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The last thing Hanna remembered, before the darkness, was gazing down at her skin, burning under the blue flame, and watching as hundreds of millipedes wriggled out of her flesh like maggots surfacing on a corpse. Her screaming echoed in her mind, but it felt far off, like it was happening to someone else. In the following hours, Hanna bobbed in and out of consciousness. One moment, she was being wheeled through hallways, flanked on either side by other bodies being wheeled alongside her. The next, she found herself bandaged from head to toe. Hanna tried to find solace in the fact that she was bandaged, but her skin felt far from okay. It was as if the itching and writhing contained within them was alive... but she didn't want to think about that.

And she certainly wasn't doing well enough to read. Her few hours of consciousness were spent staring at the ceiling and willing the pain to stop. Being unconscious might have been better.

It was almost a blessing when they piled more bodies into the room. Now there were beds close enough for her to talk to. And she seemed capable of moving her lips without debilitating pain. Beside her, she heard the man, it sounded like, in the bed beside her speak for the first time. Movement was too tough for her; she couldn't spare to turn her head. Instead, she used her voice.

"Hello?" she asked, voice cracked and dry. She cleared it once. That groan sounded familiar. "...Jack?" she ventured. "Is that you?" It probably should have been weird to her that she could recognize his sound of frustration/pain probably better than she might have recognized his laugh.

Hanna didn't actually remember getting bandaged. Lifting her head hurt too much, but she angled her eyes down as best she could. Her chest and torso were completely bandaged, as were her arms. She didn't remember her clothes burning away, but it made sense, probably. Like Jack, her face was partially bandaged, but her mouth was mostly free and her eyes too. Her hair sprawled across the pillow, matted in places. She could feel that much, aside from the burning.

"Yeah," she replied, more of a sigh too. "Better bacon than fetid Sarlacc innards. If we're making requests. My nose is too ******** up to function. That is a unique pleasure you are experiencing alone." Hanna was not aware of any scents beyond the dull throb of heat. It felt like something in her sinuses was frozen.

Her stomach growled too. When was the last time she had eaten? She thought of the granola bar that had been in the pocket of her coat. Last time she saw it, it was soggy with rotted... everything. Gross. "So here's a thing -- did I have a particularly cruel panic dream-SLASH-Alice-induced hallucination, or did millipedes, you know, Swiss cheese themselves out of my skin?" She fought the urge to itch.

Hanna snorted as best she could. "Ah yes," she mused, "I think I can smell failure even without my senses." The Lady had been strangely silent recently. Probably because she was kind of a b***h, especially when she was annoyed. Was this Hanna's punishment for the repodding -- Adelphe systematically opening her up for pain she because she could?

It was a conversation that needed to be had with the voice inside her head, but she wasn't about to do that with Jack one bed away.

Thoughts stirred at why famine would have a preference for a certain bug manifestation. "Maybe it is the segments," Hanna said, arching her back in a vain attempt to scratch an itch. Oh god, there were so many itches. It was an idle thought. She chased it for a moment before the overwhelming irritation of her skin distracted her again.

The sensation of someone looking at her fell over Hanna. But she wasn't as mobile as Jack was. The idea of turning her head felt like attempting to grow a set of wings out of her shoulder blades. Not gonna happen. She settled for good conversation instead. "First time with famine, or first mission? My first mission..." She thought back to it. "...was awhile ago. We literally got out of the pods, were shuffled into a room, and then sent immediately into the field to learn firsthand was Fear was. They let us get swarmed by monsters and then Caelius hopped in to save us from certain death."

It was strange to think back to that time. Hanna felt like she was thinking back to a movie she had watched once, not her own life. It felt distant, fuzzy. "No clones, no exes to kill. Most of the truly disturbed things that happened to me were in my trials. Until now at least." Her scalp tingled, eyes dipping shut before she snapped them back upon. She could feel unconsciousness cresting over her like a wave, but fought against it.

It was a fight she lost.

A moment after speaking, Hanna slipped back under into darkness.

Dryness lived in Hanna's throat. Beside her, Jack was bouncing back much faster, and it chapped her a**. She spent most of her day staring at the ceiling between bouts of unconsciousness. Medicine made it easier, but she wanted to rip free of her bandages and dive into a mountain of paperwork like a good little Death Hunter.

When Jack piped up, Hanna was already awake. She was counting cracks on the ceiling. "No," she said at first. And then: "There are 14 cracks on the tile above me. Maintenance is laying down on the job. At least they could put a TV in the ceiling. Even my shitty dentist did that." Annoyance laced her words. She was tired of being immobile, frustrated.

"Finish the book?" she asked. "I am jealous of your ability to hold things." She wriggled her fingers, as if to emphasize her inability to lift her arms. "I don't have many books here, but I read them constantly. I think I had a headache from not reading." A long sigh poured out of her.

"What is the book, anyway?"

Her voice was more than a little eager -- hungry, really, for details of it.

