Carneli
Lithiasaur

Zia fumbled with her keys as she attempted to lock up the diner. It had been years, but the partial loss of use in her right arm was something she still stubbornly tried to resist against and usually failed. Being stubborn was not going to make her fingers any less stiff, or make it easier to move. Regardless, she would rather spend more time slowly and carefully maneuvering her keys one handed than make someone stick around and help. She could still be stubborn about taking care of herself when she could.

Running the business and spending days in the kitchen wasn’t something she ever really saw herself doing until it just sort of happened, but the diner had been Noah’s baby, and she couldn’t allow it to fall into disarray after he died. So now it was hers to lock up at the end of business day, smelling like home cooking and dusted in stray puffs of flour. It was a good distraction. She found satisfaction in that corner of functionality when everything was so dysfunctional around them.

Straightening out her blouse, putting her keys away, letting her hair down and putting her wedding ring back on were robotic routine at this point, but when she turned to walk towards her car she faltered in her tracks recognizing a face she had fallen out of touch with.

Something caught in her throat and she didn’t cry out a name. In the current climate, names had become dangerous and precious things and the weight of them brought hesitation and silence. Out of that hesitation, came a quiet approach as she fumbled with the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

“You look too old to still be causing trouble,” She joked, the corners of her mouth weakly attempting something akin to a smile.

Anthony Darrow was feeling very minute of his age up until that moment. He had tried to put on a brave face and fight through it, every time he powered up and walked out there to fight the good fight. He tried to pretend his life could be normal, somehow, even when every truth told him definitively that normal was gone. This was the new world, the new way of life, and they had been suffering through it for years. He had never thought he would look back at the beginning of his time in the war, when he was younger and scared and everything was new but no one was truly winning, with fondness and even an air longing. Those had been good times, even when they were so bad.

They still had been better than this.

He waited for Zia quietly, leaning on his cane. His old injury had never healed, and the new battles had only aggravated the injury more. His grey hair had spread a bit more, over the sideburns of his hair and through the hair that curled around his ears, cut short and neat now rather than long and unkempt looking. His eyes were darker and perhaps more sunken from stress and concerns, and the wear of age doubled over by those other factors. He still held himself tall, though, when he was not leaning on the cane and as she looked up to spot him he did just that, straightening up and holding his shoulders back, his chest up, his head high. He smiled at her warmly, though emotion flooded over him as she got closer.

The older man did his best to hold himself back, but he failed miserably.

“You look too young to not be,” he said, moving toward her and catching her in a hug before she could get away from him. He remembered she had never been much for hugging, but he could not help himself. He had gone there on a whim, to visit with someone he had fallen out of contact with, and now that he saw her he realized just how much he missed her, and how much he had worried about her. He held her tightly, almost picking her up off the ground. There paternal and protective warmth in his hug was nearly unmistakable. He said much more through that contact than he could have in words.

“I’ve missed you.”

His comment about looking too young got a small, physical reaction where she drew up her shoulders and released a small sound that seemed like the beginning of a wry laugh. Even if it hadn’t been meant that way, she had been becoming keenly aware of being on Zirconia’s aging schedule with each passing year, and watching Chester as he got older, faster, wondering how much time they had before they had to hide. Hide more, or better, or hide completely. That same fear of time rose in her chest as she looked at Anthony Darrow’s sunken eyes and felt like she could physically absorb the weariness she saw in that man, could feel it in her temples and behind her eyes in the way it seemed to thread through every aspect of his appearance.

She drew a sharp breath at being caught in a hug, but the catch in her throat released and broke the tears she’d been afraid would find their way out if that tension escaped. Nothing fell down her cheeks, but her eyes welled as she wrapped her arms around him and dug her fingers into his shirt as much as she could weakly muster.

“You have no idea,” She said with a shaky laugh as her feet found solid weight on the pavement again and she released one arm to brush curls behind her ear and look at him, “How badly I needed to see family right now.”

The shaky laugh turned into some other noise, something repressed with a sniffle as she tried to cope with the watering in her eyes in the careful way one did without trying to smudge make up. Between the losses and the falling outs and the way she had receded from interactions with most of the factions, Chester was really the only constant she had on a regular basis.

