as kindred should

four

Hours ticked by in extraordinary patterns, one slow as molasses and the next rapid as a hummingbird's wing beat. Dorian spent the better part of the afternoon with Pip, back and forth between his living spaces and the dusty old attic.

He pulled out baby spoons, a bib, a high chair, and returned for a crib a half hour later, a freshly-fed Pip draped over his shoulder like an old cat.

Everything was rebuilt, and after he put Pip to bed he stood and felt young again; only in the manner of frauds, like he wore a mask without crow's feet but spoke in an archaic tongue anyway. A Guy Fawkes, V for Vendetta type without the occult following.

She slept soundly now, and Dorian sat on the edge of his bed, watching. Her tiny back rose and fell, her breath slow and even, her hands curled near her face.

He guessed that she was around five to seven months, plenty young enough that she wouldn't remember a thing but old enough that it'd impact her anyway. From where he sat he could see the shiny round of one of those scars, and he rose silently to his feet, turned his gaze to the carpet.

"I'm going to shower," he whispered, knowing that she could not hear him, that she wouldn't understand if she could.

It was a thought that filled him with simultaneous relief and frustration. She did not understand. That was true. She was a victim anyway. There was a useless, cyclical nature to it that ground at his bones like sandpaper.

Dorian gathered his clothes in a wad in his hand, the light fabric of his shirt draped over the tips of his fingers. In the bathroom he tossed them, his boxers landing in a blissfully dry sink. Still, he swore. A little bit of weight fled his shoulders.

Water drummed against the shower floor, and with this beat in his head he pulled a clunky old phone from his pocket and dialed.

"Hello?" Said Eurion. "Dorian?"

"Uh, yeah. Hello."

"How's the kid?"

Dorian tapped his finger against the back of the phone, considering his answer.

"She's better now. I, um, I found something."

A tinny inhale, and an order, "Tell me. Don't be coy."

"Scars," Dorian said, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "Roughly a dozen of them, I'd wager. I'd like the Bowles' autopsy, if you wouldn't mind. Just... I dunno. I suppose it's curiosity more than it is protocol."

"With you? It usually is," Eurion said, voice tilted suspiciously. "It's not a bad thing. Is that all this is? Curiosity? Or won't you tell me?"

A sigh racketed in Dorian's lungs. His eyes followed the pattern of the floor, the tile that had cracked when one of his kids - he couldn't remember which now, they had been so young - had dropped a metal pot of rocks. Collecting, they had said.

The crack trailed off near the wall, an ugly shade of yellow-orange decorated with a shelf of white towels and nothing more.

He looked at the door, at the worn doorknob, he looked at the cupboard on the side of the sink, he looked at his clothes in a small, rumpled pile, and he looked at his toothbrush, sat alone in an orange plastic cup.

"Nothing that pertains to the case," Dorian answered. "Just... personal stuff, you know?"

"Hm."

"I think too much, I reckon. That's all it is."

"I know," Eurion replied softly. "I understand."

There was a pause, nothing but the sound of running water.