeze back. I'm glad that she's comfortable enough to come see me when she needs help.

"Let me get you something with long sleeves, okay? To cover those up."

I duck into my room and grab one of my flannel shirts out of the closet before heading back to her.

"It's clean, I promise."

[adifferentlife]

"Thank you," she says softly, shrugging it on as she stands. Immediately she feels more covered, her shoulders no longer bare. "We should likely go. It's been a long few days."

[badtotheclone]

"Right," I say with a nod, opening the door for her. I'm not sure if I'm hurt that she doesn't want to say or proud of her for not being too afraid to stay by herself. Not that anyone would blame her for wanting to say, least of all me.

"Get you home so you can rest."

[adifferentlife]

"Yes, please." She buttons the shirt before heading into the hall, wishing in part that she didn't feel so strange about staying. It would be safer, she knows, but she also knows that she will have to face the dark alone at some point and that putting it off will only make it worse.

"Are you well?" So wrapped up in her own worries, she hasn't asked after him, an oversight she realises. Besides which, talking about his life is better than dwelling on her own.

[badtotheclone]

"Yeah. Was in Atlantis for a few days," I say with a shrug. As unexpected as that was, it wasn't too weird. At least not compared to some things in my life it wasn't. No one else that was there seemed all that bothered by it either and I don't know if that was weird or comforting.

"It was... interesting."

[adifferentlife]

"As in the lost city of?" That somehow seems stranger than the world that she was in. Atlantis is a place that she knows through stories and the like, her world had been utterly unfamiliar. "Were you underwater?"

[badtotheclone]

"No, this was before it sank," I explain. I'm not a huge Atlantian historian or whatever but the city was definitely above water. It wasn't all that different from most early Greek cities from what I've been told of what we saw there.

"It was like being in ancient Greece."

[adifferentlife]

"Did it smell?" She doesn't mean to poke fun, but being in Ancient Greece has always seemed a rather stinking place to her. "I imagine that it would, rather."

[badtotheclone]

"Mostly like the ocean?" I say. I hadn't really thought about the smell there, mostly just trying to fit in so that the locals didn't think we were witches or spies or whatever. I did not want to have to fight all of Atlantis.

[adifferentlife]

"No, silly. Like waste," she says with her first smile of the night, giving him what she thinks is a significant look. "No sewers, of course."

[badtotheclone]

"Ummm, no more than most farms," I say, although I haven't exactly been on a lot of farms, personally. "Either that or I just got used to it pretty quick. I noticed the quiet more than anything."

[adifferentlife]

"I think you have a very strange idea of farms," she adds, thinking of the ones that surrounded Downton. "Unless it was spring, in which case you are likely correct."

"Quiet? Was it abandoned?"

[badtotheclone]

"No. But there were no cars or trains or anything like that," I say. It's the sort of quiet you don't get normally, not in the city. Maybe she gets that kind of quiet where she's from but I'm not used to it. It was both nice and unnerving at the same time.

[adifferentlife]

Sybil does laugh then, a sound that surprises her. She'd forgotten this over the past five days. Forgotten what it was to be happy and easy. "You'd hate my home. We had a car, but it was a rare enough thing still."

[badtotheclone]

"I didn't hate the quiet, just took some getting used to. I think I'd like your home," I say, although I know I'd only like it because she's there. From what she's described and what I've learned about her time I'd probably chafe under how proper everything was supposed to be.

[adifferentlife]

"Maybe someday you'll get to see something like it," she says softly. It's a thing that she's thought a few times now, wondering if they will ever have a chance to go back, or even see their homes. "Is it strange... How much home this place has become?"

[badtotheclone]

"I think I'd like that," I say with a nod, although I know I mean that only if it meant seeing it with her. I know it would mean the world to Sybil if she got to go back home again.

"No, not strange. Doesn't replace your original home. Just a different home."

[adifferentlife]

"I didn't think that would happen. Not until I married, at least." Then it would be expected. Sybil would make her home in some house in London or somewhere in the country. She'd have her own staff and house to oversee, and eventually children. "But that wasn't to happen at least until after the war."

[badtotheclone]

"You were engaged?" I ask, somewhat surprised. It shouldn't surprise me because clearly she's a desirable person to be married to but I don't think I've heard her mention that she was engaged.

[adifferentlife]

"Oh. No, I wasn't. But I would be, eventually." If any of the boys she once danced with eventually came back from the war, that was. She worried and fretted about it sometimes, not because of the lack of prospects, but because she lost so many that she had known her entire life it seemed. "It was what was done."