“Should you be here?” Was the next question, asked in a quiet and unsure tone like she really didn’t want to know the answer. She was detached enough she wasn’t sure how the refugees functioned or how risky the city was anymore. It had all muddled into one mixed ball of survival and deception.

Tony held on to her and did so as tightly as he was able to without fear of crushing her completely. If left to his own devices, though, he was sure he would never get enough of just having her there and knowing for that small, fleeting moment, that she was safe and whole, and very much alive. He was her family, and when she said that it just made his eyes fill with tears and a shudder move through him. His shoulders sagged and he eased her down to the floor carefully again, pulling away from the hug but holding her with both hands and looking down at her with a sad, misty look.

“I just needed to see you, to make sure you were safe. I’ll be alright, and I am sure we are alone.”

At least, he hoped so. He had been very careful in his movements, as he had learned to be now. He did not take unnecessary risks, though this could certainly count as one. If it was a mistake, they would both suffer it, but for now he felt like they were safe and had a small amount of time to share with one another. He just wanted to catch up with her life, though he knew that it would be just as terrible and depressing as his own. At least she had not been taken from him, and that he could hold on to, for what it was worth. As long as they continued, as long as they did what they could to survive and to resist, then they could keep stumbling along. They could endure.

“I won’t stay long. Do you have some place we can talk?”

There was so much to tell her. Maybe she had already heard. About Chaonis, about his corruption and the way he was forcibly taken from his family. And Dogby. Little Dogby, a small but terrible loss and a painful reminder that no one was innocent enough to be safe from the war as it continued to rage. The White Moon were beaten back, beaten down, but Camelot maintained the belief that they could fight back.

There had to be a chance for them.

“If you want me to go, though, I understand. I don’t want you to be at risk, that’s not why I’m here. If you’re safe here, if you’ve made a life for yourself, that’s all I wanted to know. Need to know.”

As badly as she had wanted to see him, to revel in familiar presence, and feel a connection to something again, she nodded appreciatively when he said he wouldn’t stay long. Her pulse had risen and her heart felt like it was going to overload and cease action at any moment feeling the tug that came with seeing family. Her old family. But she had become fiercely protective of her safety and Chester’s and what small comfort they found in operating as normal. At least pretending to be normal. The city posed a danger, and it wasn’t much of a life, but she could go home. She could eat dinner in their kitchen, crawl into her own bed, and not struggle through life in a refugee camp.

That was more than a lot of people had, and her first instinct was to safeguard it at all cost.

But it was easier to put up her place of work. It was still a risk but she didn’t mind grabbing his hand and leading him back to the building she’d just closed. Noah’s old diner, his pride and joy. The fingers of her right hand couldn’t fully close around his, but there was stiff effort in the gesture.

There was some fumbling with the lock, and pushing past to the back room which was more than a pantry. Contraband was hidden here, if you knew where to look. This was where, if someone had the right connections, she still operated as an information broker. The rules had changed, though. She sympathized with none of her customers or her victims, it was a callous business and any risks she was asked to take needed to be paid for. It wasn’t for anyone’s benefit but hers, because debts and exploitation generated were the way she shielded herself when she didn’t have the brute force to.

“It’s not much of a life, but… there are… there are good parts,” She said, finally picking up her end of the conversation like nothing had happened. Although with a small, almost embarrassed sounding laugh she flashed her left hand where she finally wore her ring. After Chester had proposed, she asked for time to ‘think’ and ended up wearing it on a chain around her neck for years. Now it was in its traditional place on her left hand, next to Alfheim’s signet ring. She had kept it from him year back, used it for keep away and practical jokes and then whined like a child when he took it back.

Now it was hers again, and she wished it wasn’t.

“Noah’s dead,” She coughed out and then ground her teeth shut together in an attempt to control any emotional outbursts. This was his place, she was holding his keys, and every personal touch the silly surfer turned baker had added to his kitchen remained in loyal preservation. But he himself was gone, no matter how she tried to trick herself into lulling into those moments where, for a second, she thought he was just out and was going to come back and relieve her of her post any second now.

Tony followed her as she led the way, looking around the place. He had never been to Noah’s diner, and he soon realized just how much he would regret that when she told him he was gone. His heart sank and he looked at her for a long, quiet moment, absorbing the information as much as he was absorbing how sad she looked because of it.

