Looking toward Aideen now, with nothing else to do but hide, a tide of emotions flooded through Lucas. His experiences since the world went crazy had hardened him such that he rarely let his feelings show, but here in the dark his guard was down and Aideen would be able to see the signs of them on his face if she could peer through the dark easily. It would be quite a show. Guilt, then fear, then anger, and finally he would just be calm. 'The terrible, tired calm,' as one of his commanders used to say. That was what humans were like now, if they wanted to live anyway.<br/><br/>He *had* given her that scar, a lasting impression of which he'd just made out before she sealed them in this darkness. The memory of it was still freshly horrific in his mind. They'd been skirmishing for an important objective that whole week. He'd seen Aideen earlier that week, and she'd seen him too, but neither was willing to back down from the conflict. But when he'd made it into the objective, when the fight was close-quarters and frantic, both sides losing so many in only moments - he'd whipped the blade toward one of the demons, trying (and failing) to cut into the throat. He couldn't see anything about her in that dark place, much like the place they were in now, and the only reason he had learned that it was Aideen was the sound of her voice when she cried out in pain. Stunned, he'd dropped his weapon and a powerful kick from another demon had taken him out of the confrontation as fast as it began.<br/><br/>Lucas believed to this day that she knew it was him. To think she didn't would actually have made him feel guiltier. Of course, in the dark beside her, he imagined the sound of a blade, slowly pulled as if from bone. He could picture it, the dull, horrific glow of her eyes as she crawled toward him, almost in his lap, with the blade held in one hand. 'Luuucaaas,' she would whisper, in something like her voice but much less human. 'You dropped thiiis.' And she would carve his flesh away.<span style="font-style: italic">What would I be underneath?</span>he found himself thinking...<br/><br/>That nightmare might not have been about to happen, but in truth - Lucas wasn't sure it wouldn't, either. He didn't really see Aideen as the type, they had been friends before after all... But she was a demon! A monster! She was of the breed that had made fear and suffering the new world order! The countless, countless cruelties and horrors visited upon the people he loved because of the demons... That was who she was, he told himself that for perhaps the hundredth time since the truth had been revealed.<br/><br/>Of course she was more than that. Much more. He had too many memories of her before the conquest to just pretend that she was his enemy alone. The mornings he convinced or tried to convince her to skip school with him (ironically it was Lucas who had been the 'bad influence' of the two of them), stupid movies on some forgotten channel late at night, the three separate times over the years he tried to ask her out and lost his nerve... Those wouldn't just let her be a faceless, impersonal villain in his mind. Not that he exactly held out hope for repairing the friendship - somewhere between Aideen betraying his entire species and him slashing her face open the odds had gotten pretty long.<br/><br/>"Yeah. Just found it." When Lucas finally answered her, his voice sounded faraway, the rollercoaster of his mind making it hard to focus. "I, uh... I told them not to shoot when I recognized you. Not that it changed anything, that Kott guy's a beast." That might have been true, but it sounded forced. It was forced. This situation really sucked.