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"Cannot tell," Kostya replied, noting the name as America snapped pictures of the name. Ramona, Ramona. A litany, a procession, a proclamation of madness. He did not know her: not who she was or where she'd come from, but her name was scrawled everywhere beneath the layers of ash and grime. His heart hammered in his chest.

Mimsy was many things, but Kostya knew her. Or at least, he had known some version of her, the her he could observe in quantitative amounts, with or without her awareness. He knew how she preferred her food (the exact temperature and schedule for optimal results), how often she needed to be reminded to stay hygienic (a shower three times a week when optimistic, twice when realistic; laundry once every week done by him rather than her), how furiously she scribbled into journals he was not permitted to read (he wouldn't understand them anyway. They contained a world so far away from him in every way.)

But she was changing, and Kostya was powerless to stop the transformation. For the first time, that fact bothered him. Mimsy had clearly ached for something that he could not provide to anyone, let alone to her. She had wanted her romance, to be emotionally wound to another person and bound with intimacy. Kostya did not pretend to understand, and had long since come to terms with the fact that he would likely never have such a desire.

If Mimsy treated her relationship with the same sort of devotion that she gave to all her other tasks that held her laser focus... Well. Mimsy was devoted, and steadfastly so. Obsessed would have been a better word, but it was unkind, and no matter the amount of hurt within him, Kostya still had no desire to cast unkind thoughts towards her, even if technically true. So instead, he downgraded the word to something safer. A reasonable word, one that didn't come preloaded with negative connotations.

Mimsy was devoted to a fault. He could see it, now, after living a life separate from her existence. There were many faults that he saw within Mimsy Kercher, but the recognition of those shortcomings did nothing to pierce the thick layers of protectiveness that he still held for her. Despite her choice in those she chose to be intimate with-- a madman, given these writings-- and her inability to stay anchored to reality, none of it seemed to matter. He needed to ensure that no one would trace this back to her.

Kostya had once asked her if he needed to hide a body.

He supposed that there was no time like the presence. The cinders were as much a corpse as any splayed cadaver.

"Harrison, blond one," he murmured, America's words barely piercing the haze of concentration that had descended upon his mind. "did call Rep dolphin. On Tvitter. Is vhere it come from. Very gay lion come from ridiculous mention of 'predator' Rep seem to think himself of. Much contradiction in him. Also, I vas letting him know, too," Kostya continued, nodding absently at Taym as he made his entrance. He dumbly continued to pat down the mattress with the sheet, a centipede escaping from beneath it and slithering to the floor.

"Ve are unavare. Is Potato Man room. Am thinking he play vith fire after going little mad." He thumbed at the exposed portion of the wall's writing: Ramona, Ramona.

Kostya stared hard at his gloved hands, grappling with his current reality. It felt as though it was floating all around him, shimmery and unclear, a veil of dust that cast a shadow over his entire mind. He was not a mean person, here. Besides Rep, it was not often that he was seized with a desire to hurt someone to feel anything at all. He had filled those holes with usefulness, with subservience that served whoever chose to wield him like the tool he desired to be. This version of himself could not share intimacy with anyone because of an unidentified revulsion he had towards touch. Perhaps, if he could locate the source of it, he could try to be normal. To have friends. Plural.

Stomach lurching, the Moon forced himself to focus on the tasks at hand: both the literal, and the metaphorical one swimming in his head. Mimsy was a train long since veered off its rails: the most he could now would be to try and cushion the inevitable crash landing. It was so much harder, because she still would not cooperate. (Mimsy did not look at him; did not speak to him; did not include him. It would be fine, because it had to be. It would be fine, because he had worked with less, and would again.) He had been cast out for leaving their room after being abandoned, and now she had cast out Robert with the cleansing flames of the furious.

"Going to need vacuum," he said to America, eye balling her, "vill go look, soon."

Taym had already started contributing to the aforementioned Sharp Things pile, mostly because the first thing he'd laid hands on had belonged there, and he eyed Kostya sideways and then the walls.

He didn't think to question Kostya's explanation of what had happened, nor America's analysis. It seemed reasonable to him. Robert was large and stupid and loud, which was the sort of person Taym expected to go entirely insane. It would never have occurred to him--have no fear, Kostya--that it might instead have been someone small and intelligent and quiet.

