Lev traces symbols into the dirt as he watches.

Oswald glances at the symbols, when he is not trying to determine his filial relationship to dead bodies.

He doesn't recognize them. Maybe Lacie might have recognized them. ...Almost certainly Lacie wouldn't and Samson would, that's the whole reason they're here, stay focused. Be maudlin in a useful direction.

Lev is Very Quiet.

He is good at Being Quiet and Not Bothering People. These are some of the core important skills he has learned in his life so far.

It's a very useful set of skills. And now he can use them to help take down a horrible man who in a just world (he doesn't want to think about it) would've died 10 years ago, never gotten the chance for this.

When they're done for the night, Lev says, "I miss the books."

"Tell me about them?"

"He had lots of them. About... occult things. In his library. I don't. Remember much. Because of the meds."

"I was never allowed in. Lacie was, occasionally. When she was good, if he wanted to show her things. ...Guess I was missing more than I realized."

"It was good. I used to spend afternoons in there. Reading. And in Echavarria's house, when."

"What were they about? Not seances and cards, I suppose. The real mysteries." That's not what he wants to ask but it's what he's got.

"The old gods. The ones worshiped before Zeus or Bast or God." He laughs without humor. "The real ones."

"The ones worshipped here." He's pensive.

"Yes. Gol-Goroth."

"Do-- would-- if--" He opens and closes his mouth several times, then breathes out. "She thought it was beautiful." There's something he doesn't know how to say here, a question he can't ask and Lev can't answer. "I don't think she ever expected to... to end up... like this."

"He thought it was beautiful too. Echavarria. Trammel just wanted power. Sex and money and booze and the ability to terrorize people weaker than him. Echavarria loved it because it was the most beautiful thing in the world."

He goes to ask another halting roundabout question and instead starts crying.

aaaa???? "Um. Do you need. Something."

"She's dead, isn't she," he says, which is not what he meant to say and not what he was thinking about but now it's out there and it's awful.

"Not... necessarily? Um. I'm sorry. I am really bad at comforting people." He instinctively braces himself for getting hit.

"It's okay. It's fine." He is maybe doubled down on himself now. (At some point the crying became sobbing and he cannot quite see Lev anyway.) "I-- I wish things had been-- different--"

"Me too." Lev reaches out and hugs him and then instinctively flinches back.

It is kind of hard to flinch backwards from someone clinging to you.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's unclear if this is really... about Lev. "I'm so sorry."

Lev hasn't been hugged in ten years.

And now he is kind of clinging to Oswald too.

"Someday you will get used to it. It hurts and it is always going to hurt but someday it will be a dull throbbing pain and you will have lived with it for so long you won't know what life is like without it."

"I don't want to," he whispers. He is more than a little insensible. "I want it to hurt forever."

Lev laughs. "Well, uh, good news."