He moved to her again and put his arm around her shoulders, placing a very tender and painfully fatherly kiss to her forehead. He had very few chances to be a father these days, when he thought about it, which meant his protective instincts were a bit out of control. He was like a wayward mother hen who had lost her own chicks, and was basically adopting everything around her. At least he did not sit on his new charges, though.

“I am so sorry to hear that… he was a good young man. How are you doing… with that? This? You’re running this place now, I see. And you’re married…”

When did they all get old enough to marry and have kids? Probably around the same time his hair turned so grey. Time was slipping away from them faster than he could imagine. They had been living this terrible life, ever since the Negaverse managed to take over the city, for so long… they had all learned how to exist like this.

It wasn’t right. There was more, and they had to get to it. Camelot was determined to get to it.

At least she had someone who would take care of her. He hoped so, anyway. If that ring meant anything these days. For him, his ring to his wife was a promise, and he had not yet strayed from that. He would protect her with all that he was, and he swore not to lose any more of their family. He would not be able to live with it, if he were honest, if anything were to happen to her.


Zia sniffed and scrunched up her nose, content to forego acting her age in reception of such easy and welcome comfort that came from his gestures. She opened her mouth to say something and regretted it instantly as an ugly sob sound came out instead of words. After a second to muster up the wherewithal to form sentences, she tried again, and intermixed it with a sad chuckle. “He was a ******** moron right to the end, you know,” She managed, but there was affection there. Her brother’s actions were things she wasn’t brave enough to do anymore. Things she refused to do. Strangers were dangerous and not worth her help, she had decided. Strangers could rot in the streets like they had left her brother.

“He’s all I got now, but it’s enough,” She said with a nod as she fiddled with her ring and shuffled on her feet.

“Are you okay?” She asked, a bit of fear mingling at the pit of her stomach in anticipation of his answer. Was anyone really okay? What if she could help?

She was sure it would probably be the worst thing if there was something wrong she could help with, because she had decided help was not available from her anymore. But she couldn’t deny Tony. He couldn’t e turned away like faces she barely knew.

“I’ve heard about the… the camps.” But unfortunately not about Chaonis.

He let her mourn as she chose to, staying close and staying quiet. His presence was much different to Luxor. While the Pluto knight was silent and stalwart, Camelot, or Tony, was warm and open. It always felt like he wanted to say something, but opted not to, though he would always offer advice or come up with some sort of wisdom at the drop of a hat if it was needed. Luxor never felt like he needed to say anything. Both approaches resulted in the same thing, though: a peaceful quiet that broke only when it needed to.

“I know you loved your brother, and I know he loved you. I will miss him,” he said quietly, shaking his head. He looked at her wedding ring again thoughtfully, then nodded his head and took a step back. She asked him if he was alright, and no answer came to him immediately.

Crossing away from her, he pretended to be interested in something he saw in the wall, but he was just looking at nothing, his eyes growing a bit glossy and distant as his thoughts turned. Somehow, telling her, who somehow did not know, was harder than having strangers at the Headquarters coming up to him to talk to him about it. Everyone there seemed to know, and that was what Painite had wanted, but now, here… he almost wished he did not have to be the one to say it.

“We’re alright. We’re surviving. Gathering. We do what we can to fight back, or at the very least protect what we have. The camps aren’t so bad, for what they are, and there are other safe places.”

He was dancing around telling her, and now it was his turn to shuffle his foot against the ground and shoving his hands into his pockets.

“My son Nathan… Sailor Chaonis. He was corrupted by the Negaverse a few months ago.”

The silence that followed the statement was profound, and Tony did not move. He stared at the ground, but he was not seeing anything, and for a moment it was like he had gone somewhere else. The air was dense with pain and anger, though his face was serene enough.

There was a little bit of guilt that surprised Zia when it managed to pierce through her consciousness. She was in a position to help the refugee camps and had so far staunchly refused. If Luxor wanted to check in with HQ, if he wanted to help and contribute, that was fine. But she had walled herself off, and refused people who didn’t come to her doorstep. Even then, they were likely turned away if they weren’t family, or didn’t have anything interesting to barter.

And then the news about Chaonis had followed and it nearly bowled her over. She hadn’t had many one on one interactions with him, but he was still a presence she knew of, had teased girls at training session for looking at him, knew his name, knew his face.

