Watching her and flittering down to the table, Needle was almost disappointed with how rational she seemed. He had always liked the wyldlings—their danger, their hunger, the raw need they lived with spoke to him as few other creatures did. They were as desperate as he was for something more than the awful smoke and grime of life, and this he appreciated. Still, rationality had its uses, and if she wouldn't be swayed by the simple fun of it then he had other methods of convincing her.

He'd made sure of it.

“It's not unusual for him,” he agreed with a smile, letting his leather-bound feet touch the table and tapping across the wood with soft clicks of his heel, “especially when plotting. Or scheming. Whichever you might call it—either way, he wants you here and didn't tell you why because he's sold you out. [i]They[/i],” he emphasized the word, “want you too. And that's something that neither of us will find a good thing.”

Walking forward to watch her, one foot in front of the other, Needle eyed up her concoction. He'd other chemists, of course, or at least others that owed her favors, but her skill was impressive. She kept an eye on her wares and hadn't sampled overmuch—certainly nothing in the room had turned colors or started walking—and focus and control were something the precocious little pixie could appreciate. “What I want from you instead is your help. By all means, make me some glam—I'll never say no, and there's a great many friends I can think of that would [i]love[/i] to sample your wares. But I need a bit more from you than that, and not something I'm willing to discuss here. But I'll promise you this, here and now--”

And then a single note, a woven little thread worked its way from the door and waltzed it's way into Needle's lizard-brain like an arrow through a storm. Just a hint of it—there were doors and clamor and glamour in the way, after all, but it was enough to set him reeling with the way things had been before. The crying and the fucking, the crawling over and under and in the middle of his own kind, shivering in a swarm, as mindless as ants and just as misgiven, adrift in the sea of--

“What the [i]fuck[/i] was that?”

In an instant the needle it he held behind his back was out, waving like the tip of a sword towards the alchemist even as he clutched his head. She wasn't an elf—no memories like that could have surfaced from some hollow emotion. She wasn't a satyr, and the one that Auntie had pauper-pulled from the streets wasn't strong enough to pull that up. This was something new, something awful that drew the memories like poison from an open wound, and Needle was dripping with them, gushing. [i]No one[/i] should be able to pull that from him, that was [i]his[/i]--

Focus.

The bite of the needle through it's little palm was enough, the sharp little tip hissing through it's soft skin enough to make it gasp. Red blood welled where the point bit in, a tiny drop not even the size of morning dew that matted his clenched fingers as he pulled away and jammed the needle into the wood with a grunt. The fingers in its red hair bit into the scalp, enough to draw the thought away and [i]focus[/i]. Whatever that was, he couldn't let it distract him. He couldn't. Not when he was this close.

He breathed, and laughed, and looked back to her with mad little eyes that glittered shark-dark in the light.

“Sorry, lovely, I got a bit scrambled. Someone about there's playing with what they shouldn't. But back to my point,” he forged on in spite of himself, trying to salvage something of this, “you [i]need[/i] me. Adin's betrayed you, the fae are on their way, and if you want to be something more than a little twinkling star you need my help. Price or no, and I assure you mine isn't high. Just a bit of light ready, bedtime stories and fairy—hah!—fairy tales.” History was a fairy tale, because fairies had lived it. Breathed it. Watched it happen and jotted it down and remembered it in ways that humans would never understand. Most pixies didn't, either, but Needle--

“So tell me, precious,” it said again, propping itself up on it's little needle as it watched her, half-tattered wings twinkling behind it, “if I told you right now that the Queen of Souls was after yours, would you let me fix that for you?”