[I saw your status message, so I was just chilling. No problem at all! I'll try to get back into Ryan's headspace, but it's been a while, so it might take a little to capture that mood again.]<br/><br/><br/>The coin flipped again. In the blink of an eye Mau went from weeping to nigh ecstatic, her composure as volatile as a raging storm. That all too familiar yet oh so distant coin of Mau's emotions flipping and twirling, sometimes coming up heads and other times coming up tails. No. Not sometimes. Even if her emotions could be random when she was with other people, when he was with her her reactions followed a reasonably predictable pattern. She was the puppet, and he the puppetmaster. He held the threads of her sanity in his fingers, and he could make her dance to his rhythm, twisting her this way and that in accordance to his whims. And unfortunately, war had stripped all of his whimsy away. It had been five years since he had left Mau, and he had inadvertently forgotten the unique control that he could exert over the girl. But now that he was presented with her again, that dark pull of dominance was tugging at his psyche one more.<br/><br/>He let Mau finish up and guide him out of the bar, casually waving goodbye at Breanna on his way out. The streets were just as dark and nostalgic as when he had arrived, except this time they were filled with the explosive presence of his unexpected partner. The quiet was replaced by Mau's eager and nonstop voice, constantly talking about all the various topics she thought he might be interested in. Her enthusiasm was palpable, overflowing out of her small body as she tried to fill him in on five years of news. For his part, Ryan maintained an air of slight interest, simultaneously listening to her stories even as part of him wondered how he had ended up in this position. Other than Mau having an apartment now, the two of them walking down the roads of Southie was like a snapshot pulled straight out of his memories. Typically, their nighttime walks only ended one way, although he chose not to dwell on that thought.<br/><br/>He supposed that her gossip was interesting enough, but it didn't really register with him. A life growing up on the streets and years of military combat had taught him to not really be shocked at anything, and in truth he didn't really care about these childhood names anymore. They were just another part of his teenage years, figments of a bygone time. The two blocks passed in a whirlwind of names and words and thoughts, and soon they found themselves standing before Mau's new place, which Ryan appraised with an idle eye. It was a nice place, actually. Bordering on bougie. And since Mau sure as hell wasn't making this kinda money off of running a bar, he supposed that she must've been doing quite well for herself amongst the crimelords of Southie. By all standards she was making a decent life for herself… so why did she still need him?<br/><br/>Ryan shook his head and followed Mau into her place, locking the door behind him. Mau's grin inexplicably caught him off guard, a stray thought popping into his head:<i>she's still just as pretty as all those years past.</i>Where did that come from? It was the memories leaking through once more. She had that exact same face, that exact same tone that she always used when she was planning some kind of mischief. The expression that he had seen thousands of times, that had always brought an amused smile to his face.<br/><br/>But no. That was then, and this was now. "I'm not gonna visit anybody else here," Ryan replied firmly. "For all they know, I died in Afghanistan. Only reason I'm visiting you right now is… for the memories." Why was it that he was even here right now? He should've just walked away. "I'm no longer part of the crew, nor am I going to meet any of them again." He walked over to the fridge and tossed it open, grabbing a beer and cracking it with a sharp pop. The whiskey from before was still in his system, but with Mau one could never have too much to drink.<br/><br/>"I'm staying over for one night, and then I'm driving out again. Our paths diverged already, and I have no intention of getting dragged back into this." He didn't want to start their night with yet another argument, but he had to make this clear. For Mau, but also for himself. He would not allow himself to lose control of himself here.