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He does not want to be here - that’s easily fixed. He will get up and leave. He just needs to get these damnable things out of his veins and he'll be right as rain- “Hey, whoa, stop stop stop.” Milo’s grabbing his wrists, stopping him from disconnecting himself from all the tubes. “Let go.” “I don’t think so.” “Red. Red!” “Nice try, but we’re not in a scene. Sorry, but I’m not gonna let you rip out your IVs, now quit it.” “Horrible man,” he complains. At least he’s here. Octavius is glad to not be alone. Plus, he’s cute. “You’re cute,” he says. “You’re loopy. If I let you go, are you gonna behave?” “You behave. You’re a bad, bad boy.” Milo blushes, perfect little pink clouds on his cheeks like one of those strange Japanese cartoons. “Well, maybe so, but don’t talk to me like that in front of the nurses, okay?” Nurses. Doctors. Flimsy sheets, flimsy gown, florescent lights in a stucco ceiling. Hideous. “Hospital’s where people go to die.” “Actually, the hospital’s very much a place people go to stay alive.” “I don’t feel well,” he groans, taking stock of his physical form. Nothing’s like it should be. His guts feel like they're going to spill out. “I feel very, very bad.” Milo’s grinning like something’s funny and that is making him quite cross. “Well, you’re septic,” he says, patting Octavius’s knee under the nubby blanket. “Stay put, I’ll tell them you’re up and talking.”

The sex was impersonal, quick, and about as simple as he could hope for. The only time he even felt like he had anything to do with it was when she asked him to say it again.  “Huh?” he asked, having absolutely no idea what the last thing he said might’ve been.  “That it’s only me,” Electra breathed from above him, hair stuck to her forehead in sweaty strands. “That I’m different from everyone else. That I’m special. Say it.”  Oh, that. “It’s only you,” he repeated. He’d have sung a sea shanty if it got her moving again. “You’re special.”  She threw her head back and laughed, thoroughly satisfied. He didn’t ask her to explain, not then and not later, because he didn’t particularly care.

Rules: Rewrite the line of dialogue from the person who tagged you into the voice of your OCs! (You can include a short beat of action to help establish character if you want.) Pass on the tag with a new line of dialogue.

Electra paused a moment and almost looked pained; Riley realized she was probably thinking.

Time forked - he saw all the way down the not-guilty road in a flash. He heard her voice dripping with smugness, saw himself getting dragged through a trial. Felt the weight of the coming weeks, months, years. He saw himself getting up there and being forced to lay his soul bare in front of hundreds of hungry eyes.  It felt as real as anything, and then her actual voice reached his ears.  “Not guilty,” she said.  Not his imagination. The shocked gasps and the gauche, intrusive popping of cameras; Virginia next to him, making a pained whimper, grabbing his hand. His heart stopped.  But what if she really hadn’t-?  “No, no. Wait.” Electra’s voice cut through the clamor. “Oh, geez. I’m sorry, I meant the other one.”  Virginia squeezed his hand. Riley sat stone-still as ever, her gaze fixed on Electra. The judge banged his gavel and called for silence, for Electra to take the proceedings seriously, and to restate her plea for the record while she looked around the room, feigning alarm through thinly veiled delight.  “Guilty, I swear,” she declared, her voice as loud and clear as it’d ever been. “You have to forgive me, your honor, it’s been a tiring couple days. But I totally did it, hundred percent, guilty of murder in the first degree.”  She articulated the last couple words with pride, a confident student center-stage at a spelling bee. Then she saw him, and locked her eyes on his.  He held her gaze, but it wasn't easy. It only lasted a second before she turned back around in her seat to face the judge again, but not before blowing him a little kiss - just a tiny puckering of her lips and a breath behind it to send it through the air.  The air caught fire and his throat clenched shut and what he wanted to was to run from the room and find a place where no one was watching and no could hear him and just scream. At the same time, an unfamiliar voice told him not to give her the satisfaction. It was a new voice, just born, and it hated her. His skin prickled.  “You realize,” the judge grumbled, “that by pleading guilty, you give up your right to trial by a jury of your peers?”  “Yep.”  “You also know that you forfeit your right to cross-examine your accusers?”  “Yes, I do,” she said wistfully, as if that, of all things, was what she regretted the most. He half-expected her to turn around again. If she had, he might have snapped.  She didn’t. It just went on like that, the judge asking her if she understood this and that. The press continued snapping photos behind them, shifting in their seats to get a good angle between everyone’s heads, but Electra - Electra had clearly grown bored. She cocked her head and answered the questions put to her in a monotone after that, and Simon came back down to the room, to the emptiness of it all.  So vacant: Virginia and Riley next to him, Electra up in front, the judge, the guards, the reporters, everything. A movie with a predictable ending on a flat screen, and he was the only idiot in the audience that didn’t see it coming. Who had expected more for some reason and could only sit there slack-jawed as the credits rolled.  Even when they walked her out, she didn’t look his way again. 

“The missing kid,” he grappled, facing Ken. “You said a student was missing, what’s their name?” Ken pulled a ledger off the wall - even she couldn’t keep it all inside her head. She flipped through the log of keys and ran her fingers over the braille. “Grace Gallagher.”  It should have felt like a relief - she’d been on her way to train station, so of course she wasn’t in the castle, and yet, her key was. And he’d never met the girl before today but he’d touched her hand twice now, and. And. And wild mood swings weren’t unheard of in twelve-year-old kids and it had been notable, the difference, but he simply had too much on his mind and too much to do to stop and give it any serious thought. He did now, and the first time he’d touched Grace’s hand, she’d had a gentle, diminutive feeling about her, folding herself up contentedly, no wish to be perceived.  The second time, in the flurry of falling papers, a flash of her mind: bursting at the seams, boiling over, screaming to be seen. It had been hot, loud, painful. It bled red and he had almost recognized the sting. And then he’d shaken it off, handed Ken her things, and walked away. He left her there, free to slither way way through the school, to wreak havoc, to take, hurt. Kill. “It’s Electra,” he managed, his voice hollowed out in his certainty. “She’s here.”