Anna has fallen before she even knows what's going on. She wants to speak, but for the shock of it—mental, this time, though she's certain the physical will come shortly, as her body becomes aware that it was maybe an inch or two from cracking its own skull on the stone. Slumped over as she is, her legs and feet a jumble beneath her, her arms nowhere close to catching the fall, her head landing first on top of her metal arm and then sliding to the cold, damp ground from there, bound by gravity, she feels utterly powerless.

She isn't present as Dinah and the other person leave her behind with Woe; she can't even will her tongue or jaw to form the word "help", or maybe even "please". She isn't aware of anything but the dull chorus in her head, the one she thought she'd left behind two months ago. But choruses always repeat, don't they. It's basic songwriting.

It's happening again. It's happening again.

She wants to shut her eyes and pretend that she's anywhere else, but even if they could listen, she would only be able to remember salt and blood and lightning. The splinter of wood, the slow descent of a body into the water. The uncaring shoulder, the boy who would be king, the gunpowder, the screaming and blood and feathers and bile and the crackling of lungs and the defeat and the loss.

Her body is screaming and it's the only part of her that can. She is on the beach. She is in the black forest. She is in the water, she is in the lab. Anywhere but here, anyone but her.