(Untitled)

[argyle_princess]

Hannah thinks that Brennan is right about most things, and Hannah knows she's right about needing to eat and sleep and so on.

So Hannah eats. All right, Hannah mostly pushes soup around the bowl with her spoon, but she eats at least a third of it, and in her defense, it is a very large bowl

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[dr_temperance]

And, true to her word, Brennan is right there.

She had managed to doze off for a while herself, sitting up in the chair. When she had asked Bar for supplies necessary for the care and feeding of an exhausted and distressed teenager, she had also requested a book for herself so that she would have something to occupy her mind other than worry while Hannah slept.

It had turned out to be Alternate Realities for Dummies: Explaining Magic to the Hopelessly Rational. It had read like the diary of an unhinged theoretical physicist and hadn't held her attention at all. And it gets kicked, unnoticed, under the bed as Brennan gets up.

"Hannah? It's okay. You're fine."

[argyle_princess]

Hannah stares for a moment, in utter confusion, no idea where she is or why.

And then it all comes back, the pieces fitting themselves together into one very large and ugly picture.

She shakes her head. "No, I'm really not fine," she says. "Objectively, you know. I think this might be as far from fine as I've ever been."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan is unsure what to say.

Platitudes are useless, and she's not very good at delivering them anyway.

She sits down on the edge of the bed.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

The explanation Hannah had given her out by the lake had been direct, but not terribly informative.

[argyle_princess]

"Sort of," says Hannah. "I . . . I don't really know. I mean, I do, but there was a whole lot of information and not a lot of time to take it in, and some rather gaping holes and . . .

". . . and Henry is in hell. Literally. Or, rather, he's in a place that is 'as close to hell as anything I care to consider.'"

She's clearly quoting someone on that last.