Unstable [Grey]

[Jesse Fforde]

OOC: Backdated to October 26

Victor had left, the night before, and Jesse had continued. Graffiti was not something that he had dabbled in thus far, and he thought now was a good time to start. It was a good time to start something new, right? Get into something that he had to learn, because it was easier to be distracted when he had to focus. The second floor of the lair - Cerberus - was now constantly filled with the acrid and overwhelming stench of aerosol paint; but Jesse couldn’t smell it anymore. His senses had become attuned to it, until it was normal. It burned his throat and his nose, but that in turn helped to distract him from his ever-present thirst.

Tonight was an okay night. He’d dragged the mattress in from the other room, and when he exhausted himself he slept there, in the middle of the space. Uncaring who came and who went. This had become his den, his hovel of despair, and everyone knew it. There was no point keeping any kind of order, right?

He wore a pair of track pants that were once gray but were now spattered in a rainbow of colours; the same had happened to his black tank, and his hair was in a constant state of hazzard. But at least he wasn’t covered in blood anymore. Paint, at this point, was preferable.

He’d started in one corner with flames. The blended, now, into a twisted, fiery dragon. Well, at least the start, anyway - the tail and back legs blended in with the flames, and disjointed from the main painting, Jesse had started on the head - the manic eyes of the beast, the gnashing maw. If he was focused on the art, he wasn’t thinking about anything else. If he focused on the scales, on the technique, he failed to focus on his own well-being, and the fact that he had no idea what he was doing, or why.

In one corner was a small desk. Upon it was a stereo, which was connected to Jesse’s phone. Music filled the area - a mix of violent punk and heavy metal - and it didn’t sound too loud to Jesse. But then, he’d been busy in the noise for a few hours. He was as immune to the volume as he was to the near-poisonous air.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

The mechanic had spent three nights in the sewers. From the catacombs to the mausoleum, Grey had left a combination of her blood, zombie blood, and dust in her wake. Her smell was putrid. She was coated in the slime of the sewer, the flakes of zombie death, and the disappointment of what her undead life had become.

From Hunter bullets through and through in her shoulder to a few grazes of Paladin pain, Grey ignored all of it. The bite of physical pain had been nothing compared to the almost frozen amounts of anxiety and grief that washed through her chest. It caused her to be so physically heavy that Grey's very footsteps were more like the very Zombie shuffle-drag that she hunter across the catacomb floors.

Where she had gained in strength, she lost in self-preservation. She had become weak in the mind and hateful in the heart. Her fear had twisted her, causing her to immediately pull away from the emotional recoil of her lover. Who... Was no longer really even her lover any more, was he?

Not according to that message. Not according to the way she had taken his cold, callously heated oblivion that she no longer seemed to care. Was that really the problem though? It was not at all about caring. It was about opening up. The whole issue had been about her not touching base with him as to why he hadn't come home to her. But, in hindsight, Grey really was just selfish. She was hatefully selfish because she wanted her lover all to herself. She didn't want to share him. She didn't want to let other women even look at him. She didn't want to know that he was tempted to let his lips be subjected to anyone else's soft kisses.

Her heart had been turning over in her chest. For hours out of the day except when the sun's invisible hold deep within the sewer system claimed her consciousness, Grey had cried herself to sleep curled up against the cement barriers or gated grates. She had curled in on herself, soaked in blood and stench and filth and she didn't even seem to care.

Seemed. It is such a small, almost innocent word. So much goes wrong when someone seems to do something. Taking a deep breath, Grey almost choked on the disgust that oozed from her very clothes. The stench was no doubt soaked into her pores so deep that she'd smell for days. Everything on her was ruined. But, so was she.

Getting on to the elevator, Grey's once broken fingers still swollen and gnarled from the latest Zombie horde attack depressed the C button for Cerberus.

Hair lank and matted to her scalp, she closed her eyes as the doors shut and the glide upwards took her to an impending shower. What she was not prepared for was the complete and utter chaos that greeted her when the doors of the elevator opened.

From the raging screams and bass blasting her ears to the acidic smell, Grey stopped breathing. She stepped out onto the floor, her bright blue eyes now the color of a dull glacier since she lacked a few pints of blood and hadn't bothered replacing any. The cashier at the shop was just outrageous lately, even with a decent smile. What kind of a discount would she get if she looked like she just came from a swamp?

As she took in the mattress to the colored walls to the way Jesse held himself, Grey felt the sizzle across her nerve endings. She felt the crushing burn and the flop of her heart trollop in her chest. She would wheeze no doubt if she were human, but that quality left her this past May.

He was in trouble.

She was in trouble.

Her mind slammed into a brick wall. The tension she felt ran through her body, stealing her resolve to stay angry. And she just stood there, staring at him work as the cord coiled into a noose deep within her finally loosened now that she was within the same room as him.

He had her soul and she knew he was crushing it. But, it was all her fault. She gave him such a long time ago the power to hurt her. She stepped off the elevator, dripping muck and muddy footprints in her wake.

