"It's her. That girl.. I knew something was off with her." Mark said in something of a low hiss. All Sven could really see of the girl isolated on the road in the fuzzy picture was her shoulder length blond hair. One sleeve of the long, dark colored, nearly trench coat like garment clung to one of her arms as she lunged, in a frozen sort of way only photographs had, away from a number of people dressed in dark official looking uniforms. There were boxy blurs that he could only assume were speeding cars, and the only really clear portion of the image was the brightly lit highway.
"Who?" Sven asked.
"The one that stabbed Jan. She's a nutter." Mark said. "She's running into traffic."
Sven had to admit it certainly looked that way in the picture, with the woman's low lunge leaning precariously close to the largish boxy blur, and her torso was situated most definitely over the relative safety of the white turn off line.
"Good. So they caught her."
"No mate. This is Sunday's paper."
"Is it?"
"Tch. Read the caption, yeah?"
Sven frowned over at Mark, and rolled his eyes.
The caption below the image read:
"This image was captured on the motorway, moments from the woman running into traffic and getting struck headlong by a white Impala minivan. Her identiy and nationality remain unknown at the time of this publication."
"Can't be her." Sven declared. "Says she was hit by a car."
Mark didn't exactly shove him aside, but the sharp elbow to Sven's ribs did make him shuffle away. Sven chewed his cheek as he kicked at a purple towel on the floor, and trapped it under one bare foot near where Jake sat in the highchair. He used this impromptaeu mop to clean at the oatmeal sticking to the floor, all of which Jake hadn't wanted to swallow.
"I say it's her." Mark insisted, and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. "Or at least her twin. That's it. She was looking for her twin. She said she was in some hospital in the city."
"Which one?"
"No idea. She was weird. Got all cold when pressed about it."
"What's that mean? All cold?"
"It was.. I dunno. This sort of look. Gave me bad vibes." Mark shrugged. "I left to get more soda. Didn't really want to deal with it."
"If she was so touchy about it, why bring it up at all?"
"Like I said, she was looking for her sister when Jan decided to help." Mark said as he folded his arms.
Sven nodded, and frowned as he saw Mark's thoughtful expression. He hated to bring something this painful up, but he needed to know.
"um.. speaking of…do you know when the arrangements are going to…"
Mark's gaze pierced into his heart, and Sven felt a rather large lump form in his throat. He swallowed as the man's brows skewed upwards, even as the corners of his mouth tugged down in a terribly lost way. Mark's eyes went all glassy in the span of a few blinks, and Sven looked away to Jake. He didn't want to see a grown man cry, and his son's mysteriously high cooing squeal sound gave him a good excuse not to.
"Um… I-I dunno. " Mark said thickly, sounding as though he too was struggling with a suspiciously large lump in his own throat. "I I haven't been able to do anything. They.. the city won't let me…"
"It's ok." Sven said, and scrubbed his mind for something somewhat soothing to say. "I .."
"Forget it." Mark huffed out, sounding much like a deflating balloon. Sven watched as the man shuffled his way from the room, and wondered to himself if there was some better way to handle such things. He looked back to Jake, and the wide open blue eyes of his son seemed to say to him that of course there was daddy stupid.
He supposed for now he would give Mark his "man space", hoping that was the best course of action he could take for his guest. Man space, Sven thought. Mark was a friend, and even if he was (possibly) a gay man, man space was always a good idea to have in such situations.
He huffed out a breath of his own, smirking as he reached for a relatively clean towel from one of the backs of the chairs, and began the arduous task of gently, yet firmly, scraping off the patches of dried oatmeal from his toddler's forehead.
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
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