there is no greater pain
or punishment than memory

Age has done a lot of things to him, and he doesn't try to deny that fact. He knows that it's left stains on him over the years. He's changed in ways that don't always make sense to him, and right now he can do nothing aside from roll with it. Quinn had tried to turn back and be what he had once been before, but that hadn't worked so very well. It's led him to being here, to being without purpose again. He suspects that he might never have had one in truth. All of it was in his head, but that was better than nothing. He had used that to soothe him before; something was better than nothing. How many times had it led him to falling to mistakes? Or more than that? Hard to keep any of it straight anymore, he was free falling through life right now. He had turned away from a bloody battle not long ago. His biggest clue that he wasn't right. It's uncomfortable, but he hadn't gone back to make it right, either. There had been no urge felt to do so this time.

It's easy to play calm and collected on the outside after the passing years and the shattered pieces he's tried to wedge together to look somewhat normal again. The inside is the same bloody mess as usual, and he simply sits there giving Echidna the look and wondering what all of this will lead up to. What had brought her back here after that strange night on the reef? It feels slightly less odd to him now; Echidna doesn't seem to be as 'out there' as that night. Was she more here in mind this time? There was a stillness around him when she sat down those feet from him, folding her legs. Her words were there and Quinn isn't perfectly sure to which part she aims it at, but he has already decided that for him it belongs to the thoughts of gracefulness of the past. "It does." Remembering it makes him dizzy. He cannot let it make him forget the last few times they had met up and how different those times had been from what was before them.

He's looking at her and trying to fight off the imagery of blood slicked skin and nothing else covering it. His clothing feel too tight suddenly and he squirms, just a little. The shriek from the mare snaps him out of it, and he glances to where Glowstick is eyeing the mare like he doesn't know how to proceed at all. He doesn't blame the horse at all, but it's shoved the previous thoughts from his mind, and perhaps that's for the best. His gaze settles back on Echidna and she was speaking again and Quinn is quiet for a moment at the first part. "So I'm hell to you?" There's not even a flicker to say he's upset by it, because frankly he doesn't know what he thinks about that comment. He does not believe that it has always been true, but he would accept that it may have started to become that as time went on, with each time that they had met up again. He was sure that they both had the scars to prove it; the kind that did not lay within the skin.

Or she was saying that feeling was hell, but he doesn't see a lot of difference to it if she feels when she's looking at him. Quinn can't be sure that he knows what he believes in anymore. Fate? Karma? Was there rhyme or reason to all the things he had gone through? He didn't know, couldn't be sure, didn't want to deal with those thoughts right now. He's stuck on the last thing she's said to him about the universe wanting something to happen since it kept happening, them being 'thrown back in' like this. Quinn rolls his shoulders in a uncertain shrug. "Tell the universe that I do not understand the memo. I haven't been able to decifer any of the current ones I've gotten." He pointed out. He couldn't figure out most of what life had thrown at him up to this point, in fact. "You seemed at peace with yourself, or getting there the time before last when I saw you. You out of sorts again, being pressed back into male form?" It's all a puzzle to him these days.

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