[Jesse Fforde]

At first Jesse didn’t notice that there was someone else in the room.

No, that was a lie.

Jesse noticed, but he expected it to be Kaelyn, or Victor. Or Clover. But Clover had already been and gone tonight - the masks that she had brought were next to the cupcakes that were still untouched. But covered, at least, so they wouldn’t get covered in paint. The masks were stacked - the various animals spattered with red spray paint. It made Jesse anxious, her invitation. Go out, she said. Out, to paint his newfound skills on the walls of the city. The masks, of course, to keep their identities secret, their antics less than legal. Out where there were warm bodies. Blood. So much blood. So many things to burn. So many temptations, out there in the open.

But she was right, without even having to say anything. Maybe she didn’t intend to say it - it was just a conclusion that Jesse himself had come to. There had to be a balance. It was all well and good to lock himself up inside but that would probably send him as insane as the outside did. He gave in, only because he wouldn’t be alone. If he had someone there with him, he was less likely to do something incredibly stupid. He was less likely to fall off the wagon.

Although he was aware of the presence behind him, he didn’t turn around. If it was Victor or Kaelyn, they would make their presence known, sooner or later. He continued to work. It was only when the scent found him that he turned. And when he turned, he was not welcoming.

See, although Grey might have been covered in all kinds of muck, Jesse’s nose sifted through all the different flavours until it found the one it wanted. The one it craved. The thing that it had been deprived of, for so many nights. When he turned it was with a flare of the nostrils, the paint can he’d been holding dropped with a clatter and a roll. The look in his eyes was not soft. It was barely even human. His lips curled, canines immediately sharp, pulling at his gums.

Blood. It was all he could focus on. It didn’t matter that it was Grey. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what to say, or what to do. There was no room in him for guilt or anger or outright shock. There could be no pleasantries. There was only a vicious and violent hunger, a roaring fiend that wanted to shatter him as it burst from his skin. Hunger for blood. For death. The pure rage of it.

His fists clenched at his sides. He took a single step forward before he stopped. His entire body locked up as he squeezed his eyes shut, as he lifted his hands to his face, as if covering it might somehow guard him from the sight of it. The smell of it. If he could smell the paint wedged into the lines of his skin, maybe it would help.

“Get the **** out,” he said, sharp and loud over the music. He sucked in a breath before he could help himself. It nearly choked him, that need for blood.

“The blood, Grey! Get it out!” he shouted, hands falling, his features twisted and grotesque. She was standing in front of his exit. It was why he didn’t leave himself. He couldn’t risk getting any closer. But he might not be able to help it if she lingered.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

It felt almost as if it were an out of body experience as she stood there looking at her lover. He was the epitome of everything she wanted in a man. He was kind and caring. He was full of laughter and humor. He was sensitive when he needed to be and hard when she did not want it, but that was what had been best for her. He knew how to tease her into a smile and press kisses against her lips like a sweet salvation.

He brought her into this world of death, guaranteeing that he would always love her and look after her. And in that moment, she had been innocent of how the world around her could change. She was innocent of how outside forces caused her senses to shift and her beliefs not to change, but instead bloom.

Death caused her to become embossed in tunnel vision instead of broadening her horizons. It caused her to break apart, shattering into a million pieces with the constant undercurrent of unfamiliarity. Her chest heaved, suddenly as if she couldn’t keep herself quiet anymore as a sob startled up out of her throat.

She had told herself she had cried enough. Grey had succumb to the thought of losing the man that she had died for and her vision had dimmed days ago. Now, Jesse’s paint cans had caused those eyes to dilate. The bright colors forced themselves into her mind, swirling in the hatred that he spewed from his lips. The contorted face did not scare her. The fangs that penetrated from his very gums did not frighten her.

She had once stood in front of Micah’s angered form where he had talons instead of fingernails and pure rage in his eyes and Grey had squared her shoulders and yelled back at the man. Grey’s walls were up. Her mental defenses were engaged and the bitterness that suddenly sounded in her voice had taken even her by surprise.

“Or what? You’ll kill me again?”

The Shadow Realm may just be a place where Grey could finally rest.

[Jesse Fforde]

What Jesse had been through the past couple of weeks had amounted to this; to a haphazard bed in the middle of a room filled with distractions. His art. His plants. Really, there weren’t all that many distractions, which was why he liked it when the others came to visit. He liked getting a few of them here at the same time. He liked to keep them as long as was possible. Most of the time, if he sat back and let them chatter, sooner or later one or the other of them would make him laugh. And if he laughed? It was a good night.

The night that Clover had brought his phone back to him had not been a good night. It was a rare occurrence that Jesse allowed himself to cry in front of others, but he hadn’t been able to help it. As if the last few months of anxiety and tension and frustration had all built to this singular point where it all came crashing down.

He hadn’t known that Grey had begun to organise the binding. It was most of the way through Autumn and she hadn’t said a word to him about it. The date wasn’t set. And she had got so annoyed with him when he’d continued to bring it up so he’d stopped. Lately he’d lost hope that she even remembered. That she even wanted to.

