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Janice Fitzpatrick had not been taking care of herself, and her father had actually looked at her long enough to be worried. Nearly two and a half years of Negaverse service, of coming home at odd hours and occasionally nursing bruised from fights, had never phased him. He never paid much attention. She'd always been an independent person. His own hours were odd enough and she had been clever enough that he hadn't noticed. There was never any suspicion that she was doing anything more than studying really hard, and that her increased levels of stress and fatigue were anything besides the results of being an overachiever.

Disappearing outright for weeks had changed that. Suddenly turning up at the hospital he worked at, the signs of neglect and abuse more than obvious, had been a breaking point. Something was wrong.

Something had happened.

When the door opened, Ladon would be greeted with an all-too-familiar expression -- except, it was on only a slightly familiar face. The man behind it was some inches taller and a fair bit older than Janice, but the family resemblance was striking enough that he could conclude easily which parent she took after in appearance. Same strong jaw, same sharply-angled face, same stern demeanor; though this Fitzpatrick sported jet-black hair and eyes the color of rusted copper.

"You're Janice's friend?" he asked, curtly and sharply. If Janice's gaze could cut like a dagger, her father's was as penetrating as a Death Star laser.

"She's in," the man replied, curtly and businesslike -- also horrifically similar to Janice. For all Ladon knew, some of the photographs of Janice vaguely visible on the mantle from the doorway were actually pictures of her father as a teenager. He eyed the fruitbasket with an unusual kind of curiosity, as if it were a dessert at a restaurant he wasn't sure whether he was going to regret ordering.

In actuality, he was just trying to remember whether or not his daughter was a fan of fruit. Besides holidays and birthdays, he hadn't really sat down and shared a meal with her in ages.

"Come in and take a seat," he said. "I'll... go tell her you're here. You said 'Ladon,' right?"

He stepped aside for the boy to come in, quickly latching the door behind him afterward. There wasn't anything too remarkable about the house besides that it was nice, if not a little dusty from a lack of convenient housekeeping. A crammed-to-bursting bookshelf could be seen next to the staircase, there was a copy of one of Dr. Fitzpatrick's medical degrees hanging framed on the wall -- and, of course, there was a grandfather clock, ticking the awkward moments away one by one.

Dr. Fitzpatrick had presumably more or less disappeared, probably off reading or doing paperwork or however it is surgeon fathers normally spent their time off. After a few minutes his presence was replaced by a new, slightly more familiar one.

The sound of muffled footsteps on carpet could be heard slowly approaching as Janice made her way down the stairs, the noise accompanied by an also-muffled clattering and scraping of small objects against cardboard. She had a long box tucked under one arm. Ladon probably found it about as familiar as Janice was.

It was Scrabble.

"Ladon," she muttered, her voice a making a small upturn in greeting. She was stingy with her words otherwise. Without bothering to say anything else, she set the box down and opened the board on the table, placing a stand for the letter tiles in front of her guest before fishing one out for herself. There was no need for small talk. Board games were her small talk. Murky plum hair fell in a small curtain around either side of her face as she continued her set-up. It added a tired dourness to her appearance that she didn't quite have with her usual braid.

A fruit basket. He'd brought her a fruit basket? Janice's eyes twitched their way over to the gift, the sharpness in her eyes receding a bit but her frown not changing one iota. She liked fruit, yes. But this had been intended as a gift, and a gift implied an occasion for one.

And the only event that this could possibly be related to was one that she never wanted to think about, or be reminded of.

Ever.

Again.

"I'm not all that picky," she said, in an amazing display of self-ignorance. There were plenty of foods she'd be willing to eat, for certain, but the scrutiny with which she regarded them could make her worse to deal with than someone with a much narrower range of preferences. "But you didn't need to bring anything." Her jaw reset itself with a slow grinding of her teeth. Ladon had a handful of letter tiles in front of him a blink later.

"You can go first," Janice flippantly offered, in an unorthodox display of hospitality.

She didn't bother to mention that she hadn't played Scrabble in over a year.

"You're supposed to spell a whole word," said an impatient and increasingly irritable Janice, gazing with a raised eyebrow at the single 'R' Ladon had placed on the board. "Or are you still thinking? If you are, it's not exactly a good idea to improvise with your letter placement, Ladon." Her tone was incredibly snobbish, on top of it all. It was probably something to be expected from a player who had a three-year district championship under her belt -- exasperated to be playing with an amateur who barely knew the rules.

She tried to remain focused on the game, and the current snail-like pace of it, as the inevitable questions began. She knew that was why Ladon must have been here in the first place. To check up on her. To see if she had recovered. And, though it was at no intention of his own, to remind her that she had very recently endured a period of her life where she was weak, miserable and afraid.

"You met him," she curtly replied; "you can imagine." Then she collected a Double Word Score for herself, and nodded to Ladon to play another handful of letters.