Blame

All in Ink

"C'mon, Liz."

Mister Afton had finally finished his shopping not long after Charlie left, meaning that both he and the rest of the troupe poured out of the small hardware store and onto the street, filling the once quiet space with a ridiculous and overwhelming amount of noise.

Rather than accompany them back to the train, Jesse and Elizabeth went to some poorly lit, old, run-down restaurant that was nearby.

Well, it would actually be more accurate to say that Jesse practically dragged Elizabeth there.

"I'm no stranger to the fact that you're not the biggest fan of talking. You're almost never the one that starts the conversation."

That was true. In the past, Elizabeth often found that whenever she tried to speak to people unprompted, whatever she said was, more often than not, disregarded. So she had stopped bothering a long time ago.

"You hardly ever talk about yourself, even when I try to get you to."

She never found herself worth talking about, really.

"For a long time, you wouldn't talk about your feelings either."

Nobody had cared before. She assumed that they still didn't.

"But, when you've got a...a malevolent demon following you around and trying to have conversations with you, I really don't think you should keep that to yourself."

Elizabeth stared down at the ashtray on the table between them for no reason other than it was easier than making direct eye contact.

"I know I said that I was skeptical, but that wasn't code for 'don't bring that up ever again'."

She wasn't all that surprised that Jesse thought she had interpreted her words like that, because Elizabeth had misinterpreted things Jesse had said as a gentler version of 'shut up' multiple times in the past.

"Talk to me, Liz."

Jesse extinguished the remainder of her cigarette in the ashtray and Elizabeth finally looked back up.

"I w-want to tell you," she mumbled. "But I can't."

"Why not?" Jesse asked softly.

"I don't know... I can't f-force myself to talk about it, no matter how hard I try. I get that feeling I get when I stutter. It's like I'm b-blocked off, but there's no sound coming out at all."

Jesse stared down at the napkin Charlie had given Elizabeth, which the redhead had been repeatedly folding and unfolding since it had first entered her grasp.

"Try writing it down. Here," she pulled a couple of napkins out of the napkin dispenser on the tabletop and dug around her pockets until she found a pen, placing the items in front of her friend, "use the napkins."

"O-okay..." Elizabeth picked up the purple pen.

Click.

As she began to write, she found that it seemed like a far more difficult task than usual. It was as if her hand didn't want to move. As a result, her already messy scrawl looked worse than it normally did.

She was glad that Jesse had started to stare off at something else past their booth because the feeling of being watched would have only made it even worse.

She wasn't sure how long it took her to finish, but it felt like forever.

Sliding the ink-covered napkins across the table, Elizabeth awkwardly cleared her throat. "Done," she said.

Without saying anything, Jesse began to read through everything Elizabeth had written.

Elizabeth spun the pen between her fingers while she waited for her to finish, cycling through every single trick she knew about three times before the sword swallower finally spoke again.

"'I'll make sure that anybody who hurts her gets hurt back'... That doesn't make any sense."

Elizabeth pressed the back of the pen against the tabletop.

Click.

"W-well, that's wh-what it said."

"It could definitely just be lying to you. Or maybe it misinterpreted something that happened? If it's only attacking people that have been dicks to you, then it makes no sense that Laura got attacked. She's never been even remotely disrespectful to you." Jesse's gaze flicked back up Elizabeth. "...Right?"

"R-right."

"But with Arlen...he insinuated that you were to blame for Laura's injuries again, and pointed my knife straight at you multiple times, so I guess that kinda aligns more with what it said..."

"If it is being t-truthful, then I feel like we should probably w-warn everyone in the troupe."

"Yeah, don't want anybody else to get hurt before that thing is taken care of," Jesse agreed. "See if you can borrow that footage from Charlie. If you can't, then... we'll find some other way to tell them that doesn't involve mentioning that the attacker is a demon. And footage or no footage, we should definitely avoid mentioning that's got a particular interest in you, 'cause I really don't know how well that will go over with everybody."

There was a small stretch of silence between them before Jesse slid the napkins back over to Elizabeth. "You should give these to Charlie when you see her."

Elizabeth folded them up and stuck them into her pocket. "O-okay... I'll try to pay her a visit tomorrow."