"I am trying to get a secret underground base but it's hard and complicated and making an off-grid secret house is hard, actually, and, there's, I'm, I'm already juggling so much and it feels so fucking stupid when I'm also dealing with, with. Fucking assassination attempts. In a confluence."

That doesn't actually tell him how he could possibly help but saying that would be counterproductive.

"I can help. ...if you're okay with Quasar knowing about it, I mean. They helped me get this place."

She should probably attempt proper communication or something, but instead just gives a bitter shrug.

(Fuck that discomfort too, right, who cares about her fucking comfort when she's just going to be shot in the head.)

"I don't - want to problem solve that right now," she sighs. "I want to explain this and the other times I haven't felt supported so you can see the trail of evidence that I see. Okay?"

"Okay. Sorry." Man he's bad at this. "...I'm really bad at this." He wants to say "I'm sorry" again but he said he would stop doing that so much.

"To be fair I am also kind of having a nervous breakdown of some kind and I'm the shittiest company."

He wants to say she isn't but he knows that's the rose-coloured glasses, objectively speaking this is not the most pleasant of times to be around her. "If there was ever a time when it was okay to not be okay it's now." ...is he implying that there are times when it's not okay to not be okay? "I, I mean, it's always okay to not be okay, I just mean—"

"Yeah." Sniffle. "Anyway. Um. So you never actually said that you thought I was right to tell your friends? It was. Really all just criticism about how I was risking their lives and stepping all over your feelings and it, just. I just felt cruel and thoughtless and stupid. That's it."

"Oh. I'm sorry. It was the right decision. I would've agreed with it. Did agree with it, I mean." He thought it was obvious, with how he didn't criticise the decision itself and only did the delivery, but... he thinks he gets it.

Lack of criticism is not approval, Tae-gun, it's just a lack of criticism.

"Um, what else was there, was that your full list...?"

She can't tell if the list was just painfully and pathetically short or if she's purposefully being uncharitable because she's - whatever she is right now.

"The peeing in a cup was legitimately pretty sweet," she adds, in an attempt to try to at least pretend to be fair.

"...that was the full list of things I remember... I didn't keep track in my head and I can't remember—sorry, I'm sounding defensive. ...okay I feel like I can be a little bit defensive, here, I didn't know I was meant to study for this test."

"Uh huh," sniffle. "Well. I'm having trouble thinking of things, too. And - do you have that kind of trouble thinking of things I did to try to make you and your feelings matter? With me, I mean."

God, she's still trying to win the fight, even now. (She's such a mess.)

"...yes. I've been trying really hard to sit on my feelings and let you guys—figure it out—without my feelings entering the planning at any point."

She stares at him.

"Yeah? Because that's the only thing that's ever mattered, right? That one problem that I just won't roll over and do whatever you fucking want for, because it is dangerous, and I have known it is dangerous this whole time! Fuck all that goddamned patience with your triggers, and trying to get you to reconnect with your friends for the sake of your emotional health, fuck the - the planning for how to make the fucking hand-holding silo entirely because you wanted it, fuck the constant attempts to figure out what you're feeling when you don't even know yourself, because I don't want to fucking hurt you, because, because, because..."

Yeah, back to sobbing. Raggedly, now. For some reason, it hurts so much more to hear that all of her attempts to show that she cared about him and wanted him safe and fulfilled and happy have just, just. Bounced off. In favor of fretting about the ex he broke up with half a decade ago.

Well now he's crying, too. He'd been doing so well at not doing that, he'd been keeping it together, mostly, but now he just... can't.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know, I'm just broken, I'm sorry." He wants to argue, this feels so unfair, it feels like she's just, just been keeping score to throw it back in his face, been doing a ton of things that she felt were, were burdens, without even telling him they were burdens, and she just wanted him to guess. To magically divine that. He's sure other people can do it but he can't, he just can't, he needs to be told, if he's not told he has no way of knowing. "I'm sorry." He's breaking his promise, he's saying sorry a lot of times again, but he can't seem to stop. And he can't seem to stop loving her, either, even with how much this hurts. He feels like what he's doing, right now, just, just taking the abuse and not defending himself, that's for her, too, but he can't say that. He can't say that because, because that'd also sound defensive, and because she just said that she hates how he makes everything about himself and this would be making it about himself. "I'm sorry." He wants to pull away and go cry alone but he can't because she needs his help with the backlash and despite everything he's feeling he can't possibly leave her to deal with it alone.

