#bergen_county

"She's upstairs last I saw"

He thanks Jaymes, and is soon heading up the stairs. At least I can trust Jaymes not to try to fix those frayed hems. That's history via fabric!

Sam's door is closed. The sluagh's sensitive nose can pick up clues - Odin's in there, and Dagmar smells of sweat and stable and a trace of blood.

He hesitates, then raps lightly.

"Sy?"

"Yeah." He opens the door and steps in, closing it behind him with a soft click.

The lights are out, but that should make little difference to the sluagh. Dag is sitting on her bed, backed up against the headboard with her knees pulled up to her chest. There's a scratch across her cheek.

He moves over, and lightly reaches a finger to trace the scratch - perhaps not even making contact with her skin. "What's this?"

She turns her face away and shrugs. "I'm not supposed to. Chief doesn't like it."

"Hm." He perches on the far side of the bed, drawing his own knees up - not that he takes up much space. "Whatever it is, we'll fix it. Tell me what's going on."

"I fucked everything up."

Symon doesn't have the welcoming ease that makes you want to spill your guts like Connor does, but... well, it's Symon, right?

"Everything?"

"Yeah?"

"You're still alive, you haven't razed the town - or the county- to the ground. That's not everything, at least. I mean, you're still here, I'm still here."

"I shouldn't have bothered you. I just..."

"Have you ever complained when I've asked you for help?"

"...that might as well be a rhetorical question."

"I... need to get over myself."

She swallows. "Sylvi... the letters.. and stuff?"

He nods, letting her continue at her own pace.

She points at her desk with a jerk of her chin - there's a pile of now-opened letters there.

He reaches over, picking up the top letter, and a pause to make sure that this is ok.

She nods.

He reads. Expressionless, flipping from one page to the next.

The second letter, the script, the third.

Dagmar buries her face in her arms.

"This is not your fault." He says, mildly, as he sets the stack aside.

"I let that happen. I failed a Dreamer. It is my fault."

"And I'm sitting here... feeling sorry for myself!" Her voice cracks with anger and loathing.

"If.. let's say, Jimmy... failed chemistry, would that be my fault?" He asks, reasonably.

She rearranges, clamping her hands under her arms again.

"No. Why would that be your fault?"

"But I could have helped him. I knew he was having trouble. I had the time to tutor him. We're friends. But I didn't. And he failed."

"He's not your responsibility. May was my Dreamer."

"Irrelevant. You didn't know. If you knew she was in trouble, if you saw her hanging off the edge of a cliff, would you have walked away?"

"I... no, see, she called for me and I refused to listen."

"You didn't go hiking that day, even though she invited you. Does that make her falling off the cliff your fault?"

"I would have known if I'd listened."

"Yes?"

"No."

"I'm a coward. And that... all of this is because I'm a coward."

"You feel shitty about what happened. That's because you care about her. If you didn't, you wouldn't give a fuck. But feeling shitty only makes you feel worse, and that doesn't help anything get better. Unless you like feeling like a coward and wallowing in your own loathing."

"Do you like feeling like this?"

"No."

"What is done is done. The only one who who wants to make you feel bad about it is you. Punishing you isn't helping." Reasonably. "Trust me, if it was, I would know. I know all about wrecking punishment on the deserving."

"So instead, let's look at how to fix this."

"I don't know how."

He considers. "I think you need to start by talking to May. You have to explain to her that you ignored her letters. And why."

"And yes, that's going to suck, isn't it? Consider THAT the punishment you deserve... not this." A vague gesture at her miserable, wallowing nest in the rumbled bed cushions.

A deep breath. "Chief's right, I'm responsible to. I have to. I know better than to.. to expect to still be friends, after. May's a Dreamer, and that's what I should have remembered. We have to get her off the pills she wrote about, and.. and find her a Muse that won't hurt her."

"I'm sorry."