Kieran still swayed as Jude's chair scraped against the kitchen floor. The horrible sound felt almost like the only real thing that had happened all morning.

Now that he was in the process of admitting it, the process of his confession, he felt almost - relieved. Maybe. There was no going back now, wasn't there? And he couldn't go back; could not face the risk again with the knowledge that it could have happened again. He could not think of his future past this conversation, past Jude's kitchen.

Suddenly he could not really think of anything.

He reached out one hand to grab onto Jude primarily because he was not actually entirely sure about standing, but also because more than anything he wanted to hold onto something. There was blood on his fingers, and the obvious literary references almost made Kieran laugh, never mind that it was his own. 

He did not know how long his ankle had been bleeding; the wound had veered towards gruesome, and besides that there was the feeling that he had had since looking at the ankle and those chains. That shaky out-of-body feeling, the horrible anxiety and the knowledge and more than anything that perpetual guilt.

It had been so close.

"I almost got out last night," Kieran said, in a tone he did not quite recognize, "I - it tried to chew off my foot."

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