She made sure the multiple lined sheets for signs ups were firmly attached beneath the notice itself and hung the traditional pencil-from-a-string, and stepped back. She would get some coffee and some food, stop by the children's office, go see William, and not obsessively keep track of which names appeared on the list. That was the plan.

1: Which wasn't saying much, as reformed vampires did many things religiously2, given that tedious, rigid routine was an integral factor in controlling urges like removing blood from throats or limbs from bodies.

2: Though the irony of describing it as such given vampires' reactions to actual religion can hardly go without comment.

Maladicta was sprawled across her and William's bed, on her stomach. Olivia was lying on her back beside her and squealing quietly when Shenlong would stick his nose into the arch of one tiny foot or the other. The wolf's ears would tick one way, then the other, and sit back while the baby flailed. Then, once she'd calmed, he'd go back to giving the other foot a dose of cold, wet attention and start the happy squealing over again. Maladicta was watching this with genuine fascination, and occasionally, when Olivia would look at her, would widen her eyes in an Are you serious? expression, but Olivia would just giggle more and clap her hands. Or she would wave her hands toward each other and miss, but she seemed happy with her efforts.

"I wonder if I was ever this easily amused," Maladicta murmured.

She would manage it with Geoffrey, she could manage it with Vimes. She was pretty sure. Even if he'd just had a huge setback in being a human being, which wasn't ever easy. She certainly hadn't brought it up since going off on him, however inebriatedly, after the party. She was technically off-duty, not that it much mattered on the island, when she went to the office, and knocked quietly before entering.

"Sir?"

Maladicta was doing something she hadn’t done in a very long time. She had the vague impression that the two people she shared her present life with didn’t much approve of it, only because it had never come up or been mentioned. This was partly because she hadn’t done it in… Well, all right, so she couldn’t actually remember when she’d done it last, and partly because neither William or Sacharissa smoked. She noticed that smokers tended to be quite vocal about the fact once they were no longer actively participating in said vice.

So she’d stolen one. It was significantly different than the kind she’d arrived with. She’d like those better. Breathing this in was vaguely nauseating and gave her a buzz. The League probably wouldn’t have approved on the basis of the latter trait alone. Shenlong didn’t seem to approve much, either. He had moved to the other side of the porch when she’d lit it and proceeded to lie flat on his stomach with one long wolfish paw over his nose, and stare at her. Maladicta had decided not to dignify this behavior with a response.

She had a dog. Sort of. She was sitting, in green linen trousers and a black 'tank' top, on her porch, in the fading sunlight, with her dog. It seemed like the set up for some bizarre, farcical novel.

Oh, wait, she’d already been in one of those.

She pulled a face and dug the pad of her thumb against the crest of her eyebrow. It didn’t bother her if she didn’t think about it, her knowledge of the book’s existence. Even if she did, it was far too prevalent a condition on the island for her to feel particularly singled out or slighted by it. Still, she would never tell William. Ever. Not ever. And she would actively work to prevent him from ever knowing if the risk existed. She had more faith in him than she’d known could be found in a person- either to hold or inspire- but not about that particular detail. And she didn’t even know if Sacharissa knew. Which was fair, for all the details Sacharissa didn’t know about her.

And for whatever reason, since the evening of the shoot-out, those little thoughts had been coming back and over again, to be brushed away but always return, like gnats. And more than little ones. It wasn’t cold feet, because she didn’t feel less strongly about either of her fiances, and anyway you couldn’t have cold feet unless there was actually a wedding, however tangentially it was set. If anything she felt more strongly for the both of them than she had yet, and for reasons she couldn’t wrestle into clarity, she could feel herself, practically watch herself in moments, pull away. It was -ing exhausting. And she didn’t even want to. So why would she?

She sighed, turning the smoldering, uneven cylinder around in her fingers before sliding it back between her lips, and mulled. It was her least favorite but, recently, most participated-in activity. Mulling Things Over. Trouble was, the more one did mull things over, the less sideways a direction one could approach the issues from. Their shape got clearer no matter how hard you tried to view them only peripherally and forget them after. Questions got less generic. You went from what is the damn problem to what am I so bloody scared of?

And then you dropped your cigarette.

Some conversations, it was difficult to be enthusiastic about. Maladicta'd had a few of them since her arrival on the island. Most of them had been with William. This would be another one. Lucky William.

There were difficult confessions and there were difficult confessions. This was both.

She was in thin cotton pants that had been cut off just below the knee and her red military tunic, sleeves rolled to the elbow and front undone. This was in no way a tactical approach to the conversation. She was seated on their bed and waiting for either of her betrothed to show up, because she had to tell them both. She sort of hoped Sacharissa would be first. It was just instinctual- Sacharissa gave William A Talking To quite frequently, but her attempts with Maladicta had always fallen slightly short and, recently at least, ended with soft embraces.

At least, ended with said embraces more quickly than a conversation with an agitated William was prone to. She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead and ran her other hand over the back of her neck, and waited.

Maladicta had needed to get the hell out of the compound. There were too many people on edge, there was F to look for- and not find, which was even worse than finding her- and in general she was just tired and annoyed and feeling strangely harassed. The hot springs helped. She'd gone, found them pleasantly free of people (though it was the middle of a very hot day, so who would be there, was the question), and had soaked, bathed, let the day wash away. She'd dressed and gone back to the hut, not the IPD, and had done absolutely nothing for about an hour but lounged on the bed and read. eventually she let the book fall to the side and just stared at the ceiling, hair still damp and drying in waves around her face, and enjoyed the breeze up the mountain base and the quiet.

Maladicta was wearing her uniforms, sans jacket, sword at her hip, hair tied tightly back so it was kept out of the way. She didn't quite run to the IPD office, but she strode purposefully enough- past the coffee, past people waking up, confused and panicked already- where no one made a move to greet her, let alone stop her. She pushed the door to the office open with a fair amount of force and stalked in.

"I'm going out, and I'm not waiting for a team of volunteers to be gathered, prepped, and sent," she said. "I'm taking rations from the kitchen and water. I thought I should let you know."

The other rehearsals had ended hours earlier, and so the stage was empty. Maladicta had come from the compound, in her jeans and tunic because she had no idea what the costumes would be, so she didn't know what would work for practice clothes. She traversed the stage, looking over the script. She was grateful that Jim was Benedick because she knew him, and liked him, and that had worked out very well in the last play: She'd gotten to know and like Jack Crew, and they had worked quite wonderfully well together.

There were certainly worse ways it could have gone. She looked up, noticing someone walking over from her peripheral vision, and smiled, lifting a hand.

"Evening."

This was the worst feeling in the world. Maladicta had suffered going Cold Bat, twice, had seen one extremely unpleasant and one viciously frightening war (simultaneously) and, since her arrival on the island, come up against a myriad of generally uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences, mostly different versions of being sick or wounded that had never been a possibility before. This was the worst feeling so far.

She had her pack over her shoulder and her gaze on the ground, though she wasn't especially seeing it. She was wound up, too many thoughts going around her head for her to be much of anything but distracted, and anyway her vision was blurry. She couldn't hold on to any one thought long enough to look at it or grapple with it. They all just crammed together and shifted around.

The compound was her destination, and if she hadn't decided that before taking off to stride brusquely into the night she couldn't fathom where she'd have ended up. The night didn't used to be a problem for her. On the contrary, it had always been a boon, a relief, especially after wearing the Ribbon. Now she was almost as blind in it as anyone though, again, the tears didn't help.

She just needed someplace to curl up, and she could deal with it all in the morning. She was sure. She had to be, or else everything would simply fall apart, even more than it already had.