He looked down. Silence.
I smiled, trying to lighten the mood a bit. "I mean, like your obsession with the suits. I hate those, you know."
He grinned at me. "Well, Sandy, you have to look presentable. If it were up to you, you'd look like a hobo." He teased me.
"Hey, it's not that bad!"
"Well... quite close, if you ask me. I think you're better than that, boy."
I looked down, not sure on how to ask the obvious. "May I... Ask a question?"
"Ask away, Sandy."
"You admire that guy, don't you?"
He looked into my eyes. I again saw a glimpse of the Void, though this time mixed with gloom. "He made me what I am, Sandy. I'd never be here if not for him."
"Key always says you're not your past, but your decisions. I think she's right. I could make the choice and leave this...
He laughed at me. "But, could you?"
I sighed. "You know what I mean, Andrei. Thing is, I don't take that choice. Neither do you. You're not the past. You're what you decide to be."
"Well, I would have never decided I wanted to be in this hell if not for him." He grinned. "Anyway... I need to get something."
He came a few minutes later. "Here. You wanted this?" He offered me a small jewelry box.
"Holy shit! Are you gonna ask for my hand, or something?" I joked.
There was something else in his smile. Something I could not pinpoint. "Open it."
I opened it. A ring. ... No, not a finger ring. The other kind. Shit. He had a thing to always chose the worst possible moment, completely disarming you in the process.
"You want it or not?" He grinned. He knew the answer, of course he did.
"Do it."
- - -
A couple days later, Andrei had sent me to ask Key for a file. I opened the door to her office. "Hey. So..."
"Come in." She said without looking, too absorbed in her work.
"Key... Andrei wants to know how long will that take. He needs it ASAP."
"I'm working on it —" She froze in horror as she looked up and saw me. I guess I looked like I was in pretty bad shape after the other day. "The hell has happened to you, Sandy?"
"Life has happened." I shrugged.
She stood up with such rage that she knocked the chair down. She grabbed my arms before I could react. "It was that bastard, wasn't he?"
"Key. Listen to me, okay? It's not his fault. I asked for it."
"That's a pile of bullshit, Sandy. You don't deserve this." She stared at me for a second. Then she practically tore my shirt open, grabbed the chain. "What's this."
"I'm telling you, I asked for it all. Like, literally."
She turned me around like a puppet and pulled my shirt up, revealing the recent wound in my lower back. The ring. "You telling me you asked for this?" She seemingly hadn't heard a single word I had said.
"I'm telling you, Key. Yes. It's my fault. It's my life—"
She didn't listen. She grabbed my hand, and pulled me out of her office, toward Andrei's.
