The Quiet Place

[Omi]

Charlotte practically fell onto the offered seat, her pale face streaked with sweat and her breathing still ragged. There was no fear of her misinterpreting the gesture, though - reading the other woman's expression was like reading a book, and there was no sympathy in that gaze, just the impression that she was being inconvenienced. All the same, sitting down took the edge off, although it wasn't exactly a miracle cure. The added insinuation that the other woman was in the same position as her barely even registered with her - even if it was true, there was little difference between unwilling and willing collaboration in her mind. It sounded faintly like a weak excuse or justification for her current position, too, which didn't help matters either.

"I'm not from Lyon," she half-spat, half-gasped, her brown eyes staring up at the stony-faced woman as if daring her to argue. "I'm from Le Mans, in Maine. It's gone now- the supernova about a year ago- I was transferred after that. I don't know who you're talking about." She could have spun a semi-truthful tale about Orleans for days on end, but of course this girl was the provincial type. Charlotte had always thought of Lyonnais as something of a backwater, a dull little system tucked away in the sleepiest recesses of the Kingdom with nothing to offer but a planet full of farmers, but of course this girl happened to be intimately familiar with the damn place. It was all beginning to wear down on her - the past few hours had been like something out of a nightmare, and things were only getting worse. She had regretted agreeing to the Lorraine tour almost the second she'd stepped aboard that sad excuse for a liner, but no one could ever have guessed that it would have turned out like this. The room felt like it was tilting slowly up on its axis, the stress, strain, and outright trauma of the day all combining to take its toll on both her body and mind. "Don't you- do you have any painkillers?" Appealing to the woman's sense of pity was a waste of time, she knew that, but the sooner she deflected the ongoing interrogation, the better.

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