"Ceiling boob," Hanna echoed with a snort, "is a phrase I am sad I never heard until this moment. Think of all the missed opportunities in my life to use it." The bed squeaked as she shifted, matching the tiny squeak of pain that passed her lips.

Her limbs ached, not just from the burns but from the listlessness. Hanna had always been a moderately active person. Immobility did not sit well with her, at all. She was the type who shifted her body position every twenty minutes while reading a book, constantly searching for the perfect angle. To be confined to this same pose on her back was a new form of torture. At least when she was in the pod, she was mostly unconscious.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hanna could make out Jack's form on the bed. He held up the book, and it took extra effort to make out the words -- but she did all the same. "I never turn down some good melancholia, or reading," she said. And then, more emphatically: "How can you not like reading? The best things are written down." Reading was Hanna's thing. She could read endlessly. She got immense pleasure every time she finished a book, as if there was some long list of All Books Ever and she was slowly working her way through.

"I used to avoid Poe by choice, when I was younger and cared about things like the opinions of strangers. I didn't like to add fuel to the fire that I was likewise a moody b*****d," she said. That was all before her giant ******** IT decision that ended in facial tattoos, loving herself or some s**t, and diving headfirst into Deus' offer without actually knowing a single thing about the organization. "I ended up reading The Cask of Amontillado though. I was running lights for the play version. Was curious how they differed, something like that. It all feels far away now."

If she had better body control, she would have shrugged. The words were filler, filler that was better than further inventorying the cracks on the ceiling.

It made Hanna feel instantly better about Jack when he clarified that he did enjoy reading. She was prepared to seriously judge him, and now she didn't have to. Victory! "Remains of the Day was the book that almost ruined reading for me. It is a classic, highly regarded. My English teacher was practically frothing at the mouth when she introduced it to us." Hanna could still picture Mrs. G bouncing on her heels as she explained the deep, meaningful impact the novel had had on her. "I was bored to tears. I didn't want to read about a butler being passive aggressive for 250 pages. I could appreciate the description, blahblahblah writer crap, but the story itself just didn't do it for me. In any way." Yet she had still finished it; Hanna could never stop a book once she started, no matter how terrible.

It was the sole reason she had actually finished the third Fifty Shades of Grey book.

Laying in the bed, she tried to picture Jack as a jock. She could see it. Hanna had run track in high school, but she had never gotten into team sports. Her sisters were big on soccer when they were growing up, and perhaps out of spite, Hanna immediately quit it when they began. Her mother never forced her to start it up again.

Her ears picked up on the sound of Jack dropping the book, then reaching for something. Water, she needed some -- and as if on cue, Jack was offering it. "Let me just..." she began, straining every muscle to the nth degree, only to watch her hand crawl with an unreal slowness toward his outstretched hand. The bottle was mere inches away when Hanna felt the pull of a scab ripping free beneath her bandage. Her hand twitched, knocking the bottle from his hands and on to the floor.

"Oh.... balls," she said eloquently, grimacing as she eased her hand back down. Her side was throbbing. "You know, I really, really wanted to be able to do that. I visualized it. Mentally coached myself." An apology was forming on her lips, but luckily, Hanna didn't have to say it. A Life Hunter strolled by and scooped up the spilled water bottle. He put another one beside Jack and then pulled out a second, unscrewed the lid, stuck a straw into it, bent the spout toward Hanna's lips, and left it balanced against the bandages on her neck so all she had to do was turn her head and grab the straw with her lips. Then, without a word, the other Hunter was gone.

Hanna laughed lightly. "I feel like the person at the hibachi restaurant who can't use chopsticks and has to use those weird kiddie ones that are fastened together at the top." Turning her head, Hanna gripped the straw gently and sipped what was quite possibly the most glorious sip of water she had ever had in her goddamn life. "That man is a chef," she said. "This is delicious." She continued to drink, the straw making awkward sippy squeaks every so often. "Scratch that chopstick thing. I feel like a ******** hamster."

For a time, the only sound was the general wheezing of the room and the steady sipping noises coming from Hanna as she drained half the bottle. She came up for air with a satisfied sigh, careful not to move her head too much, lest she knock yet another bottle on the ground. "You're a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you," Hanna quipped.

The water had served to quench her thirst, but now it only highlighted how chapped her lips were and how achey her throat was. Double-edged sword. Her solution? Drink more water. "I was going to put in for leave. Get some new things. A bunch of my stuff went missing when I was put back in the pod. I can't keep wearing the same two pairs of shoes. Well. One now that the second pair got burned." Did Jack know she had been repodded? Oh well. Her burns were obscuring her desire to hide her weaknesses, whatever. "But apparently Caelius has put the kabosh on Deaths getting leave? Bullshit. If I could go, I'd bring back more Old Bay, for my spice. I'm almost out." Then, almost as an aside: "It's a Maryland thing... though I guess I don't even know where you're from."