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The running theme in meetings with H (aside from an utter lack of appointment-making) was Taym's appearance saying something, loud and clear even for someone less perceptive than H (and wasn't that nearly everyone?), about his general state of mind.

The usual well-groomed careful presentation with the coat spoke to his desperate desire to be taken seriously in the face of all evidence that he would not be; the one time he'd shown up caked in a day's work it had been because he was frantic, and demanded time now. He'd shown up for the podding freshly-showered and freshly-shaven and maybe if he'd ever seen Fight Club he would have thought like a monkey ready to be shot into space, but he hadn't.

And this time he showed up without his uniform at all even though now would have been the ideal time for the neatly-tucked-up scarf, rather than the one sloppily tossed on at the last second and doing nothing to hide the fading bruises painting his throat. Somewhere on the island a relieved redhead was sporting the other half of a matched set, and this was his intentional tether to her and to reality and to responsibilities beyond the responsibility, the one that weighted him down, the one that it had been a guilty relief to be delivered from, even for a few days. He hadn't even showered. He'd run a few handfuls of water over his face and held that back as a promise: I'll come back for it.

He looked like a wreck: disheveled, feral, the stubble back in full force after a week to recover, trailing the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke and his hands completely steady as he lifted them to knock before letting himself in a half an instant later. He looked like someone who'd break a nose given a half a chance. To someone like H he was the furthest thing from intimidating, but intimidation wasn't the aim. Living down to unspoken expectations was. If he could have slunk in with a needle hanging out of his arm he would have.

No acknowledgement. "Did it work?"

A long pause while he considered this, and a tremor ran through his hand and stilled.

"What happened to my weapon?"

This time only a second elapsed before he visibly startled, jolted by some internal trigger, doubtless the result of his tentatively reaching out to feel for Fiona's input.

"So she was..." he almost buckled under the sudden implication of it, a sudden grim purpose settling into his face that boded somewhat ill for the presence sharing his head. "She isn't--communicative. Yet," he added, fiercely. "This is... in terms of surveillance, it has--"

And then tension, back again. "How recent?" he asked, clipped. "Or is that something else she's going to have to cough up?"

He'd been standing. Without being invited he collapsed into the chair across the desk. They'd probably need to Lysol it ********," he said simply, so overwhelmed that it was devoid of any real inflection. "Did you get rid of the others?" And then, as an idea dawned on him, a creeping horror. "Did it do anything?"

A long, calculating silence while Taym's eyes roamed restlessly over the middle distance.

"So once we round them all up and get rid of them," he said shakily, stubbornly phrasing this as though it were inevitable, "the last one will be... functionally--" he couldn't bring himself to say it, though.

And then something H had said settled into him, even as he sat there trying desperately to avoid thinking about what he'd just been told. "From any dead hunter," he corrected, excising the superfluous word.

And then, suddenly, he latched onto the paper-thin shred of whatever it was he needed to cope with everything he was learning.

"And she didn't go tablet," he said, "when you killed it."