I've a rather troublesome friend who isn't here to take you to task for all this. More fortunate you; my crack at it is merely a pale imitation by comparison.

[He shrugs.]

She would like you. She would also tell you that you're being an idiot.

Reasonable? I'd hardly go that far.

[He actually laughs, at that. Just a little, under his breath.]

Some days I'm half surprised she hasn't turned up here yet.

[gideon have you ever seen a man snap his neck upward so fast he about gives himself whiplash]

...No. No, you don't.

[A long, long interval.]

It's better when things like this only happen to us.

[ first of all, nav, how dare you, ]

...

[................]

I would be the one standing between her and danger. Always.

...Once, I suppose. In my youth, when I'd naught else to live for but myself.

[Just Thancred, he'd told the old man who would soon change his life. And I don't have a family — at least, none that I know of.]

I think I might well have been on the precipice of making a second go at it. Before all this.

But I died.

[And in a fit of something that might almost be sentimentality, he leans against her. Lets her bear his slouching weight, just a little.]

...You'll laugh, you know. To hear it.

Near enough. My heart failed.

[There's an irony there, somewhere. A poet could make all sorts of quips. Most of them would even be funny.]

Fitting enough, I suppose. To think that in the end of it all, the thing that took me down was the consequences of my own reckless actions catching up with me.

'Tis strange even for me to contemplate, I know. Dying quietly in bed — whoever would have thought?

[He shakes his head.]

Looking back on it, 'twas bound to happen sooner or later. I never was one to shy away from pushing myself to the brink of death for the sake of a good cause. I was bound to lose my balance on its precipice sooner or later.

Well, that and the fact that you hit like a behemoth.

[Gideon you should see his bruise.]

...But yes.

Oh, don't look at me like that. I'm still standing, aren't I?

[He elbows her a little, just a friendly dadlike nudge, and then gazes out across the grody shelves of the literal convenience store they're having this extremely sentimental conversation in before remarking at last: ]

Do you recall some days back, when you asked me how I beat the Number Nine? Why I can drink it without succumbing to all manner of foolish acts.

That's what I do for myself. How I imagine being what I would choose to be if I could.

[He laughs under his breath.]

That it's the best-tasting drink they've served here yet is just a perk. I'd drink it regardless of its taste, just for that.

Mmm.

[can you just hear the my turn coming]

And which part do you doubt more, I wonder. The first half, or the second?

You couldn't possibly look like any more of one than you do already. You've nothing to lose.