Yeah.

She similarly wants to tell him to fuck off if he can't perceive the many, many ways she's tried so hard to show she cares. But she can't, because she doesn't want to go back to the hospital tonight. That wouldn't help anything at all.

They're just going to both be sobbing here, then. In the shower. Hope he has a large hot water tank.

He does. "Crying in the shower" happens to him far more often than it does to normal, unbroken people, so he needs to be able to do that without having to worry about his water running out.

They should at some point actually get rid of the grime, though; if nothing else, Tae-gun himself feels a lot better about things when he doesn't have a constant background buzz of being dirty calling his attention and making him feel more like a worm.

Yeah. They can manage that. She'll even wash and condition her hair, get all of the little bits of her own fucking grey matter out of it. (He didn't have conditioner before she started siloing with him. It's just another thing she brought in her efficient little luggage bags and put on the shelf without making a fuss.)

But then she's out of tasks to accomplish, she will just stand here miserably in the shower.

Tae-gun'll turn off the water and, after confirming it's okay, towel her off, then since she likes wearing clothes after a shower he'll get her those.

(Seeing her be so... quiet and passive... also hurts. He's not sure if it hurts more than being yelled at for what he feels are unfair reasons but it hurts differently.)

He had one more dungeon scheduled for the early evening but that obviously got cancelled when his partner was shot in the middle of a confluence what the fuck, plus of course they spent hours in the hospital, but that means it's about time to have dinner. They still shouldn't let go of each other, and this won't be the first time he's made them food while they've needed to be touching and they have a Procedure™ for it: her arms will be around or touching his waist so that he can use both hands to make food, and he can tap her if he needs to walk somewhere so that she'll come with. He doesn't say anything during this whole process, though, because he thinks that if he tries he'll start crying again and he'll become a whiny child who's complaining about how Hye-jin is being so unfair to him and he doesn't want to do that to her.

Yep. She'll just be here.

Silently holding him exactly how he directs her to, and crying very quietly and unobtrusively. Perfectly cooperative. Hollowed out of everything but what seems to be simmering anger at him in particular, but there isn't much of that, either.

After they're done eating they should... plausibly sleep. It's still kind of early but he's feeling wrung out and he doesn't have it in him to study for the dungeons tomorrow. He's not sure he'll have it in him to go to them but—no, actually, hang on. "I'm going to cancel tomorrow's dungeons. I don't want to leave you alone and I don't think it would be a good idea to do dungeons in the state we're in right now." Would it be petty for him to say that he's doing this for her? It probably would be. He won't say it.

Anyone that thought she was going to do a dungeon the day after being shot in the head is a fucking dumbass.

She just nods.

"I wasn't going to try to do any dungeons tomorrow," she agrees, miserably. Not so much for the dungeons themselves, actually, she might even find those sort of restful and fulfilling, burning everything that dares to oppose her to the ground, but. It's the everything else that is the real problem. The media, the cameras, the fear of another assassination attempt, the - partner who she kind of doesn't want to be touching right now but is medically pressured to. That. That all sucks. (All she ever wanted to do is her job.)

Yeah. Yeah.

So, absent any objections, he's going to go to bed and they can sleep.

(Or try to. He's exhausted but he's not sure how much he'll be able to, rather than just spend all night up thinking in circles.)

Well, she didn't nap in the hospital, and unconsciousness is not the same as sleep, so. Even with the intermittent and sporadic crying, it doesn't take her long.

"Give me one reason, just one good reason not to punch a hole in that guy's chest."

"He'll use you to murder an innocent person."

They convened an emergency meeting at Hyun-jae and Juheon's after they all had heard the news. Woo-young was invited too, but he's having to guide his partner after much Nightmareing.