[I won't do anything rash, says local man, moments before suggesting they start punching ghosts. Palamedes can't help but laugh, a short bark of a sound that he turns his head to bury in Viktor's shoulder before he does something rash to Cytherea's ghost over there. If he's here, holding onto Viktor close enough that he can feel the vibration of his voice and has that presence to anchor to, physically— then he isn't back in that goddamn room, standing there saying those words to Cytherea the first time.

First,] I love you and I appreciate the thought, but you'd have to get up, and I'm not letting you do that.

[Thanks for staying here on the unsettled couch, he's very grateful. Cytherea, for her part, sighs and considers her nails again, as if having lost interest in the pair of them already.

Palamedes is quiet for a moment, pressing his anger down into something manageable and even before he speaks again.]

I didn't know her name until I was here; I could have gone my whole life without having to learn anything about her that might have made her seem like— like a person.

['Yes,' she pipes up then, bored, and the way Palamedes grinds his teeth through the rest proves it to be another recitation of past words, although without the overlaid edge of his own voice this time, 'but this wasn't really about any of you. Not personally.'

A beat.]

I think I'm being called a hypocrite. Do you think I'm being called a hypocrite?