She's temping again, though Gramps says she can do better.

With his eyes. He says it with his eyes but never out loud. Her mother doesn't say anything either. The kitchen is so quiet when they all sit together and the house is too loud when she's there alone.

She feels so restless.

She takes the car for all hours (just to hear mum complain) and she goes to work early and stays late (maybe, well, probably not, but just maybe she's capable of being better and moving up).

Then she's fired again (should've known, she's worthless, she's nothing).

Moving out might help. She thinks about it all the time now. Maybe independence will help with the restlessness that keeps her focus tied up and tangled.

She thinks about it so hard that she takes a wrong turn and almost doesn't find the building in time. Bloody great first impression.

Maybe this job interview isn't a good idea.

It's a tall shiny hotel-type office but she knows all the posh places have uncomfortably crowded lifts at this hour so she takes the stairs (two at a time) and wonders just when she got in shape.

The view of the city out the glass wall is thrilling (why hasn't she noticed that sort of thing more?) and as she's distractedly rounding the stairwell her heel catches (knew she should have gone with 'practical' instead of 'flashy') and there's a crash as she stumbles into someone's open arms and the memory of an embrace with the most wonderful

spiked hair and paper-pale freckled skin and long long bones paper cut her heart in half

The blood from it wells bitterly in her throat, forced up by the extra pulse that burns all the way up to her eyes with golden light.

Where is he now?

is all that fills her poor head for one (cold lonely aching) instant before it's stamped down (by dirty chucks and long fingers and sorry sorry eyes)

The arms around her feel wrong (less dangerous, not as safe, not as skinny) but when she opens her eyes she's home.

Halfway up the stairs, precariously tipped into the arms of a man who dropped a box of staplers and photo frames and stationary to catch her before she tumbled to her death, and she's never been more at home than this (has she?).

"Are y-y… y-you alright?" he gasps in earnest.

Tall, dark, and handsome with a stutter and he's just been laid off so she could temp in his place.

"Yeah," Her heart quiets to a smooth single beat, and her mind feels clear and soothed.

She smiles.

"Yeah, I'm fine actually. I'm really… fine."

And she is.