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[viking_seer]

"Anderson here. Leave a message and I'll get back to you. Thanks."

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[viking_seer]

She tilts her head at him, curious.

"There's a reason you made the choices you did, flipped the 'switch' you have. The choice not to do that- did you ever worry about him?"

[hostileterritory]

"Oh." He considers that. "I guess I did, yeah. Or... not so much worry about that, specifically, as worry in general about what it all did to him."

He frowns, struck by a sudden bit of memory. "No, I didn't want him to do it. I didn't want him to give it up. I worried that he would."

[viking_seer]

"You worried that you'd give up who he was to flip that switch?"

She's not trying to lead him anywhere but she's not surprised it's heading there.

[hostileterritory]

David shifts restlessly. He does not especially like where this is headed. He does not especially like the dominoes that have been tipped.

"I didn't want him to do it," he says again, and stops. Can't come to unpleasant conclusions if he deliberately avoids the logic of them!!!

[viking_seer]

She nods.

"And did he have any feelings about it when you did it? That you know of, obviously?"

She isn't pushing. Isn't even nudging. She's just asking questions.

[hostileterritory]

"He didn't know. Doesn't know. I did it when he died."

Right before Caleb died, so he could stand the mercy kill he knew had to happen. Kills, plural, but it was the first one that he needed help through.

[viking_seer]

She doesn't nod this time. Instead, she looks for his eyes, looks to them, to see what's there.

"So you could die with him?"

[hostileterritory]

The uncomfortable simmering in his chest makes him clear his throat. "Did the file not cover those specifics?"

[viking_seer]

"It covered events," she says clearly, "not your feelings. Not your intent. I didn't mean in the physical sense."

[hostileterritory]

He doesn't know what it is about Saga's eyes that manages to be both comforting and unsettling at once. They're the kind of beautiful that comes from watching strafing fire on the horizon.

He studies his fingertips, mentally contrasting the feel of Caleb's hair with the pressure of his hands on Caleb's throat. "So I could kill him."

[viking_seer]

"And the reason you haven't turned it back on, since then?"

Quiet. Careful.

[hostileterritory]

A long pause. "No reason to."

[viking_seer]

"And why do you think that?"

[hostileterritory]

He folds his hands over each other, squeezes them briefly, goes back to small restless motion.

"No one around to know I'd ever been different."

[viking_seer]

"What about for you?" she says quietly, "what about for you... getting to feel it when Hanna does something nice for you? Or enjoy a meal down to your toes. Feel rested or exhausted. All those things that you look forward to o-or you dread or you get to enjoy. All those things. You deserve to feel things, Henry. For you."

[hostileterritory]

He looks at her sidelong. His posture doesn't change, but there's something in his face that reads clear as day, no Seer Powers needed:

Do I?

No malice in the thought, no particular shame. A weighing of the facts. Consideration for the things he's done.

He shrugs a shoulder.

[viking_seer]

And she looks back at him, one eyebrow just a little raised as if to say 'I said what I said and you know I know what you've done.'

"Something to think about, maybe?"