Not nearly as bad as she thinks she is. Vin's story pulls Asseylum from the depths of her own memories, and she feels a connection between them click like links on a chain. It also helps her place her own experience. She looks to Vin with understanding softening her eyes.

"It's a terrible feeling, isn't it?" she expresses. "More than the pain, I believe losing your sense of time and place to that darkness is most unbearable." She smiles. "But I am glad you did not meet your end that way, and that you had a friend who could ensure that."

How many near-death experiences has she endured in such a short time now? Thinking of Vin's friend rescuing her from the haze of death reminds her of the other time she was almost killed in recent memory— by someone else she thought she could consider an ally, if not a friend, if only she would just let her in. Back then, she had a friend who had saved her, too, and she recalls the gratefulness toward him flow like a warm spring. Vin must have felt similar.

Had he saved her the last time she thought she died, too? A new curiosity germinates, but she keeps it to herself. Maybe there is an explicable reason she's still here, after all?