“You don’t give a damn about me.”
▓█ in universe (if you want) ▬▬▬▬ present day ▬▬▬▬ potential starter
He wondered when she would figure it out. For such a young age, he is a small master of manipulation; he has spun so many lies that he himself no longer knows what to believe, even in the depths of his own mind. He speaks to every person he meets with the full intention of squeezing everything that can benefit him out of them, and he will do anything necessary to receive it if he finds them useful.
Some people are worth more effort than others. Some are worth the effort, yet don’t require it. Evie is a middleground.
It started with curiosity, and a hunch, and a fondness for tea that proved useful, but not nearly strong enough to continue to enjoy it for as often as he found his way to the tea shop. He became a regular customer-- a little friendlier than his typical personality would permit, but it wasn’t a lie. They didn’t inquire enough about each other for lying to be necessary. It was comfortable.
That is, until he was the only customer in the shop, and a man walked in with a gunshot wound, and Evie leaped into hesitant action.
Since then, he dropped by whenever he was in the area and his time was free, likely unnerving the girl for how much he knew about her operation, but he assured her her secret was safe with him. (A secret is never safe with Protocol, it’s just kept quiet until it’s revelation will launch him closer to his ambitions.)
She eventually gave up on chasing him away, and he eventually watched her tend to wounds and treat those addicted with even more substances to both prolong and shorten pathetic lifespans.
It’s after the shop empties, and Protocol assisted in preventing a female from dying of some kind of allergic reaction in the center of the shop that she speaks, and it’s a subject he knew couldn’t be avoided forever.
“You don’t give a damn about me,” is a statement, but she and him aren’t so different, and he knows there is a question within it-- a lingering so why are you still here that she can’t say.
“You’re right,” is his only reply, and he shrugs like that’s enough, because he doesn’t have a better answer.
