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Damian looked at Richard, nodding sagely. He would be incredibly civil with him in this matter. The pain richard must feel every day was something quite new to him, with his own father dead. But he would get to that later.

"Lorey... I looked at the police report concerning your mother. It said her body was found in an alleyway, away from the road. A drunk driver on a speeder would have hit her on the road, don't you think?"
He didn't wait for her to answer. She looked too dumbstruck to do so anyhow.

"There was no mention of who had done it, no pictures of the speeder or the driver. No reports on the charges against them, or what even happened to them. That should have been part of the report, yes?"
Damian was running high on the adrenaline he felt at this great reveal. It was all so critical, so important. And a part of himself hated it all, because it would perhaps inevitably drive the two lovers even closer together.

"I also saw the pictures of her body. She was unrecognizable, in pieces, burned." These very words sent terror into Lorey's eyes, and though it pained him like nothing else, Damian breathlessly pressed onward at a clip.

"Lorey, a speeder couldn't have done that. No one could have, no one natural at least... Your mother was murdered. and I believe you are also a victim of this person's schemes, though they want to see you live, I think."

"I'm saying..." Damian muttered, trying to understand himself. Why had he come? To see Lorey understand completely what her mother had been through? To know that she had been lied to all these years?

"Richard, you believe that you are dangerous because of this mystery about you, that Lorey is unsafe by just associating with you. But Lorey is just as dangerous, don't you see? Everyone she's known closely since her mother's death has died, or gone missing, or met some terrible fate. Every chance at something better was ruined by some invisible person pulling the strings..."

And it seemed right there he began to lose that righteous attitude. Why was he there again?
"You are at risk as well. And I, I have just lost my father, am being bombarded by lies, and am suffering from the same circumstances: someone I loved has died mysteriously, and the truth is being hidden from me. Ultimately, looking at you two, the people I know will begin to have ill fates. I do not know what is going on. But it isn't... it isn't by coincidence."

Shocked? Disgusted? Confused? There was no one word that could describe what she was feeling, nor was there a proper grouping of them. Lorey shook her head, mute, though her lips were parted just in case some kind of word wanted to slip through.

"The ring," she managed to say after a moment, and just like a mystery they had found themselves in, she slipped away quietly to find the music box she had brought from her old home.

In the silence, Damian simply looked at Richard. He was more concerned for her than for him, but there was something like respect in his eyes. Then, he could understand that pain of loss, with the added sting of not knowing what to do next.

"You're a lucky b*****d," was all he could say, with a nod to where Lorey had just walked out of the door. It was completely out of nowhere and had nothing to do with what they had been talking of, but he felt the words bubble out before he could reason to hold them back.

And since the apartment wasn't that small, Lorey returned with the bent ring. There was no stone set within it. It was a simple band of silver, though it was misshapen, almost melted in a way. In Lorey's shaking hands, it seemed a very small thing indeed.

"They gave it to me. It has her initials in the one side..." she said, holding it out or the two to see.

The vagabond took up the bit of jewelry, examining it carefully.
"If it wasn't a speeder who damaged this, it was someone very strong indeed. Unnatural..."

Unnatural was the first word to describe the murderer, though they had no idea how right they were in thinking so.

The ring was returned, and Lorey, who felt like nothing more than an observer, had nothing to say. Everything Damian said had been right concerning the chain of terrible things in her life. Any time she had felt happy or content with her way of living, a friend died, or she was let go. Nothing allowed her to keep that happiness. It was this that had made her so unstable just a short while ago; the very idea of losing Richard was unthinkable after she had seen enough already.

"I thought you should know," he said. "You have a right to know. We all do."

Silence stretched out once more. Lorey remained standing still with the ring in her hand and eyes staring out in front. Lies. Lies, it had all been lies all those years. No driver, no speeder, no accident, nothing. Lies and constant sadness from some distant person who for some unknown reason, couldn't bear to see her happy.
Her knees gave out from under her with the surprise and torment of it all. Lorey's hand reached out behind her to take hold of a chair that wasn't there, to find something to hold onto as the floor seemed to move from underneath her.

Damian watched the scene unfold. Of course he had made the move towards her, but stopped once he realized Richard was the one to catch her. Richard would hold her tight. He could only be the onlooker on this love scene.

And he watched him carry her to the bed, tuck her in, kiss her. There was something sick turning inside of him through it all, but he couldn't look away. Lucky b*****d, he had called him. Lucky, stupid, brutish b*****d.

The invitation to stay pulled him from these thoughts, forcing him into the present once more.
"Amazing... how strong she is and yet how fragile," he said, taking a seat upon the couch. "She was never really that healthy, you know. I suppose that came with where she lived and all that filth she had to clean."

Another thing that made his stomach and head reel was how he had known her for all her time at the Ballroom, knew more about her and understood her more than this Richard, yet here he was sitting alone as another cared for the woman he loved. It should be him, he thought bitterly. But Lorey didn't want him. Obviously.

"I'll be fine."
Even Damian's head swam a bit at the word 'friend,' but that was what he had to be to Richard to survive now. Just looking at his body made him understand that while he could probably win in a battle of wits, physically he was overpowered. He supposed that came from wanting to maintain that slimmer, fit-but-small physique he had.

