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[Jory Addison]

Jory's eyes widened, "I'm not telling you what he told me if he didn't tell you already." He wasn't going to give away Lyric's secret, the big one that had to be the root of all the problems. If Lyric wanted her to know, then Quinn would know. "How will hurting him make it better? It would just make it worse."

[Quinn Ashwinder]

My God, Quinn thought to herself, she didn't want to hurt him, she wanted to help him and she wanted to be prepared. "I don't want to hurt him. I told him I didn't have any expectations of him, that he could be safe with me, free." She looked up at Jory pain in her eyes, "but I find that him living is an expectation that I can't let go of. I want him to live. And the only knowledge I have to try to help him is that someone hurt him when he was a kid. I could guess, but it's not the same. And I don't know who Lyric trusts, who he cares about enough to live for. Because it isn't me yet, and it isn't you. So help me with that, tell me who we can turn to who can help."

[Jory Addison]

Well, Quinn had said she wanted to know where to hurt him, and Jory knew he wasn't going to help her do that. "Yeah, someone hurt him, but I'm not gonna tell you what it was. I don't know who to go to. He only has his mum, and she's in New York and I don't think he'd listen to her even if we could talk to her." It was hard to imagine Lyric listening to anyone, actually.

[Quinn Ashwinder]

Quinn thought about that, of all the people Jory had told him about, his mother hadn't featured in any of them. He had protected her. Perhaps she was a weak link, a link she didn't want to use. "I don't want to know who hurt him, if he wants to tell me that I'll let him. That isn't important, it defines his problems, but the solutions are somewhere else." She thought about it, "we talk to him first. I'll talk to him first, if it doesn't work we use other options. Maybe getting a hold of his mom."

[Jory Addison]

What if Quinn was wrong and that was Lyric's problem? Jory still wasn't going to tell her, but he didn't think that it was something to just blow off, either. "I tried to talk to him about what he was doing once. I mean, I didn't know what it was, we just called it drinking. He said I couldn't help him or make him stop." Lyric had stormed off and that had been it until Lyric had come back to the dorm that one time so happy.

[Quinn Ashwinder]

Quinn shook her head in bewilderment at Jory, "and you just took that? I mean, I wouldn't have spat in his face with the challenge that I could make him stop. But just because he said that you can't doesn't mean you actually can't." She remembered something Kiley had told her when she'd been scared, worried that something bad was going to happen. "No one can make you stop doing something you want, but you. Lyric made his choice to do drugs, but my choice is to stop them. Who do you think has a stronger will? Someone who needs drugs to live? Or someone who lets life in despite the hurt?"

[Jory Addison]

"Why don't you get your words straight before you try to tell me off?" Jory shot. "Just because he says you can't doesn't mean you can't or no one can make you stop doing something but you? You can't have it both ways." Did she even listen to herself when she tried to tell him stuff? She couldn't, or else she wouldn't be saying two completely different things one after the other.

[Quinn Ashwinder]

Unbelievable, was he dense? "It's the same thing, it means the same thing. You, Jory can't let anyone stop you from doing something, only you can stop yourself from stopping him. All he can do is encourage you to stop, and if all it takes is encouragement for you to stop," then you shouldn't be helping. Quinn took a deep breath, talk like you would to Lyric, when he's jumpy, make him understand. "Lyric can't stop himself from doing anything...even if he wanted to stop the drugs, didn't you hear Ariel? He could be begging himself to stop, but his body craves those drugs more than common sense."

[Jory Addison]

Quinn was throwing so much information out at him that it was hard to piece things together and reply to her. It was impossible not to start getting frustrated again. Whatever she had said, it wasn't the same thing. "It's not like I knew something was wrong, at least not this bad! I talked to him about it one time, I wanted to help him, and it wasn't this bad. At least I wasn't encouraging him to go out and get high!" How could she just throw it on him like he was the one doing something wrong? She couldn't act like she knew everything.

[Quinn Ashwinder]

Breathe, breath Quinn, she reminded herself, it wouldn't help Lyric to let Jory and herself get into a fight, she could use the help, possibly a united front. Heck good auror vs. bad auror might even help, even if she had to play bad auror. "Jory it doesn't matter who talked to him when, or who did what. Who knew or who didn't know." She hadn't known that Lyric was in trouble. Didn't need to be reminded she'd apparently played along with Lyric's game of Russian Roulette, even if she hadn't actual encouraged it, it still stung.

"Breathe Jory. The only important thing right now is Lyric. Not who gets him, or blame, just getting him help." She pointed to herself and then to Jory, "both of us, and we have to be able to present a united front when we see him." Who knew if that was possible, but she'd be trying her darndest to make sure that it happened for Lyric. "It's also not important to tell him how he used to be, focus on now. Now he's dying Jory. He's killing himself. We have to make him focus on something good for this moment, and something good for the future."

[Jory Addison]

Jory hated the way Quinn talked to him, he hated how she was acting like he was the one being stupid. One minute she was telling him he shouldn't have accepted Lyric saying he couldn't help and the next she was telling him to calm down because he couldn't see any difference in him accepting that and her accepting what Lyric was doing.

"If you want us to work together on this, stop treating me like an idiot," he said. "I didn't do anything worse than you did when it comes to Lyric doing drugs. If I don't get something then don't give me that look, sorry if everyone doesn't think like you do." They needed to talk about Lyric, but they had to be able to talk first before they could bring Lyric into it.

[Quinn Ashwinder]

He was an idiot Quinn decided. She talked to him like a person, he didn't get it, she talked to him like he didn't get it, and he still didn't get it. What was his malfunction. I'd stop giving you this look if you understood one of the ways I was trying to talk to you. What did he focus on the tiniest thing that made him feel bad?

You couldn't help someone if all you could think about was yourself. Selflessness. "I don't care about my past or your past with Lyric. It's the past. We have to focus on the present to save him. We have to offer him a good present." I'd be willing to give up myself to save him, give up everything that makes me happy here, sell my shop, not to watch him die.

[Jory Addison]

Jory had only ever heard people use someone's name so much in conversation when they were talking to a little kid, or to someone that was barely conscious, though he had only seen that a couple of times at Quidditch games. He didn't argue, he didn't bring it up again, it was pointless. "How? I barely saw him happy even before he started them."

[Quinn Ashwinder]

Quinn turned the tiny marble against her fingers, "yeah. Well you're lucky you've seen him happy at all." She looked up, into Jory's eyes, hoping he'd understand, not look away. "But regardless, of whether we've seen him that way or not, we have to give him more. Tiny things to hold onto, like Melody or how he likes music. Like how carving makes me happy, or something that makes you happy when you're upset, we have to guide him to those things."

[Jory Addison]

Jory closed his eyes and dropped his head, unable to hold Quinn's. "Does he still take pictures?" he asked, remembering that night that seemed so long ago when Lyric had taken pictures of him. He wondered if this would have happened if he hadn't spent so long at Eros' that one time. What if he had come back to talk to Lyric when he was sober? Could he have fixed things before they really had the chance to start?