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Koh'a's plan had been great. Really. Perfect, flawless, absolutely the pinnacle of planning and forethought. Leave his village, leave the Twelveswood, get out, get away from everything he ever knew. Bleached his hair, changed his name, got himself too drunk to remember salient details, so it felt more convincing when he lied.

He'd just made one tiny, little miscalculation.

Senah.

"Koh'a?" she'd said, when she saw him. Or at least he presumed she'd seen him, anyway.

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The lilt in her voice said the word was a question, but the incredulity in her tone spoke more to the idea that she couldn't believe he was here, rather than any uncertainty that it was him.

Koh'a sighed into his drink.

"Koh'a, what are you doing," she said, in a way that wasn't a question at all. His ears twitched as she brushed past him and grabbed the glass out of his hand.

"No, I'm sure you're quite mistaken," he said, his voice slow with drink.

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He smiled up at her, because he liked to smile. At least, he did, anyway. Lately it felt more like he smiled because people asked him fewer questions that way. Now he turned that smile on Senah... Yes, it was her after all, and not a girl he'd jilted one or two towns over. He'd sort of lost count, after a while, but to be fair, most of them didn't follow him.

Pity. Always easier to fool a stranger.

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It had been a while since he had seen her last. Maybe a year, maybe longer. She hadn't changed much; same long, pale grey hair; same vivid red eyes. Eye.

Wait. Hold up.

He squinted, trying to force his vision to focus. He couldn't be seeing right. Her other eye had... What was that? "What's wrong with your eye?" he said, tilting his head slightly, as though a slight shift in her perspective would make her give up the trick somehow.

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That got her to stop, whatever reprimand she'd had on the tip of her tongue dying in her throat. She eased back, dipping her head so a curtain of hair fell over one side of her face, obscuring the white eye from view. "It's none of your business," she said, but there was a sullen, defensive note to her words.

"So it isn't," said Koh'a.

And he thought that would be the end of it, he really did.

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They both got one really uncomfortable question out of the way, neither of them answered, and now they could be on their merry way. Except she wasn't leaving, so he thought he would give her a nudge. "Now if you could just give me that back, miss---"

"Koh'a," she said. "What are you doing? Why are you pretending like---" She took a whiff of the drink, then recoiled, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Gods, this is swill. And it's not even noon!"

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"Is it not?" Koh'a looked up at the ceiling of the Drowning Wench. "Looks plenty dark to me."

"Where's Aunt Koh? And your brother? Where's Koh'to?"

Ah.

Well, he supposed there was no sense in trying to pretend any longer. Maybe he'd been a fool to try in the first place. No, if anything, it had been a mistake to come to Limsa Lominsa to begin with. He had just thought, it was such a big city, and Aunt Rinh's family was just... what, seven people?

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Seven people in this big bustling trade hub of a place, what were the odds? But no, fate hadn't been kind to him. That was the way of things lately.

He was still smiling, but now he was looking down, at his hands, loose and limp in his lap. He felt... as though he needed to be drunker for this. There was an answer to that question, sure, okay, but he couldn't... He couldn't put it into words, words that he could speak, out loud.

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He didn't want to remember. He couldn't remember. Except he could, and it was just that the memories were so awful that he felt himself stopping just before a certain point because he knew that if he let himself remember any more, he was not going to come back.

He took a breath. It turned into a laugh. He took another, but that turned out to be a laugh too, until he was laughing hysterically, at an empty table, before noon, with his cousin, who still hadn't given him his drink back.

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He might have been crying. He didn't know. At some point the laughter broke into a strangled sort of sound, and then he was quiet again, all at once.

And then, at last, the words.

"They're dead."

He spread his hands. Ta-da. And couldn't look up into her face, because he didn't think he could bear what he would find there either. He didn't need to be reminded of his own grief, which he wasn't feeling, because he was too busy keeping himself drunk out of his mind.

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The silence held for a long time this time. Daringly, he took his drink back from her and downed it; this time she didn't try to stop him. He considered ordering another, but now the mood to drink had left him, and he didn't have the heart to wave over a barmaid.

... Well, maybe it was just as well. He'd been taking odd jobs here and there, but coin tended to run out rather than in, these past few weeks.

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When Senah finally spoke, it wasn't to ask questions, which was a blessing he hadn't exactly looked for under the circumstances, but was glad for nevertheless. "We need to get you an inn room," she said.

He blinked at her, because of all the things he had expected her to say, none of them had been that. "An inn room," he repeated. "You're not going to try and take me back to Aunt Rinh's?"

"No," said Senah, so firmly that he wondered at it for a moment.

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But she didn't leave him a lot of room for wondering. "What, take you back to see my family when you look like this? Are you kidding me? Sure, Mom would cluck over you and make a fuss, but my sisters would just take it as a bad example. Not to mention Rinh'a." Her nose wrinkled slightly at the mention of her brother, and Koh'a tried to think of what he could remember of the kid. When was the last time he had visited them anyway?

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He had a vague impression of a little boy, ginger-haired and pink-cheeked, with bright green eyes that very clearly came from his mother. But thinking about Senah's little brother inevitably brought his own to mind, and even though Koh'to and Rinh'a looked nothing alike... The taste of liquor soured on his tongue, and he felt trapped in his own body in a way that he had been trying his best to avoid feeling.

Senah shook her head. "The innkeep's right there anyway," she said.

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Unhooking a little purse of coins from her belt, she shook out a few and pressed them into his hand. "I bet you've beggared yourself drinking your life away, so here. This should cover you for a few nights, at least."

"Thank you but no," said Koh'a, handing them back. A little fumbling and he managed to produce a coinpurse of his own, shaking it so that she could hear the jingle of cash inside. "I can't say it's been easy, but I'm not destitute yet."