Back in the office, the little creature climbs up to sit crosslegged on one of the desks; Denice takes the chair, sitting with one foot hooked under the wheels and the other knee hugged to her chest. The creature sits quietly for a few minutes - gathering its thoughts or waiting for her to speak or something else, she can't tell - but eventually asks, "tell me?"
After a few long seconds of trying to figure out how to explain, she gestures helplessly back toward the body.
The creature nods, slowly. "Did you see?"
She takes a moment to consider how to answer, and then shakes her head - no, she didn't see it happen...
The little creature levels a gaze at her, and this one she understands, and shrinks from - but instead of lashing out, it seems startled by her reaction, its pulse increasing a bit as its expression changes to one of worry and it sits back upright from where it had been leaning forward to scrutinize her. "All right, didn't see."
She relaxes slightly, resisting the urge to get up and pace. After a few seconds, she remembers to acknowledge the statement, with a nod.
"Not see..." she tenses again, but the creature continues, "other thing? Like see?"
She nods, relieved, and the creature takes a moment to think about its next question.
"Know who?"
She winces, thinking about it, and nods.
"Bad guys?" The question takes her a little off guard. They do bad things, sure, obviously, but does that mean that they themselves are bad? She hasn't really considered the question before, and it seems wrong to just jump to a conclusion... really, is that the kind of thing it's even possible to know about someone?
The little creature is giving her a look, again. "They friend?" it asks, and she shakes her head emphatically. "They mistake? Sorry?" the question is a little more pointed this time, and her head shake is more or less reflexive.
"They do that," it gestures to the other room. "Bad guys." Not a question, this time.
Yeah, all right; she nods, and the creature nods back. It takes a minute to think, giving her a chance to consider this new perspective - if they are bad guys, what does that mean? Should she be doing more than just removing their ability to hurt people; should she be interfering with them more generally, or more directly? Should she be putting herself more at risk, to stop them?
She hasn't come to any conclusions, just a vague sense that she doesn't want to be more aggressive with them, by the time the creature speaks again. "Bad guys do that again?"
She shrugs, and draws her other leg up onto the chair.
The little creature pats her knee. "We help? Make bad guys not do that again?"
She looks up, still mostly lost in the thought of losing more of her charges to violence, but surprised enough at the creatures offer to be drawn a little way out of her reverie. It's making a complicated face - tiredness, she recognizes as she studies it, and sadness make up most of it, but there's a flicker of anger, as well, and other elements she can't make sense of.
It does seem to be serious, though.
She's not sure what to do with that.
It's been a very long day, and there's a nasty headache building behind her eyes, all of a sudden. She shrugs, again, and rests her forehead on her knees, trying to gather the strength she needs to finish up here and get home.
The creature pats her shoulder - hearing it coming doesn't stop that from making the headache worse, and she can't help but tense up at the touch - and hops off of the desk to go do... something... to the wall. After a few seconds, the entire sound of the room changes, as if part of the wall had just been replaced with soundproofing foam. Disorienting.
She looks up, and there's a portal back to the bike path embedded into the wall. It takes her a few long seconds to work out why, but then she's up and moving - it's not a choice, it's just something that's happening now, she's just trying not to shamble too much.
Going through the portal is a whole new source of pain and disorientation, as her awareness of the area around the morgue is replaced all at once with the sounds of the area around the bike path. She's got a bolthole nearby - three blocks away, if she takes the most direct route - but she doesn't think she can make the trip; certainly can't make it safely or without risking being seen.
She curls up behind the bush. It's far from ideal, but even in this state she'll wake if anyone comes too close, she knows from experience.
A time later - perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours; she can't tell, she isn't even sure whether she's been awake the entire time - the little creature appears again. It speaks very quietly: "you okay?"
She's still trying to work out how to make her body move, to respond, when the creature steps forward and touches her, and abruptly she's in an entirely new place. She rides out another wave of disorientation, but it's less painful here even with the abrupt change; it's so quiet, she's never been someplace this quiet, there isn't a single car or truck or television set or even a running refrigerator within ten miles of here, within her entire range, just - somehow - forest.
She's in the middle of trying to piece together how that could be, where she could be, when the little creature pulls a heavy blanket out of a portal and covers her with it, and her body relaxes involuntarily at the weight and comfort, and she falls asleep.