"Because I am a stranger, and one can feel free with strangers, for what I think and say matters little." It is simple, really, quiet. Her hand resting on his shoulder to brace him, hold him carefully. "So let me be all that matters then, one who listens, and shall never judge." Her smile is fond, careful of course, to not ask anything else, but fond.

"Pain feels an illness. It feels an infection, a disease that burrows in the blood and the will. Crippling, exhausting, many times over, it is hard to see the way forward in such throws."