Sollux== Stop crying.

Who said that you were crying? Only little kids and the Vantas's cry.

Okay, so you were crying, but only a bit.

Two hours was all it took for you to break down, which is pretty shitty when you think about it, but you think that you deserve some sort of exception to that rule.

Your name is Sollux Captor. You are a student taking classes online, a cashier at Target, and, as of a few hours ago, a suspect.

Aradia Medigo's body had been found last night at exactly nine twenty-five according to the officer currently sneering at you from across the steel table you were seated at. She is tall, with long legs and pierced lips and a sneer that would bring a man to his knees. More specifically, you, if this lasted longer.

You had been taken into custody at some unholy hour this morning, having been trapped in here for god knows how long. The clock on the wall couldn't possibly be correct, saying that it was only four am. It couldn't have been less than twelve hours ago when you saw her last, bundled in her ram hoodie and leaving the lobby of your apartment complex as you yelled after her.

That was exactly the problem that you were facing at the moment. You had been the last person to have seen your closest friend alive, still smiling and breathing and puffing out air into the cold through her nose as she sighed and dammit it was just making you cry harder thinking about this. The tears only serve to remind you that you haven't gone completely numb with grief yet, as per usual, but that would surely kick in soon enough.

The fact that someone so warm and awake and alive could be laid out onto some examining table, ready to be cut into like an animal, still hasn't quite registered with you yet. Aradia and the body in the morgue that her roommate had identified couldn't possibly be the same person.

A red-haired officer with a dragon tattoo slides you over a box of cheap tissues that would most likely only serve to peel a layer of skin off, but you decline anyways because you know that the sooner you answer these questions the sooner you can go to Mituna's house and drown your sorrows in sugary sodas and his fiancée's homemade tacos with no judgment before becoming a full-time hermit for the rest of your pathetic life.

"Could you try asking the question again?" You speak softly, carefully lifting your tongue out of the way of your too-long teeth as to not lisp at a time like this.

The cop on Dragon Lady's left rolls her eyes and flips her notebook like she has been for the last half hour while waiting for you to stop blubbering like an infant. "What happened the last time you saw the victim?"

"Aradia." The reaction is immediate because no, she will always be Aradia, not some limp form under the starched sheets that they keep in the morgue for that purpose.

"Whatever, just answer the question, punk." Piercings is quite simply having none of your shit this early and for a moment you do not feel anger or sadness. The night has taken far too much out of you for that.

"Come on, don't be so rough on the kid!" Dragon Lady sends a halfhearted punch into the woman's arm, then turns to face you. She looks right through you, which would be weird if not for the fact that she's obviously blind, a stout white lab with a tag that reads 'Pyralsprite' parked underneath her chair. "What happened the last time you saw Aradia, Lemonhead?"

"We were just talking... I hadn't seen her since she left for some school trip last month. We just hung out like we used to." You were such a liar.

"Is that all?" The annoyed officer raised one pierced eyebrow at you, the dark spirals of ink that trailed down her arm shifting with the muscle as she wrote.

"...We had an argument. In the lobby." The two women mange to exchange an impossible sideways glance before leaning forward to listen to you.

"What was it about, Mister Captor?"

"She said," You swallow the lump in your throat and notice that hey it's a little warm in here before continuing, "She told me that she loved me, but that she had to go somewhere. She said that it was important that I don't go looking for her."

"And why was this so important?" Officer Maryam is eyeing you up like a scared animal that she means to bring in for slaughter, which isn't that far from the truth, really.

"She had this boyfriend, someone with a Z for their last name. He didn't like her and I hanging out too much. I think she was afraid of him finding out." The meathead actually had the nerve to show up once, to pick her up after one of your movie nights. The dent in your doorframe from where he'd punched and you'd dodged had been covered with a picture frame.

"Did she mention this boyfriend any time during the hours when you two interacted?" Dragon Lady looks like she's trying to call her vision back by concentrating on your face, which isn't freaking you out at all.

Okay, maybe a little.

"She had said that he was getting back from his cousin's house tonight, something about them having dinner." You remember every word, how relieved she had looked but with a certain twitch of uncertainty etching itself into her smile. You had figured that she was as scared as you.

"So, Mr. Captor," piercings asks, "Where were you at 9 last night? I suggest you answer this carefully."

"I was at home doing some things for my online school. You cant really check the hours, but I'm sure that you could call the office there." They had to believe you; your administrators could vouch for you, right?

"Likely story." Of course she didn't believe you.

"Maryam, maybe we should" Red glasses are pushed up your savior's face by teal fingernails as she attempts to calm her visibly irritated partner.

"Do you know how we found her?" Officer Maryam hisses at you. "She had been beaten so savagely that we could barely identify the body."

"Porrim, don't."

"Broken ribs caused the puncturing of her lungs. Fracturing to the skull. Her spine had breaks in two places."

You suddenly feel like your insides are about to become your outsides and clutch your head, wheezing. Porrim isn't finished, already standing up so that her chair screeches as it's pushed backwards.

"She died after drowning in her own blood. And do you wanna know what I think?" She's seething now and so are you.

NO.

I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.

"I think it was all your fault. You've got plenty of time o your hands, was it just too hard to see her go?"

"PORRIM, STOP." Officer Pyrope shouts at her, casting a worried glance your way.

You barely recognize your own voice when you whisper "no". "I had no reason to do it. She was my friend, you've got to believe me, I-I wouldn't ever hurt her!"

"You're our prime suspect. Jealous of her boyfriend, maybe? Or maybe she wouldn't leave him and you got angry. Your records aren't exactly clean, Captor."

You loved her.

"She was my friend, you bitch!" You try to stand up, forgetting that your hands are chained to the table with a pair of heavy cuffs.

Your vision was blurring before you even begin to process your thoughts.

You loved her.

Officer Maryam is barking orders into her radio and you're oddly silent and suddenly the room is on its side after Pyrope pins your head to the table and kicks your legs from under you. Suddenly you can't even think anymore because you're vomiting and passing out, Aradia's smile, the way she had looked when she hugged you after she had arrived burning behind your eyes.

… Syringes. Cold. Gatorade. Possibly cheap takeout. Sensations hit you in relentless waves, easing you out of darkness before forcing your eyes open. They've crusted over considerably and you begin to wonder just how long you've been asleep in what looks to be a doctor's examination room, the kind that you went to when you were a kid.

There's a pile of clothes, neatly folded, on the table next to you, with a note in Latula's handwriting that's hard to make out but if you squint you can /just/ barely...

Someone opens the door silently, a man shorter than you who looks as if he's been awake for three days straight, sucking down his coffee like it's the only thing keeping him alive. Then again, it probably is.

"Captor?" You nod your head and he just eyes you wearily. His eyes are black and his voice makes it seem like he's been smoking a pack a day for nearly fifty years.

"M'supposed to escort you to the interrogation room…" He says his name, but you're too busy attempting to get your heart to restart to hear him.