He waited for Richard to fall asleep before even making the slightest move. The previous night had been terrible, and by all means, he should have been sleeping as well. But Damian's thoughts began to turn against him in little time at all.

Quickly and quietly he went to the kitchen, and with a final turn of his head to check that no one could see him, he slipped a flask out of his coat pocket. Strong alcohol, made specially in Veratia, graced his lips and burned his throat. It would only be a few sips...

Lorey, he thought. Lorey, my God, why couldn't you have just loved me, if not put up with me? Why didn't you let me adore you, dote upon you, give you anything you wanted?
At the very least, he could have bought her a house of her own. But she had refused his advances. She had wanted nothing to do with him, other than conversation here and there. They had become friends, and enemies all at once. But God, how he loved her. How he wanted to sit beside her in that bed and watch over her as she slept in that pale sleep.

But it was Richard who she loved. Another swig from the flask sent his mind into a little fuzz, but he didn't mind.
Richard, he reminded himself. But that was his own fault, throwing her out like that. Desperation drove him to push her away, and maybe that was why he had come to say that the couple should stay together... because if Richard pushed her away, she might be lost forever.

He should wake him up, he thought. Yes, wake up Richard and say what not to do with Lorey. He'd be thankful.
Another few swigs.
He'd be thankful and in debt to him... he'd have to do as he said. No, that wouldn't work, he'd fight back. If only there was a way to make Richard seem weak, if only...

These thoughts kept coming as Damian took deeper drinks, until the flask was empty. Even then, the little bottles the hotel had placed in the kitchen looked delicious all of a sudden. Damian took those up as well, and in no time at all, was as drunk as a sailor and just as unruly. Eventually he took a seat in a chair, slouching and mumbling to himself. The haze was a comfort. He could see why the rumors of Richard being a lush could be true: grief did that to you.

--

Lorey awoke about an hour later with such a head ache. She remembered Richard vaguely, calling her darling as she fell. Everything that had happened, Richard wanting to leave, Damian exposing an awful truth... it had given her such a drop in blood pressure that she just couldn't take it. She had fainted before, but not like that.

Lorey got up out of bed, narrowly avoiding stepping on Richard to go to the kitchen area. Maybe there would be some aspirin there...

And yet the only thing she could seem to find was a very drunk Damian, who's bleary eyes looked up at her with such sadness that it nearly broke her heart.

"Y-you're.... you're beau'ful," he said, slurring and speaking so slowly that she almost wondered if he was awake at all.
"Why don' you love me, Lor?" he mumbled.

Oh please, she thought. Why can't things be sane around here?
"Damian, you need to rest..."

But her reprimand only made him more agitated instead of sleepy.
"No... no, lis'n to me, Lor... lis'n. I... I love you..." In a tottering way, he stood from the chair. Had it not been for the flash of silver she saw emerge from his coat pocket, she would have gone closer to him to help. The gun looked so small and refined, but she knew it could do damage despite the size of it.

"Put that away." Lorey's harsh little whisper didn't seem to reach him, though.

"I love you... all I ever wanted was to... t'be loved. And now tha' cop is here, in th'way. I sh-shold jus..."
Tottering and reeling somehow brought him out of the kitchen and out by the bed, where Richard slept upon the floor. There was a clicking, loading noise before the device was pointed at him. The eyes of the fallen son looked so confused and determined as the gun was raised, as if he himself wasn't sure what was going on or about to happen.

Lorey knew the options, though. She knew them too well from her life in the slums. Slowly, ever so slowly, she came up from behind him to place her hands upon the gun.
"Damian..." her lips whispered. "Damian, please... you're not well. Shooting him w-won't help anything. You know you don't want to do that."

Wake up! she told Richard in her desperate thoughts. Wake up!

The blue eyes he loved so much looked at him with fear, but they were the only things betraying the terrible sensation running through her whole body. With her hands still on the gun, she slowly began to tilt it away from Richard.

"Damian, please... this isn't what you want to do. I know you, you want to help people, not kill them..." she cooed. For a few minutes, it seemed to work. His grip slacked, he let her lead it away.

"He's in the way." His voice caught. The world swam in tears. The dizzying, sickening world was a blue until they fell upon his ashamed face. "I 'ave nothing, I can' lose you, too..."

"You won't lose me. We'll be friends, like we always have been..."
And just when she thought he would allow the gun to fall into her own hands, Damian shoved her away, sending himself backwards as well. The weight of the gun in his hands was still there, and how heavy it was as he raised the barrel to his own head. Lorey's eyes widened. "No...!"

"You... you never wan'ed me," he said, smiling as the tears came down. That strange, controlled composure came back to him once more. For just a moment, Damian seemed to be the aristocrat he was born and raised to be.
"Sometimes I'd wonder... if it'd be worth it to just let the gun..."

Before Lorey could scream or rush forward, Damian's finger pulled smoothly on the trigger, sending all the parts colliding together.
She shielded her face with one hand, covered her ear with the other in some vain attempt to block the carnage, but...

There was no shot.

"Click."

Damian stood there, unloaded gun still pointed to his head. He laughed, laughed until his drunken sides hurt. Laughed, until it became odd sobbing noises, until the noises became true sobs, and Damian, the once proud overseer of the Ballroom, collapsed upon his knees in a heap.