Much, much later in the night, when the worst of it is over, Break can be found dancing slowly in the light of the oil lamps positioned around the shelter, a white-haired little boy resting in his arms. He needs to sleep himself, but Aiden had been understandably restless even after he'd fallen asleep, waking with bad dreams he didn't have the words to explain properly yet -- and Break isn't about to simply shush him and put him back to bed. Instead, he sways back and forth to the singing flowers, rescued from the rubble of his house, and sings along, quietly. Aiden has his head resting on Break's shoulder, mouth hanging open, firmly konked out. Fortunately, Break didn't have to use Bat's most draining power to calm the boy. The singing and swaying were enough.

"I was just guessing at numbers and figures,
Pulling the puzzles apart --
Questions of science, science and progress,
Do not speak as loud as my heart.
Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me;
Oh, and I rush to the start.
Running in circles, chasing our tails,
Coming back as we are --

Nobody said it was easy.
It's such a shame for us to part.
Nobody said it was easy.
No one ever said it would be so hard...
I'm going back to the start."

He's one of the only people awake, now.


[Private to the_smokescreen, set during the Jackquake.]

Sinuses be damned! Break has been as mobile as it's possible for him to be this week, enjoying life to the fullest. He's still reliant on his cane and far slower than he'd like to be, but he's been out every day, enjoying the warm air and the ease of the heat on his various aches -- and, most importantly, a renewed sense of independence. Whenever he's been away from home recently, it's been with Liam at his side and a Chain to transport them both, and being able to go out on his own has been doing wonders for his cabin fever.

But he's misjudged the end of the weather. It's been a week, yes, but because the false summer had appeared overnight, he'd assumed the return of the cold weather would, too. He isn't expecting the temperature to suddenly plummet and the snow to begin to fall while he's walking home from a visit to the mansion.

Break feels it in his wounds, first -- the old one on his shoulder, the new one in his knee. Then the shivering starts, and soon he's gasping for breath as the air thins out. He debates turning back, but he's well over halfway home now, and as his leg stiffens painfully underneath him he has to make the choice of getting to the house as fast as he can or stopping at one of these houses to beg a stranger for aid.

He makes the wrong one. When he tries to move faster his cane slides on a fresh patch of ice, and down he goes. He gasps when he falls and keeps gasping, that phobia of being suffocated that he's had ever since losing that lung surging to the front of his mind; and as he lays there shaking in the cold, he's too stunned to even comprehend just how much trouble he's in.



[Backdated to the "summer in winter" event; private to darkbrightflame.]