And somehow knowing it was just in the last few months made it all the more worse. It was a fresh loss and a surprising one when she thought there wasn’t very much for anyone to lose anymore.

“I… oh my god, Tony…” She whispered with just a hint of a whimper eking through her tone. She reached out one hand to nervously touch his arm, unsure of what to do. In the old days she might’ve run into a full body tackle of a hug, but there hadn’t been room for intense and unmitigated emotion in these recent years. It was solemn and uncomfortable. And above all surreal. The Chaonis in her head was the same a*****e smiling through Maia’s training session. She had no ability to picture him older, corrupted and stolen. And she had no real desire or need to, either.

“You can… He’s not…” She swallowed, sentiments on her tongue not articulating as well as she wanted them to. “Do you think you can get him back?”

Tony offered her a very small smile. It was profound in what it wanted to do, offer warmth and comfort and the thankfulness he felt for her being so caring. It did not reach those levels, though it had all the looks of it. The sadness buried just beneath the surface of the look, the way his lips trembled at the corners and his eyes dimmed while failing to make contact with hers. He took a trembling breath, struggling to hold himself together while he spoke about it.

It was not working. His efforts were failing him and he shook his head, having to turn away from her and rub at his eyes in an effort to beat the tears that were threatening to break him.

He felt like Chaonis was dead. It was hard to admit, even to himself, but her question made him consider it. Nathan was gone, lost forever probably. Even if they could purify him again, there was no telling if he would ever remember who he had been before he was corrupted. There would likely never be another chance for him to speak to his son again. To tell him how much he loved him and how proud he was of the work he’d done as a Senshi. Camelot had gone so long without knowing, and after he found out the two of them just took it for granted. They agreed to a mutual silence on the whole thing, never really speaking about what they did for the White Moon unless they had to.

But Camelot had been so proud of him. He had loved him so much. He wanted to see his son grow and become so much more than what he had been allowed to be. But his life had been cut short, and by all accounts, Nathan Darrow was dead, and could never complete anything he had started. Never speak to his friends again. Never find love and learn to understand what life had to offer him, the way his father had.

It was unfair.

And worse yet, Camelot still saw his son. Whenever he saw that corrupt senshi, he saw his son. Saw what he was being made to do, and how cruel he had become with his starseed filled with Chaos. He saw Painite puppeting him, using him like a toy and delighting in how much pain it caused Camelot and others. It was all just a game to her, and the more Camelot hurt, the funnier it was. The shell that looked like his son was just a ghoul, a constant reminder of how badly Camelot had failed as a Knight and as a Father.

“I ah,” he said, his voice shaking, “I don’t think he’d ever be the same. But even if his memories are gone, and he’s someone new, I want to try and purify him. I want to see him free of Chaos. And if we can’t do that… I won’t leave him to them.” His voice broke again, and this time he had to lift his arm to bury his face in his elbow, choking on a sob.

Zia’s lip quivered until she grit down her jaw to make it stop. Camelot was right, a corruption or purification had huge effects on the starseed. To do it twice would probably render a totally different person, and who knew how whole they’d be. Even if he had succeeded in getting Chaonis back, it wouldn’t never be a whole victory and could very well be hollow.

And that was assuming he would come willingly. The obvious solution to get Chaonis off of the battlefield was a solid and clean kill, but that was thinking in her usual terms. Of looking at people as dehumanized chess pieces. To try to apply that cold logic to Camelot and his son caused a wave of rare self-disgust she wasn’t used to feeling.

She wondered what was wrong with her, and how far she had gone down a bad road when her first thought was to tell Tony that it shouldn’t have to be him, he shouldn’t have to be the one to exterminate his son. A charitable thought unless one read through the fact she was implying obviously someone else should take him out. She kept her teeth firmly pressed shut. That didn’t need to be said out loud.

She had her regrets with her own personal losses and empathized more than she realized, because she idealized Tony and his alter ego as Camelot as the perfect paternal figure. Probably the only real one she’d ever had. There was no way he had regrets, because the version in her head did everything right, and never failed. He was the perfect protector. And while her brain was rambling this in confusion she found that she still hadn’t fully recovered from being knocked down by the original information.

