He scrambled away after hurling one of her defenders into a wall. She inwardly chuckled to see her efforts coming to such success. He had been so well trained, so powerful... and she had broken him. She played her part well as people gathered around her, protecting her, soothing her. She finally managed to break away and head off down the street. She could feel the direction he had gone, and followed.<br/><br/>As she walked, she allowed herself to begin absorbing his emotions again. She had only been walking for a few moments when she suddenly came to a stop in the middle of the walkway. In a daze, she felt a sudden wave of dizziness. She only just managed to stumble into an alley way between two buildings, when suddenly, she was not herself. Her consciousness was pulled into him through the fragment still lodged in his mind. Her entire being was absorbed into him, leaving none of her awareness remaining in her body. All of her own memories were suffocated, snuffed from existence. For those brief moments, she felt what he felt, knew what he knew, and thought what he thought.<br/><br/>Pain. So much pain. Loneliness like she'd never known. Compassion, love and devotion... They were all things she had no understanding of... and it frightened her. When she finally managed to return to her own body, she was lying in a heap, legs contorted back in a painful angle, in a pile of trash down the alley. There was a filthy man wearing rags and smelling of booze poking around in the trash beside her. As she began to wake, he stuck a hand in her pocket, searching for money most likely.<br/><br/>Angrily, she batted his hand away and rose to her feet. She was furious that she had allowed something like that to happen. Brushing herself off, she closed her eyes and began to allow her previous appearance to show through, not caring that the homeless man was spluttering in fear at the sight. She turned and resumed her angry pace, approaching the area she knew she would find the stricken slayer. When she arrived, her anger melted away at once. She found him seated on a bench, hands in his lap, staring blankly down. He was deflated... broken. The emotions she'd felt within his mind slammed into her one more. This time, she took no thrill in it, though she tried very hard to react as she had always done.<br/><br/>She didn't even realize she was moving as she slowly stepped forward, knelt before him, and lifted a hand to press her palm to his cheek.