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[He rolls his shoulders and gives a look back to the singed mattress beside him.]

I don't think that would've happened if Lucifer was involved. But... It didn't feel right. Maybe he was holding me back or something.

It doesn't sound like he can hold much of anything. I don't know if this is his doing or "hell's."

Or what it took to get us to hell.

[He gives her a squeeze before pulling away.]

I need to show you something. I don't want to risk it having any kind of power over us if this happens again.

Uhm.

( She self consciously looks back at the door, at her father hopefully back in his room before turning back to Landon. )

What is it you need to show me?

[He follows her eyeline, but doesn't see anything in particular. Maybe something was there before?]

I just... We didn't talk about some of the things that came with us. And then when you weren't you, it was the first thing you wanted to ask about. But if there's something else going on I should know about...

No, it's -- just making sure my dad isn't hovering outside. ( Listening to her not break apart. ) This is about the arrow, isn't it.

Oh, your dad. [It makes sense that he might be. He can probably hear Landon's fresh heartbeat all the way out there.] Does he know I....?

[Is he okay with his daughter bringing home corpses?]

Have the golden arrow, or, come back to life in a burst of flame. He was standing right there. He knows you're a phoenix. It's probably the only thing he approves of, about you. ( But, she says it with a shrug. )

[Oh. There's a lot in that, a series of worries to knot together and keep among the rest of his anxieties.]

The second one. But... Is. Are you okay with that? Not having his approval, I mean? [Having him around changes their relationship. And shouldn't it? She finally has her father back. She's a little more whole. Maybe she doesn't need as much.]

Landon. He knows I love you. That's enough for him. He sat here for me for almost twenty four hours. If he didn't think you were worth it? If he didn't care?

( He wouldn't have. )

I don't want to embarrass you either. [ he's nowhere close to Hope's impossible backstory. It was different when they were all just misfits together. Her father is a reminder that she's basically a princess. It's hard to work through, and really he'd rather work through it by stuffing it into a box until it ceases to be a real emotion. ]

But we should drop it. You're right about the arrow being here. But there's something different about it.

You don't.

( She brings a hand to his cheek, trying to impart this on him. That's not how she sees him and she hopes that's not how he sees himself. )

What, it's not what everyone's suddenly after? I think we should be happy about that, don't you?

[He lets the subject drop. If they keep talking about it, she's just going to say more things that she thinks he wants to hear instead of acknowledging the divide between them that he can't shake until he's good enough. He just has to keep getting stronger, and maybe then...]

We could be happy about that, but -- it's different now. I think it's more powerful here.

You think the golden arrow is more powerful here. How. Why? We don't know that, Landon. It could have no power.

( she doesn't know one way or the other, but, she doesn't want to find out. does he? )

I don't need a demonstration. I don't need to experiment. Let's just keep it hidden.

( while she personally works to destroy it. that's an idea that comes to her that she doesn't voice. it doesn't need to be down here but she refuses to believe what it can do, that it could have more power here.

she's not thinking along those lines. )

It has more than no power. [There's something resigned in his tone; it's something he's been considering privately for a long time now.] It's... hot. It doesn't melt anything around it, but it burns when I touch it.

The knife's here too. I don't know if it's related. At least that much seems normal about it.

( she's brought her hand down, walked away, trying to gather her thoughts. )

Stop touching it!

( if it's that bad. she turns back. ) The knife, the arrow. I will take them. And we just won't touch them. We'll forget they're there and we won't tell anyone we have them, okay?

Hope, you're acting like I haven't been handling it for months already. They're fine where I have them. I'll let you know if I get the feeling that someone's trying to open up a Malivore portal over my bed, but I think we're as safe as we can be.

More than no. ( She plays that back. ) I feel like the way I speak is rubbing off on you. I caught that wrong, but, we do nothing with them, okay? Leave them where they are. As far as we know, all the knife does is open a portal that doesn't exist here.

That was the plan so far. And as far as I know, it only ended up with me because it was inside me when I died. Maybe... the knife was another part of it? I don't know how long I was -- unconscious -- before I got pulled in here.

[Maybe Raf and the Necromancer stopped to do a few rituals. Maybe there was something else. It's uncomfortable not knowing.]

No, I don't think it's that logical. I mean, I ended up with Vardemus' therapy box and an ascendant. I was inside one and related to the other, I helped power it, but so did thirty witches. But, it came with me. So, maybe it's just about ... how it relates to us. Or, the power that these hold is so great - and useless - that they came in with us.

( She hopes it's that and there's nothing dagger-related connected to Landon's fate. )

Remind me about the rules for ascendants. You use them to send things to other dimensions, but you can also use them to get out, can't you?

It needs more power, but, yes. An ascendant, basically, sends someone somewhere else through a portal. Usually a linked prison world. The chances that this ascendant could get us anywhere are slim, and even if it could, it would get us back to a prison world that collapsed. Or, maybe it didn't because for Josie and Lizzie that hasn't happened yet?

( It's hard not to talk herself in a circle about this. )

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