She was floundering in this unwelcome break from the safe routine she built in her little wall of pretend playtime. It was enough to break her down and finally, finally go into that massive hug, even if it was less massive than she wanted it to be, but her skinny arms did their best. Zia didn’t run around playing monster hunter and kickboxing. She wasn’t physically fit in the least having given up those silly notions of running around the city after her injury. She didn’t dress like a street rat off to start some s**t in magical wars, she was a grown up, who dressed in sensible business casual wear and went to work and stayed quiet and didn’t flounder and flail and openly weep into people’s shirts.

Except right now, because she totally was.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” She blubbered.

Tony felt her clinging to him and he knew his resolve was gone. He wrapped his arms around her and sank down to his knees, shutting his eyes tightly and finally letting himself mourn the way he had been so stubbornly refusing to do. He clung to her and sobbed against her, while listening to her cry as well.

“It was! It was my fault! I should have stopped him: I could have saved him! I thought he could handle her but I couldn’t stop him. She took him from me! I was took cocky, I was sure we had her. What kind of a father am I, letting me child run head first into a battle I knew he could not win?!”

He gripped her arms a bit too hard, maybe, though he was not paying attention to it.

That night was burned into his memory. They had been battling for so long, surviving this terror their world had become. They had made a good team, working together without talking about it, effortlessly. Father and son, the dynamic duo. They had forged a mutual, silent respect for one another and they worked to well. Camelot felt young again, working with his son, seeing how strong he was and how powerful he had become. Camelot felt like they could handle anything, like they understood the way the world was working, and they could, if they just kept at it, make things better.

How wrong he was.

She had come out of no where, and she was ferocious. She had her team with her, and it was a blood bath. Camelot had killed two people that night, and would hardly have thought anything of it when he turned to see Painite pinning Chaonis to the floor. He’d left the younger Darrow to take her on while he handled the others. Chaonis lost. And he lost everything.

Camelot heard the screams in his dreams still, when he managed to sleep at all. Both his own and his sons. And he would never forget them.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s gone, and it’s my fault. My son, the one I could barely call myself a father of… I tried so hard to make up for all the time I’d lost with him. I only knew him as a young man, and he died so fast… he’s gone, and I have to fight his ghost. I let him die.”

Zia had never really had an issue with being honest, even when she knew it was blunt or going to hurt the person she was talking to. Well, most of the time she never had an issue. Back in the day there were certain people she just saw as fragile who needed more protection, although the criteria for that got harder and harder to meet as the years went on. She still found it jarring when she couldn’t answer Tony. Chaonis sounded like a pretty lost cause to her, but she couldn’t tell him that, even as he more or less said it himself.

She was already bawling when his resolve broke, so when it seemed like they crumpled to the floor she didn’t see any reason to stop. At least, she couldn’t stop by then. She croaked out a small whimper as he grabbed her arms and shook her head furiously, but she couldn’t offer the comfort she desperately wanted to give him.

Instead, grief that stemmed from her own failures seemed to escape the box they’d been so carefully and tightly locked in and flooded her mind with such force she thought the pressure behind her eyes would blind her.

She had let Alfheim recklessly go out alone, knowing he would do something stupid on faith with or without backup. She had neglected to go looking for him for days because she wasn’t speaking to him. He died alone and quietly without fanfare and no one noticed; Not right away, at least. He deserved better, and she was an immature child who hadn’t given it to him when he needed it the most.

She had let Orpheus think he was playing hero, and he died eviscerated on the asphalt.

It wasn’t fair, they had deserved better. Someone who knew what to do, someone who could’ve offered support. And that was all she could think when Tony mourned his son so deeply and blamed himself. She deserved her share of blame too was the resounding conclusion her consciousness kept screaming at her, and that made it hard when all she wanted was to tell him he deserved nothing but condolences. She wanted to tell him, explain it wasn’t his fault. There had to be words, somewhere, but when she tried her mouth just gaped and quivered and released nothing but sobs.

It was bittersweetly cathartic, in it’s own way, even though her respiratory systems were brought to exhaustion already from the sobbing and the heaving, and she resigned herself to leaning against him as her shoulders occasionally jerked with forceful sobs that refused to stop in spite of fatigue.

She was mentally scrambling, grasping at random things in her knowledge of the English language, trying to expertly piece together something articulate and comforting to tell him. Things he needed to know, things she desperately wanted him to know.

