Sheska didn't know Jade, not really - just a vague memory of a young lady with lovely skin and bright eyes and a white dog, vivid green text and laughter on the Network for a while - and at first she listens with more obedience than interest. What catches her isn't the description of Jade. It's the look on his face, the all too eloquent pause, the tightening of his hand.

She can't hide the way everything stops, a sickening twist to the world that has her flashing back to her nightmares, when he says that he is - was - going to die. If he hasn't spoken to his brother about this, she is the last person fit to be his confidant. Stirring, she's about to object, but he forges ahead and she remains silent instead, biting her lip and knowing that if she interjects it will be all the harder for him to tell.

So she does the best she can. Rides it out with him, even if she can't stop herself from making a soft noise of shock and denial as he lays out in bare words how it was that he died. In the end, she meets his eyes through a haze of tears not yet fallen, her heart breaking for him.

Leaning in, Sheska wraps him in a hug, expecting nothing in return, but helpless to convey the depth of emotion any other way. He's sixteen. Sixteen! He should be worrying about what he's going to do when he gets out of school for the summer, not carrying this kind of guilt around with him! He doesn't deserve this.