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[Sören]

“Three times,” he repeated. Dead things walking. It clenched his teeth, but it was better not to fall down the rabbit hole of that thought. The alcohol lubricated his tongue, and he did not want to say too much -- not because the man was a police officer, but because Sören did not wish anyone to bear witness to the shadow of his darker thoughts. Nimeda’s guileless voice haunted sometimes, an unwanted voyeur to his dreams. Even that was too much.

“I know the boy you mean, now.” Though not the name. A snake; or had been, presumably up until his own kind turned their savage teeth upon the knowledge of what he was. As Sören recalled, he had intended to kill the boy before consideration of the crater cradling him struck understanding and offered a reprieve instead. The man impaled to the wall had received no such quarter. For all his tallied sins, that one had never kept Sören from peaceful sleep.

He rubbed at his face, took another bitter swallow. “I suppose there’s honour in it,” he said, though he sounded more than a little dubious. He might have in fact more honestly called it foolishness. Sören had seen the same boy at the fundraiser too, at the centre of the strange attack -- and a shield to the bloodied girl after. He grumbled low in his throat as he considered it. It was not that he was adverse to risk, but it did not call to him without discernible gain. What was the point?

“Why does he do it?” The question had some heat behind it, and his jaw clenched like perhaps he would rather have not asked it. Instead he pointed somewhere in the direction of the other man’s glass, though the last drain had had a note of finality. “Do you want another?”