And all that came out was a weak, “I’m so so sorry, Tony.” and the pulse in her temples furiously kicked in the frustration that she couldn’t do better, that the sentiments she wanted for him were locked in by her inability to tell him.

Tony struggled with himself for a long moment, hearing her soft words and just holding on to her as they both mourned for the ones they had lost. He knew that everyone had lost someone in this war: there was no escaping it any more. At the very least, his son still had a small chance, even if he could not really accept it as a true possibility. He would never know his son again, but maybe he could still know a new, good, Chaos free man in his place.

Would it be the same? It was still his son. It was a hard idea to face, but it was also a dangerous hope. He knew he had to keep himself grounded, and not let his despair get the better of him. There were so many of them suffering, and they all needed some strength. He had to be the one to provide it, if he could.

And he would damn well try.

“I’m sorry, Zia,” he said gently, pulling back and reaching up to touch her face lightly. He wiped away a few of the tears he found there, smiling at her with his tear filled eyes and his red face betraying him completely. He managed to draw some sincere warmth, though, and he shook his head very slowly.

“For your loss. For mine. For this… whole thing. But I am so very glad to still have you, and I need you to promise me you’ll stay safe. And I will protect you, though you might not see me for some time, alright? I’m always going to be with you.”

He would not lose her like he had lost his son, and he would not let her go without at least making her know that she was loved and he was going to do his best to help her live as normal and safe a life as he could. Even if he was just a guardian at a distance, a knight in shining armor that she could not see, he would be there for her. He could not lose another one.

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

Zia’s breath came in hard, shaky lengths even as she managed to push the sobs down and felt his hand wipe away the free falling tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry, too…” She managed out in an ugly, wretched voice that was filled evidence of how hard she’d been crying.

She cleared her throat, and it was easier to sit back on the floor than immediately get up. On of her heel had come off in the process and she just ended up picking at her nylons for lack of anything to do that wasn’t totally breaking down.

“I’m safe, I’m fine,” She said, almost shaking her head again as she thought of him risking the move crossing into the city, out of it. Had they even heard the announcement out there in the hidden camps? “The city’s going to start requiring permits, papers to come and go. It’s not safe. You need to stay safe too.”

She glanced around the room they were in, the operation she ran. Comfort food with a side of brokering, something that might not have kept them totally safe but she felt like it did. It kept them comfortable. “I’m safe as can be, I’m a productive member of society with my family and my stupid little picket fence,” She assured him with a bitter laugh that ended up cut short by an unexpected sob that managed to sneak through.

It wasn’t a fair assessment. She loved going home to Chester and Dodge. Inside their home was nothing but comfort and a sense of security. But in the back of her mind she knew that security was false, at least to some degree. She knew that the price of security was being part of the Negaverse machine. And years ago her younger self would’ve been disgusted that she had given up rebellion and adventure for compliance. In a lot of ways she was disgusted with herself now for being so compliant, for being so weak.

Her shoulders jerked again with the motions of crying, of trying not to cry, and trying to just stop. She hadn’t cried in years, and now it was like it was all unclogged and coming back after building up. “I…”

Expressions of love were hard. They were there, there were thought, but they were hard.

“You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a dad, Tony, of I course I know it,” Was what she managed to finally articulate. There were still so many walls around her speech and carefully built hurdles she’d constructed to protect herself over the years, it was the closest she was going to get to ‘I love you too’.

Tony took a breath and nodded his head slowly, trying to master himself at last. He knew that she cared for him, and did not push for her to say more than she was willing to. It was enough hearing that she knew he cared about her, and that he would protect her when she needed him. He held on to her for a moment more, letting them both cry the last of what they needed to get out, before he snuffled and got to his feet, helping her up carefully.

“I should go, before anyone comes along to see me here. You’ll be alright.”

And so would he. He would try, at least.

Smoothing his clothes and recovering his cane from where ever it had fallen, he nodded his head and offered her a gentle, reassuring smile. He still felt shaken, but he had to make sure that his being there did not go on too long, and he did not cost her anything by making this appearance. He knew that his presence was dangerous enough, but it would not stop him from making good on his promises.

He nodded his head and moved away from her, after a long moment of debating with himself and forcing himself to do it.

“Take care of yourself, Zia. Really.”

He took a breath and then went to the door, peering out and glancing around before he slipped out and quickly, or as quickly as he could, made to disappear into the shadows.