So high, so far to fall

[m_pinocchio]

So he goes hunting, but even that doesn't help. The ritual of waiting, moving, stalking and springing doesn't do anything to soothe him. He stands in the snow with his breath a cloud in front of his face and he listens to his heart beat, unsure of any word for what he's feeling. He's lost a lot. Maybe more than this, before. Maybe he shouldn't be

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[doesnt_speak]

Florence didn't know Chris. She knew of him, of course, that he was friends with Mike, that he was Canadian, married to the man named Jim, that he'd been on the Council. She knew that he was a curler, that he gave lessons in the rink beside the Compound, that he had a goddaughter, but she didn't know him, just like she hadn't known Eostre.

Even without that personal connection, she still feels for those who have lost him when she catches wind of his disappearance. Maybe she never knew the man who's gone, but she knows Mike and so she puts on her warmest boots, the jacket the box has given her, and she goes out into the jungle with her gun still hanging at her side.

It takes her longer to find him that she likes, but when she catches the scent of blood in the air, she sighs, resigned, and turns in that direction. Less than a minute later, she finds Mike and the elk carcass, her boots crunching on the snow to signal her arrival. There's blood everywhere, but she's seen worse and she takes almost no notice of it as she crosses toward

[m_pinocchio]

He's not even that surprised to see her. She's seen him at his weakest and his most lost, and it makes sense that she'd find him now.

Now that Chris isn't here to bring him home anymore.

With anyone else, he might be ashamed at the evidence of what he's been doing. With her, he just lets his mouth twist into something that might be a bitter smile before he looks down at his bloody hands again. "Hobbes send you out here?"

[doesnt_speak]

Shaking her head, Florence comes closer, stripping off one glove so she can reach into her pack as she nears him. She expects if she'd stayed around just a little while longer, Tom or Neil might have asked her to go, but she hadn't stayed. It wasn't something she needed to be asked.

Tugging a clean, white cloth free from her pack, she offers it to Mike so he can clean his hands. The mess behind them is something else entirely, something that will need to be cleaned in time, but it doesn't need to be now. There are other messes, bigger ones, and they need attention before the elk does.

[m_pinocchio]

He takes the cloth wordlessly, not even bothering to try to refuse it, and he wipes his hands and bends to rub snow over them and wipes them again, until they're only faintly smeared red and the scrapes on his knuckles are clear. They're not deep, though they sting in the cold air.

He almost hands the cloth back to her before he realizes how ridiculous that would be, and instead he holds onto it, letting his hand drop to his side. "I kinda..." He sighs. "I dunno. I fucking lost it." Which is beyond obvious, but he's not sure what else to say.

[doesnt_speak]

She nods her agreement, not surprised, not judging, just an acknowledgment. Whatever Mike's done here, she's seen worse and she knows he's capable of more. This is just a way to deal and she isn't bothered by the scent of blood or the sight of the animal.

Lifting her bare hand, she touches his face, ignoring the streak of blood she can feel sticky against her fingertips. It's just a touch and she holds it there for a moment, watching him.

[m_pinocchio]

He closes his eyes at her touch and lets himself lean a little into it. They don't touch each other much, even now, they don't hug, but for a moment what he'd most love to do is curl up against her and feel how strong she is.

"I'm so tired of losing things," he whispers.

[doesnt_speak]

But it's never going to stop. She doesn't need to be able to say the words for him to know she's thinking them, she doesn't even try to communicate them beyond a gentle pressure of her fingers against his face. No matter what they do, no matter where they go, there will always be loss.

Sometimes it'll be worse than this, too. Worse than Eostre, worse than Chris. She knows he knows that as well and so she doesn't communicate that either.

[m_pinocchio]

He gets it, like she's somehow beaming the words directly into his mind, and for an instant he feels like just collapsing into the snow, all the wind knocked out of him. The truth is, every cynical fear he's ever had about love turns out to be true. It's a weakness, a liability, and it'll end up hurting you in ways you can't even begin to stop.

So the question is still whether or not it's really worth it, and it's a question he answered a long time ago. He's stuck. Doomed, in the most classic sense of the word.

"It makes me want..." He sighs, shakily, and bites at his lip, looking away. "Makes me want to be somewhere where I... don't have to feel it."

[doesnt_speak]

Florence shakes her head at that, just once, but it's firm. It may never stop, this pain and this suffering, but every moment of having and feeling love is worth it. She's been sure of a great many things in her life, but nothing has ever been so deeply entwined with her, nothing means so much as that very simple idea.

Love, in every sense of the word, is what Florence was created for and Mike knows that.

Her fingers slip under his chin, making him look at her and she shakes her head again.

[m_pinocchio]

He knows she's right, even as he knows there's nothing he can do to free himself now. He wouldn't even want to, not really. Love is the reason--maybe the only one--that he's come this far and survived this long, and it's the reason he's not a monster anymore, despite the carnage around him. He looks into her eyes and he reaches up and closes his hand around her wrist, ignoring the still-smeared blood, knowing that she'll ignore it too.

"You saved me," he whispers, and the truth is that everyone who's come after her has saved him too.

[doesnt_speak]

Her eyebrow arches and the corner of her mouth twists up slightly, saying, You're giving me an awful lot of credit. It's softer than it normally is, however, because she knows there's truth there. She saved him, physically, at least, and in other ways, and he saved her. It's always been a give and take between the two of them, as much as it is now.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she takes in the scene behind her, the slaughtered elk and the blood on the snow. Turning back to Mike, she tips her head slightly, asking him what they're going to do about it.

[m_pinocchio]

He follows her gaze and grimaces slightly. Leaving it here as it is... Well, someone will find it, probably, and whoever does might have some extremely fair questions about the perpetrator's sanity. Not that they'd have any real way of knowing it was him, but still, with the murders of a few months ago still fresh in everyone's minds, he's not that interested in giving people a scare.

He doesn't need to give Vimes any more reasons to go behind the Compound with a bottle of whiskey.

"The meat's still good," he says, sighing. "Some of it." The parts he hasn't shredded too badly. "Guess I could butcher what I can."

[doesnt_speak]

Taking a step back, she lets her hand fall to Mike's shoulder first before she lets her hand drop altogether and gives a nod, letting him know she's there to help him if he needs it. This might be something he needs to go on his own, something that's necessary for the recovery process to begin, but if it isn't, she can do what he needs.

[m_pinocchio]

He looks at her for a few seconds, then back at the elk again with a weary shift of his shoulders. Now that the blind rage is gone, he only feels tired, crushingly so. Tired and a little foolish. At least no one else has seen him like this.

"He was my best friend," he says flatly. "Except when he wasn't, because he... fuck it. Maybe it was never gonna end well." He grimaces, bends down and picks up his knife, the metal impossibly cold in his hand.

"Help me with this."

[doesnt_speak]

One of her shoulders lifts in a shrug, a suggestion of, Maybe not. Maybe we're not meant to know. Endings are never easy, in whatever form, and Florence knows even when they see them coming, no one's ever really prepared.

Giving a nod, she follows Mike, pushing her gun so it lies against her back and won't get in the way. Nearly six months on the island and she still carries it every single day.

[m_pinocchio]

A casual chop of the knife at the rope where it attaches to the trunk and the elk tumbles into the snow with another sickening crunch of bone, or it would be sickening if he could be made sick by something like that anymore. It is, after all, just meat.

He glances up at her as he crouches over it, trying to figure out the best way to turn it over. "How much did you even know about him?" He doesn't remember what he's told her.