He was unsettled, though, and as unsettled by America's pragmatic forensics bent almost as much as by the destruction and the words on the walls.

"I didn't get any Christmas cards to compare it to," he answered her flatly, trying not to look too hard at what he was doing and just stay busy. Christ, he'd woken up in a bad state but he apparently had nothing on Robert. "Jesus. ******** glad he wasn't upstairs any more. Providential," he added, trying to pick up some item that dissolved into clumpy ash in his hands.

Harrison loomed in behind Rep in short order. He waved off the haze, swallowing the need to cough.

He and Rep bickered a ********, but the repartee never meant much beyond noise. Rep being talky usually meant he was relaxed. It was nice Rep was in a better mood, and the buoyancy was better than the gloomy self-pitying hole he'd been digging out for himself since the fight with Shiloh.

Between the ransacked furniture, the crazy writing on the wall, and the fire, the room was pretty ********. If the fire hadn't been recent, Harrison would think it came like that. Half the rooms down here were decorated with mad rants and iron maidens.

He looked over at Rep, then tugged his own earlobe pointedly. "You've also got, the thing."

Rep had forgotten about his earring. He tended to forget about things which weren't permanently in his field of view or essential for survival. When Harrison brought it up, his expression completely changed, grinning hugely. "You are a ******** genius."

He hadn't neglected taking stock of the room at least, some crazy person had written all over the not-quite as charred broken items of furniture. He figured it was just some other poor ******** driven nuts by this place and its close and terrible confines.

He couldn't fix the person's crazy mind but he could certainly ******** help with this room.

"The thing." he said, the crystal at his ear lighting up. "Is this."

And without, you know, warning people or anything, he decided it was the exact right moment to cast a huge ******** tidal wave which flooded the whole room and everyone else in it.

Of all the things to expect, a surprise tidal wave within the confines of the room, water splashing up to his gills, if he'd had had any.



The water began to drain away, leaving a bedraggled, sopping wet Kostya. His glasses were splattered with water, but with no dry surfaces around, there was nothing left to clean them with.

"Vell," Kostya remarked, looking around the room, his own displeasure fading into faint appreciation. This meant they could start carting things out into the hall. Perhaps America would deem the items unrecoverable, and then Kostya would be able to dispose of Robert's belongings. It was hard to get a read on her, at times.

"Very effective."

The moment Rep unhooked the earring without, you know, saying s**t like. I have a magic fire hose, would this help you in any way, Harrison ducked behind Rep.

The water pounded first into the room, and then smashed right back into both of them. Harrison braced against Rep and kept them both on their feet, closing his eyes and mouth against the spray of water. It poured past, right over their shoulders, before slopping out into the corridor.

When all they had was a wet floor and soaked limbs, Harrison said, "Might want to stand back," pointed and slow. He a step to the side and shook his arms.

"Is logical," Kostya agreed, the literal splash of cold water clearing his head. (There would be time, later, to further ponder the worries cradled close to his centre. Later, without the presence of company.) He went to stand by the remains of what was once a dresser, deducing that he likely could not carry it himself.

"Help?" he asked Obadiah, wondering if he'd burned the bridge by passing on his not-actually-intended message to America.

Kostya leveled Taym with the same sort of blank, impassive look that he was known to have. "Not fond of vhat you are calling me, am thinking," he replied, and carried the mattress out of the room.

"To trash. Is not possible to save." The thing stank to high heaven; of ash, of damp, of the flames that had roared not too long ago. Once it was disposed of, he took a moment to wring himself out, basking in the sun with a slow turn of his face towards the sky.

"Think Robert did it," Kostya lied, and for a thrumming moment, he wished that it was not so easy to lie. She had her claws in him, and he didn't begrudge her for it. Ramona, Ramona. The name that incited a fire in an all-consuming rage. "Am thinking Ramona vas from other vorld. Timing, it is right." He closed his eyes and felt another self, the scruff of a goatee, the curl of a smile (and a mean one). "Not bring bad topic up on purpose. Just to say, that is vhat I think."