With a sigh, he threw himself back onto the bed, and held his poor, chapped hands out in front of himself, wondering how it had gone so wrong. It had been a week since his return, and things showed no signs of returning to normal yet.

He had had a good life, and he had thrown it all away, for what, a ride of a dragon?

He had done his full term in the military, and then extra, leaving with distinctions. He had found himself a partner, with whom he had raised a brilliant, wonderful child, had built himself a reputation, and then, at the end of it all, he had thrown it all away. To steal a dragon.

The light of his eyes, the creature he had spent his life sketching and drawing, had always longed to touch, if only for a moment. And then he had stolen it.

No.

With a sigh he threw his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes until all he could see were colours.

That was disingenuous, he'd had his reasons. And it wasn't Stealing, it was… Commandeering. Requisitioning. Hitching a ride. Saving a life.

He had done good work, which the city should appreciate! Would appreciate, if they ever let him speak for himself!

Groaning, he rolled over on the bed, pressing his face into the thin pillow.

He should look into the local orphans. He had never given them much thought before, but if there were enough of them hanging around that the post office could acquire one on a whim, something needed to be done about that. Maybe he could design them a new orphanage or something.

He squinted into the darkness of the pillow, idly musing for a moment about who would fund the building, what it would look like. It would have to be mostly unadorned, to cut down on costs, but there was a beauty even in simplicity.

Perhaps he had been wrong, about their intentions with the kid. They did say that whomever they picked, they would come back, and the adoption offer had been genuine, probably.

With a sigh, Windwashes sat up again, leaning back onto straightened arms, and stared around the little stone room. It was a simple affair. Two spartan metal beds, one against each side wall, with a sink placed evenly between them. The plaster on the walls was a dull grey, and the window above the sink was just high and just small enough that you couldn't see anything useful out of it. A wooden door was where they'd entered through, and another narrow door in the far wall hid a separate toilet. A boring room, devoid of any architectural merit.

He eyed the man sitting across from him on the other bed, his clothes tattered and his knees under his chin, glaring into the middle distance. There was also that.

After a moment's hesitation, Windwashes adopted a more relaxed posture, and tried to initiate contact.

"This isn't one of yours, is it?" he tilted his head to indicate the room around them.

Eyes coming back into focus, Brickwrath grunted in annoyance, the glare fixed firmly on him now. "As if! What do you take me for! Look at the shoddy…"

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They discussed the lack of merits to the room for a couple of minutes, from the tiles on the floor- the cheapest that the local building supplier had been able to procure, no doubt- to the weakness of the steel used in the window bars- very imposing, but vulnerable to magic- before the conversation trailed back off into silence.

He had been here for only a day, before Brickwrath turned up, and apart from the silence it hadn't been so bad, but it wasn't home. Before they'd come for him he'd been on an unofficial house arrest, while the magic washed over the city and everything shut down. That had been ok, he had had his own bed, his partner, and the huge empty house.

It had still felt as much like a prison as this room did, but it was a more comfortable one, with room to pace.

He'd been able to wash, and he had clothes which weren't in rags now, but he still imagined he could feel the dust of the journey ingrained into his skin, in a way he hadn't felt in years. His hair needed a trim, and although the Changers had leeched the magic out of him, his teeth still ached with it, his body subtly different from what he was used to, although not in a bad way, and he knew he would get used to it with exercise. Still, old scars were missing, and aches he hadn't even realised were there were now notable only by their absence.

Eyes on the tiny window, he lost himself in thought again.

The physical scars may have been rubbed away, but the mental ones couldn't be so easily fixed. There was a hole inside him filled with anger, spilling out and tainting his interactions with the world, and he could only keep his hand over it for so long before the pressure became too much.

Outside, the sky was darkening, changing from a deep salmon red to the dark velvet blue of night, casting the already dim room into slow darkness. Soon, he assumed, somebody would come round with a lantern and food, and it would be bright again for a time, but for now…

Looking down again at the man across from him, his face almost hidden now by the deepening shadows, Windwashes could see his own grief and anger spreading like a creeping poison, infecting everyone he interacted with. He imagined it as a sort of vibrant green, too bright to be natural, the colour of potions in shop windows, or of green paint under stage-light. Searing, bottled, grief. Too hot to touch, too bright to look directly at.

His partner was at home, suffering alone now, as she had been whilst he was on his jaunt- a spike of guilt at that thought- and he was here, awaiting, what? He still didn't know. Were they to be put on trial, was this his stay of execution, or was it a quarantine? Nobody had said a word to either of them, just rounded them up and locked them in here.

His hands itched in his lap, and he wished they hadn't taken his pens and paper away. Not that they would do much good, in this light, but just the having of them was comfort in itself. He wanted to stand and pace, to shout through the locked door, to draw, to paint, to create something.

Across from him, his mentor huffed out a sigh and clambered to his feet. With one hand on the small of his back, he groaned as he straightened up, and then shuffled the three steps towards the door. A jiggle of the handle confirmed that it was still locked.

A shrug, and with both hands now rubbing the muscles in his back, he grumbled towards the toilet. A minute later he re-emerged, washed his hands in the sink and settled back down on the bed.

That done, he eyed up the window, giving it a nod. "Reckon you could get through there, if needed."

His voice was deeper than Windwashes remembered, and even after the night of conversation, it still surprised him. But, he mused, they had both been very different people back then.

"but not me." He shook his head in a familiar gesture of resignation. "Best we just wait it out, I reckon."

"I suppose." The response was swollen in his mouth. Speaking had been easier earlier, the anger within him dulled by exhaustion and fever, but now it was returning, flowing in with the darkness, spilling out between his grasping fingers and staining the air around him. The dimness of the room, which had seemed like soft cloth a moment ago, was turning into spilt black ink, sticky to the touch. His stomach was a black tarred rope, pulled taught until he was afraid it might snap, afraid he might snap.

With a sigh and a false air of relaxation, he laid back on the bed, hands behind his head, the only sign of tension his feet shuddering of their own accord against the foot of the bed. "Suppose so."

Somewhere outside, a bird cried out, and Windwashes tried to sleep.