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It was the realization that he couldn't have pulled his hand out of hers if he'd tried by force--the realization of how easily she would overpower him, and of how alien and freakish his wrist looked next to her fingers--that made him hesitate before the angry words clearly piling up behind his teeth could come spilling out.

There were two ways to end this (three, maybe, if he wanted to resort to pathetic and futile violence). He could either verbalize the fact that something was wrong--an acknowledgement that he held simultaneously with the thought that nothing at all was wrong, in a feat of impressive doublethink--or he could insist that nothing was and face down doctors

(in white coats with scales, a thought that made his stomach flip uncomfortably, with no time for him, with an endless succession of clipboards containing papers that he couldn't read, an endless succession of notes about him, an endless succession of commentary he had no way to defend himself against in the form of rigid numbers too high or too low and terse instructions like "do not administer opiates/opioids")

or in any case techs who would tell him things to the contrary and then he'd emerge from a dehumanizing series of prods and lectures and his silence would say everything that he hadn't been able to because he knew, he knew, that America would wait to hear it. He knew that he'd lie, and that she'd expect him to. He could either talk or he could come back to his room on a new and interesting set of leashes, when the whole point of the exercise (he had no words for this, but would have, had he stopped to think about it--but then Taym never did like to think) was to prove that he had, in some way, found a part of himself that was not leashed. It was a hell of a lot of punishment for not having the balls to say outright what he was half-thinking.

He gazed at the blank wall over her shoulder and despaired quietly. When he gently reached out to Fiona for some sort of sympathy, he received nothing: just absence and silence.

"Fine," he said finally. "Let me put my shoes on." So she'd give him his hand. So she'd stop touching him. And before they left he put his cigarettes into his pocket and he scooped the ice cream off the bed where it was melting in the carton and pointedly, he tried to eat it on the way: mechanically, without pleasure, the way a dog would eat.

Famine. For ******** sake.

"Obadiah Thompson, Death, Intermediate trainee," he rattled off, and he shot America an "I hope you're happy but you're staying right where you are" look as he shoved the ice cream carton into her hands to follow the Moon hunter back. He'd managed to eat about a third of it and by the last few bites had been visibly struggling not to retch.

Sunny was a petite woman, and at first glance there was an inviting, girl-next door quality that people often assumed reflected her personality right up until the point where she opened her mouth. Glancing up from a clip board, she took one look at the Death hunter and then to the Moon and asking, "Famine, again? I thought only five guys went on that mission. Are those his files, gimme and ******** off, I saw you took the last creme puff and so I'll tell you this one time and one time only, Jackson, I know where you sleep."

Finally, she acknowledged Taym as some sort of sentient being, snapping out, "Strip off and put on a gown." The nurse began flipping through his folder, expression both bored and irritable, apparently over his general existence.

Reading his file she commented absently, "Well aren't you the saddest sack of s**t. I don't know which is more surprising, that we recruited you or that you're still here. Got cannon fodder written all over this."

Sunny tossed the file onto the counter and looked him over. "So you look about ready to die. Have you been in contact with the Famine clan?"

Reaching out she grasped his ear and twisted it in a quick and vicious motion before picking up the clipboard again. "Well it looks like that's still attached, good to know." She checked a box and continued, "Those little worms were nothing. The more powerful clan members can pull the life and health out of you with a just a touch. You look like a victim."

She wrote down the word a*****e and drew a little box beside it before checking that one as well. "What was your weight coming in?"

She ignored the sass in favour of another question, "What do you think you weigh now?"

Sunny gestured to a scale set up against the wall, "Then step on up and let's see what's left of you." She went to the other side of the room to check her phone while she waited. A moment later an odd, tinny song began to play.

"For atmosphere."

"Yeah, I just knew you had it in your skinny little peanut head," Sunny's tone was almost encouraging. "Now, is your weapon defective or have you ******** up the bond some other way to keep it from doing it's job?"