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[dogbitesman]

Five days. Not quite a working week1, but close to. Too long, at any rate.

He hadn't seen Maladicta, and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not; seeing her would have made things harder, true, but on the other hand... he didn't like not seeing Maladicta. Simply being deprived of the simple sight of her - let alone her actual company - it

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[dishabille_mal]

Maladicta happened to be staring at the ceiling of the IPD office, which was neither stimulating nor particularly enjoyable. The fact of the matter was, no part of her days were exceptionally stimulating or enjoyable, since the fight.

She dropped her feet from the edge of Vimes's desk and headed into the hall, tying her hair up as she went, looking, as she had pretty much constantly for the past five days, distracted and distant.

[dogbitesman]

She wasn't in the rec room or the kitchen, which was unfortunate; it meant she'd either be in the IPD office, which wasn't exactly the best place for this, really, or outside, where it would be harder to find her.

But then he got to the top of the stairs and their she was, right there in the hall.

She looked... well, she'd looked better, but since it was Maladicta she still wore distracted and distant better than a lot of people did happy and at-peace-with-the-world.

"Um," he said, in case she hadn't seen him. Then he added, "Hi," because a disfluency on its own wasn't much of a greeting, even under the circumstances.

[dishabille_mal]

Of course she'd seen him. It had just taken her a moment to register what the appropriate course of action was. On the one hand, her most basic instinct was to turn to him, to greet him- but things were strange, now, so she hesitated.

She looked at him, not moving toward or away, and nodded a little.

"Hey," she said.

[dogbitesman]

"Um," he said again, eyes scanning her face before he realized what he was doing and adjusted his gaze half a foot to the left.

Then he considered how odd that was and returned them to her face.

"How are you?" he said, having considered about a dozen options and finally settled upon that, which should serve as some indication of just how feeble all the other eleven options were.