Albert
Fennel brought hot tea. They had a feeling Amelie would need it. It was the first time the two of them got to really talk at all since Fennel arrived, which felt odd given the circumstances, but Fennel nonetheless found it necessary to be there for Amelie. Amelie seemed to have lost something dear to her, and if nothing else, Fennel should listen.

Their dorm room was dim when Fennel entered, but still bright enough for them to see Amelie clearly. She seemed distraught. Fennel could understand why. They sat down on their bed and opened the thermos of tea.

"I brought tea. Do you want a cup? It's good for the soul."
Chad
Amelie was sitting on her bed, curled like an animal would when frightened. Bones rippled themselves through her body as she pushed herself further into the corner. There was no sound coming from her other than the occasional snap and noise of ripping flesh that find themselves making too much noise in the room. Violent pops of something polluting the room. 

Her ears rang with static enough to make them bleed, she couldn't hear. Much less the quiet steps of her roommate. Her breathing stuttering violently if you could hear it, her hands clenched together at the back of her neck. It's like she's been in this position too many times. 

"......"
There was no answer, Amelie's head was filled with static and flashing images. She felt disgusting and... Gods she didn't want to be here, she should've went back to Germany sooner.
Albert
Amelie wasn't okay. At all. That much was easy to gather. She had been hurt badly. Fennel guessed she was right when she said they hadn't been doing a good job keeping her alive.

But Fennel was here now.

Fennel poured a cup of hot tea, then approached Amelie slowly. They didn't know how close they could get without Amelie snapping back, but... It was worth the risk. They made their way to Amelie in the corner, as close as they felt comfortable getting.

"Hey." Their voice was firm, but not unkind. "Amelie. I'm here." They extended the tea to Amelie, trying to get it close to her lips. "Here. Drink."

They didn't know how much it could help. But they knew it would help at least a little.
Chad
Her entire body felt awful, something spent time rolling her nerves enough to make her nauseous. Everything was on fire and she didn't really want to try and move.

She wanted to rip herself apart, anything just for another second of fighting. Trying not to convulse at the sharp misery of the things that writhe in her body. 

White dots flash in her vision as something slides under her right eye over to her left, with a snap a bone covered in sinew shows itself with a wet squelch. It's always a reminder of her sin, do not fail do not fret, *You deserve this*. She does for letting such better people slip through her fingers. 

Amelie didn't even know anybody was there due to the viscera that flashed beneath her eyelid. A bone moved under her hand like a bug under dirt, for a second it seemed calm. You could watch the skin tear and show *Red*, but could you *Feel* It? With an agonized groan the marrow snapped forward to fennel, like it sensed them.
Albert
Fennel knew something was wrong. Very seriously wrong. They felt sick. The air was bad. But Amelie was worse. No amount of suffering or bad vibes could outweigh what Amelie was very clearly going through.

Fennel flinched at every sound, but still kept steady enough. Amelie wasn't covered in tea, Fennel was still there. But Fennel couldn't reach her - she was too far gone in squirming sinew and skin. Even if Amelie could sense them, somehow, what use was that? Fennel wasn't sure Amelie still had a mouth with which to drink.

But even still, Fennel couldn't do nothing. Even as Fennel's own guts churned, and every sense warned them of danger, they couldn't turn their back on this writhing mass of pain and suffering.

If ever there was a time to set moral codes aside, it was that moment. And Fennel did.

They closed their eyes and focused, as best they could, on Amelie. Amelie was scared; her mind was a cage keeping herself in and everyone else out, but still, Fennel had to try. 

They made a plan: If Amelie's suffering was going to stop, her pain would have to become more bearable. If Fennel was going to make Amelie's pain more bearable, they only really had one option: "Convince" Amelie the pain didn't exist.

Fennel placed a hand on Amelie, and even as the world melted around them, even as Fennel's powers flooded their own mind and obliterated any sense of who they were, they persevered; they broke the steel cage and reached Amelie's mind, and as Fennel was themselves overcome, rendered unable to comprehend the world around them, 
Amelie's 

Pain


Va
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Chad
Cold. Freezing. Everything unfeeling, something bites at the tips of her fingers. She can't feel her skin, her flesh, her bones. Something grabs at her legs a pulsing ache that pulls at the strings of her nerves. She was sick, disgusted. 

She was overwhelmed by agony, but. There was a moment when all was calm, Amelie was standing within a pool of red. She stared at others indiscernible, nothing. 

She lifted her head, the bandages on her left side torn and hanging off her face. She faced fennel in that calm moment. Her eye wide and staring into some place that echos miles from them, the skin on her left hangs you can see the inside of her mouth and the blood that pours into her throat. Skin loose, easy to slip your hand under and *Pull*. 
Her mouth opened to speak, but nothing came. 

Trees surround, Amelie is against one crying cupping blood that spilled from her arm, what lay next to her was a rock and a shattered piece of bone. Bone. Bone, there's all too much. Too much to feel too much to see. She reached forward, scampering away, she falls. Her vision is red. She can barely see. 

Her hands tight against wood, her knees numb against the floor. She can't feel, she can't. 

It. Her vision. 

*It's dark.*
Albert
Fennel stands, alone, on a raised platform on black stone, peering out across a barren, rocky landscape. The sky is bright, not by virtue of any sun, but by an explosion, around which plumes of black smoke orbit in spirals. The landscape is eerie and inhuman; there is life, but it makes only for a pale imitation of life, plants of plastic and stone and animals which fail to move.

Fennel walks across the wastes, unthinking. What do they have to think about? They don't know much of anything. They only just about managed to track down their name in the recesses of what consciousness they had left. The stones don't make a sound under their feet. They don't remember if that's weird.

They keep walking. Eventually, they find something untouched - in a sense - by the desolation: a lump of flesh and bone, unrecognizable as human or animal but unmistakably, truly, alive. They sit by it for a while. It has a heartbeat, they notice, if a slow one.

They decide to bring it with them. They fashion a cart of plastic plants and broken stones. It feels as though it takes weeks, but the explosion in the sky is still there, and it has yet to turn to night. They arduously push the lump of flesh onto their cart, then drag it with them as they keep walking. It's heavy, but it's warm. The feeling of life is worth the extra load.

They wander for miles through the desolation, alone. They lose track of time. How many days has it been? How many years?

...

Fennel, having slowly dragged Amelie into the dorm hallway in a delirious haze, collapses on top of her, unconscious.