Viral is the only one who is an unwilling witness to it, the sounds carrying to his sharp ears. A scream of anger, grief. Shattering glass. A terrible silence eventually broken by muffled sobs. He turns to walk back the way he came, but something keeps him in place.
And so he’s there when she eventually emerges, and it doesn’t take a genius to tell that something has gone horribly wrong. The front of her uniform whites is no longer white and there are mirrors in her knuckles, reflecting white and red and pain.
When Rossiu’s eyes meet his, they grow wide and horrified. He knows she doesn’t want to be found here like this, so he guides her away, planning on finding the nearest janitor to clean away the cause of her distress.
It unnerves the beastman when she doesn’t fight him and instead withdraws into herself.
He’s the one who scouts out empty hallways as he guides her back to the living quarters she shares with Simon. The last thing she wants, Viral knows, is running into someone when she’s in this state. She’s broken, inside and out.
.*.
He can smell it on her. The blood. The tears. Even through a fresh change of clothes and the soap she’d rubbed her skin raw with, he can smell what she has just lost. Something so small it was hardly there, so small and so wonderful. But Rossiu is stone-faced on the bridge, unmovable.
At her side, her fingers curl into a silent fist, knuckles torn and bloody and still glittering with shards of mirror.
When he finally catches her eye, he can tell she knows he knows. But she turns a silent look of challenge on him, and to his surprise he backs down. This isn’t his battle. He helped her the only way he could, and now it’s no longer his decision. He knows the the pain of having something so precious slip through his claws.
He once had dreams of family.
Hers were much more fully realized.
But there’s no use for what-ifs. He’d drive himself further into insanity if he ever took that road. Rossini’s too much like him, in that way. She’ll never look back, never confront the raw grief. Instead she’ll turn it inward and bury it deep within her marrow where it will never show.
And what Simon doesn’t know won’t hurt him.