As Raine responded to Flake, he watched her intently, remaining still as a statue. His cold, grey eyes followed her as she walked over to her bed. He resented how she had not given him a single opportunity to respond as she spoke, continuing to stare at her as she lay down on the filthy bedding. After a few minutes, he sighed and checked to see if the bleeding had stopped in his nose. After releasing his hand and wiping off as much of the red liquid as he could manage, he noted that the bleeding had stopped. With that done, he carefully lay down on his own bedding and closed his eyes, waiting and listening for noise. He knew for certain that he had not a chance at falling asleep at that time a day, so he took the time of silence to think about the past.

Before long, Raine had fallen asleep and Flake had found a comfortable position on his bedding. The minutes passed like hours. All the same, thoughts of dishes he heard of and fantastic missions he missed out on flooded through his mind, distracting him from the minor pain in his side. As he was dissociating from reality, a few brief noises from the other side of the room alerted him. He instantly shot out of bed and looked around to see Raine tumbling around in her sleep, whimpering. Flake got up, feeling slightly light-headed from doing so as quickly as he did, and walked over to observe her. Without his leather armor and boots, his footsteps were all but silent as he approached her sleeping figure.

Once he reached her, he loomed over the tossing girl and his eyebrow shot up. Her expression was terrified, the same as a bounty target pinned against a wall. [i]Sleep, the conversation with one’s self,[/i] he thought, grinning slyly. She turned away from him after a few seconds, still turning around in her sleep and whimpering. A sound shot down from the stairwell, calm footsteps following soon after, alarming Flake. He felt his nose once more as he headed back over to his bedding pile, then lay down, relaxed, and closed his eyes, adopting the illusion of sleep. [i]Best to trick than to be tricked[/i] he mentally recited, awaiting the nearing sounds.

The noises were not the metallic thuds of a guard’s armor, but the pat of leather boots, the soft type a citizen would wear. Flake heard the cell door open and cracked his right eye open to see who it was. The figure he saw wore the garb of an herbologist, so Flake judged that the man was “Oruin” the prison medic whom Raine had spoken of. He closed his eye and waited, pretending to sleep as he listened to the interaction between him and Raine. The man seemed to be compassionate enough to trust, but Flake questioned his judgment, especially after waking up a sleeping prisoner by contact. 

Again, Flake felt resentful towards Raine due to the way in which she described the acquisition of his injuries, but retained his sleeping persona. He heard the man approach and also observed the sound of clinking metal and wooden materials, likely the tools of medicine in his bag. Flake planned a response mentally as the man went about assembling his tools. As he finished, Oruin shook Flake and asked, “Excuse me, but do you mind waking up so I can properly treat your wounds?” Within a second of contact, Flake’s arm shot from under his head to the medic’s wrist, breaking his contact, then used the momentum to sit up.

Once again, Flake felt light headed due to the sudden change in altitude, but the bounty hunter’s cold eyes stared into the medic’s soul. Flake needed a few seconds for his light headedness to go away, then he asked, “How do you expect to treat me, ’properly,’ Oruin?” His eyes shot over to the tools on the ground, then back at his eyes. “Do your tools mend bones and restore blood as well as rest?” he continued, wiping some more blood from his nose. The bounty hunter saw Raine watching from his peripheral vision after his question and thought to himself for a moment with slightly softened eyes.