"Thanks," says Orpheus, smiling weakly. "It would've been easier. It wasn't, um, fun, being like that? But it was really easy, just... being all alone and angry at myself and everything else, and not trying to see the good in anything."

Even now it's a struggle not to sink back into that, shut himself inside and castigate himself over every little thing he could've done differently day and night. But he's trying, and he's here, and talking to Fern, and he feels the slightest bit better for it already.

He sighs.

"I tried to do something like that before," he admits, glancing away. "Not, um. Drowning people, but running away from everyone who was trying to help me, after I came out of the Underworld and Eurydice didn't. I didn't think I deserved their sympathy, and I didn't want it. That's actually what I was doing, when I wound up in Deerington? Running."

Shaking his head, he looks back at Fern.

"But there was nowhere to run, there, and people kept trying to help me after seeing me at my worst, and, um. I guess I have a new 'worst' now, but you're all still here for me, and that's - it doesn't make things okay, but it makes them easier."