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Pendour wasn't hiding it, now. She was collapsed in front of a fallen pillar, resting her forehead on the cool marble. Her breath came in gasps, and she rubbed and rubbed and rubbed at her arms.

It wasn't unusual to see her stimming, but there as something more desperate about this action, like if things got much worse she might start digging fingernails into her skin.

She shot upright when she heard someone approach, and when she looked up her good eye was almost as blank and distant as the artificial one. Who she saw kept her from bolting, though.

"Oh. Basi," she said, quietly.

She managed a nod when he asked if he could come over. "Just, don't tell Encke," she managed. "I don't want to distract him. I'm- I'm overreacting."

This time, Pendour managed to vocalize a "Yes." She pulled her fingers away from her own skin and wrapped them around Basiluzzo's hand, rubbing her thumb along the top of his knuckles, in turn.

"Touch helps," she said.

It wasn't fixing everything, but at least his presence gave her something to focus on besides the circles that her thoughts were going in. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Encke's partner knew a little about how to work through things like this, but it wasn't something she'd thought to expect. She was grateful for it, all the same, even if she couldn't quite say that much yet.

She went still for a few seconds, too still, before she added in a soft, strained voice, "It's a trigger. Um, the broken thing." One of her hands was still free, and with that one, she started to rub at the skin around her bad eye, then thought better of it and popped the prosthetic out so she could fidget with that instead.

"The one who did this to me," she waved the eye at him, "He wanted me broken. Um, bent, or cowed, or something, I don't know his logic," she sniffled, "But I know he wanted he wanted me alive and suffering, broken, not dead. That was more amusing to him?"

She shrugged as another weak breath escaped through her teeth. "It hasn't been this bad in a while, though. I think I got myself more worked up, maybe, trying to hold it all back so I didn't interrupt them."

She squeezed his hand.

At the first sign that the prosthetic might be making him uncomfortable, Pendour curled it up inside of her fingers and then let it vanish into subspace. She couldn't do as much about the socket, since it was dusty enough up here that the eye was going to need cleaned before she put it back, but she brushed the hair over the scarred side of her face so it wasn't as obvious.

Despite Basiluzzo's best efforts, of course she noticed the way he flinched. Of course it was a reminder that she was disgusting, of how deep her brokenness went. That thought brought another sob up from her chest as the muscles of her jaw and neck went stiff as stiff again.

"Sorry," she muttered, and then struggled to get her breath back. It worked, a little.

He was still there, and that helped more than he knew.

"You're being nice about it," she said, with a thin smile. Now she trace circles on his hand with her thumb.

Pendour nodded, about Encke.

"I know," she told him, still holding his hand, still tracing those circles, still keeping her eye tilted as far away from him as she could. "We've talked about trauma, sometimes. It's, just, um," she looked off towards the distance, towards where Encke would be with the small robot that was the closest thing he'd have to a survivor of his world, "Not a good time for it to come up."

Not that it ever was.

"Will you sit with me for a while?" she asked. That would help the most, she knew. "We don't have to, um, talk."