<ul>Zilah tried not to smile too much when the struggle in Quen's voice became apparent. He was looking for excuses and in the same breath tearing them down. In her head, she could imagine the kind of conversation he might be having right now, wondering whether to trust her, wondering whether he would be making the biggest mistake of his life by agreeing to this. <br/><br/>He was -- maybe. <br/><br/>However, the woman <span style="font-style: italic">was</span> lonely, and his company wasn't awful. If she could just show him the person that she was, where she had come from, and prove to him that nothing in the universe was as black and white as he perceived it, then perhaps he would give up on this self-righteous quest of his. <br/><br/>They could be lovers, she mused, maybe even friends. <br/><br/>First, however, she had somewhere she needed to be.<br/><br/>And like always when one went with their gut, Zilah had not considered all the variables in the equation. When Quen's face appeared above hers, she realized she had run out of time. Listening as he listed his terms, she nodded with a grin. "No one ever has to know," Zilah repeated.<br/><br/>If she had been causing him mental torment, he paid it in kind now. Her knuckles turned white as they gripped the edge of the examination table from the pulling sensation of the peeled glue. Then came the whiskey. "You are...such an asshole," her entire body shuddered from the pain, as she rolled her head to the side, and blinked the salt away from her eyes. When the needle finally began to pierce her skin, Zilah could no longer feel it, her body feeling merciful enough to flood her with endorphins. <br/><br/>Remaining silent, brown eyes watched his blood-soaked fingers weave in and out, until it was finally over.  Her throat was dry. For a moment, she humoured the prospect of thanking him, but found herself incapable of forming the words. Instead she slowly helped herself up into a sitting position and glanced up at him with red eyes, "I can't do this anymore. I just...I need to sleep."  <br/><br/>Amusingly, she realized she would be going back to the containment bay.<br/><br/>Almost drunkenly, Zilah stood on her feet then, pressing a hand against Quen's shoulder for support as she wondered why her vision had split into two. "Tomorrow, we'll figure everything else out, alright? I'll even give you the first artefact to prove just how serious I am about all this, but until then..." Trailing off, she leaned into him, her words growing ever more slurred from the whiskey, the exhaustion, the blood loss, his lips... "Until then, do me a favour and help me to my bed." </ul>