The words that spilled from her mouth now were just screws in the coffin. She spat them in anger and bitterness. Had she been angry and bitter all along? Was it all lies, when she said she didn’t regret it? Kill her again, as if doing it the first time was something she hated, something she’d take back, now, if she could. Or was it just now, that she felt regret? Now, that she decided it might have been a bad idea?

And yet, he reasoned, he wasn’t the one who’d called it off. He wasn’t the one who’d walked away. She was the one who’d decided yet again that she wasn’t good enough instead of trying to figure out what it was Jesse was trying to do. He refused to break down. And regardless, he wouldn’t be able to. Grey stood her ground and failed to understand why it was Jesse was telling her to get out. His jaw clenched and he took a forced step back. He wasn’t scared of Grey. He was scared of himself.

“Why the **** would I kill you, Grey? I’ve locked myself in here for a reason!” he roared, his voice cracking with the force of the words. As if the pure violence of them would somehow tell her how desperate his plight was.

“You come in here covered in blood and I want to slaughter the whole ******* city! Do you want me to lose control? Is that it? Some kind of vengeance run where you single-handedly send me insane? Please just go, Grey. Come back when you’re clean,” he pleaded. Maybe if she understood he wasn’t forsaking her - just the blood that clung to her clothes - she might ******* get it.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

She turned away from him. She had planned to use the bathroom just as she had before. There was a shower there. Her clothes were here. But, when he asked her to leave, it was like a splash of ice water down her body. From her head to her feet, she was instantly soaked in guilt. She hadn’t thought. She hadn’t realized. She hadn’t figured her blood or gore or muck would be an issue with Jesse.

That was just it, perhaps. Grey didn’t think at all. She didn’t think of her presence impacting another. No one had come to her except Victor. No one had bothered to see how she was doing. No one took time to come to her and say hello or see what the hell was going on. Kaelyn had gone out with Grey once, but in truth… Family to Grey wasn’t a two way street.

The only family experience she had beyond being seen and not heard was Jesse. And, as the elevator dinged its arrival, Grey stumbled onto it. As if her legs suddenly were each a hundred pounds, she took herself from Cerberus and hastily pressed and repressed for the doors to be closed. She couldn’t even look at the man that screamed at her as her eyes welled suddenly.

She was, in truth, such a failure. She had failed him countless times when it mattered. She wasn’t strong enough to stand for him let alone with him. The countless hours spent in the sewers and the catacombs training were worthless. The hours on her back earning a paycheck and changing things from tires to used fluids to repair and body work on vehicles might have built her bank account up, but the recent increase in blood packs almost wasn’t enough to cover to barely break even.

The loss of Jesse months ago was seemingly teasing her. It had almost broken her then. It was, in retrospect, a trial run on the pain that she would be going through. He came to her then. But when she went to him, it wasn’t in the most presentable fashion. What did she have left?

Like a robot on auto pilot, Grey peeled off her clothes. The bullet wounds had nearly sealed themselves closed. She moved around the basement of the Circle on stamina and visited the fridge. She didn’t go to the bathroom there. She clutched the blood packets, feeding the meter with half of what she’d be able to tolerate. Four, five, six packets of blood collected and she took them into the bathroom with her.

Clothes were thrown in the garbage and she downed the plastic encased blood. It didn’t even take but a few minutes and the heat of the shower ran over her icy cold skin. Steam built its way up and the blood splattered the tile walls. Grey stayed there until it ran clear down the drains.

Soap and that sweet fresh scent of tea tree oil and tangerine would soon fill the space. The acidic scent of iron and gore was removed when the trash was tied off and she wiped down the shower. Ensuring that her wounds were healed, the pink shiny skin covered over with new flesh - the delay was almost two hours now.

Drained and near exhaustion, Grey took the time to even run bleach underneath her hands and her fingernails, soaking them with a precision that had been filled with guilt. She wrapped a towel around herself, no robes to be had on the back of the door. Barefoot, she used a towel to sop up the mess in the elevator too. The equivalent of dirty rainwater and mud, the only blood had been on her clothes which were now in the trash bin outside.

The elevator dinged softly, sliding open its silver doors to let her out once more into the bowels of Jesse’s lair. With the sun coming up, her movements were perhaps a little slower than normal. In the time alone, she had lost her reserve to fight. She had lost her smarmy attitude and her stiff upper lip.

Clutching the towel around her, Grey moved to the bedroom where her clothes were.

[Jesse Fforde]

Shame was a constant boon buddy for Jesse, these days. Shame that his own condition led to selfishness; a lack of seeing how others might be feeling or how their lives were impacted by his behaviour. Or even whether they were suffering from things that he was not aware of.

He was trying, though. Trying to ask how others were faring; trying to pry into their lives. But he felt hopeless, useless, unable to help them if they needed help. How could he help anyone when all he could think about was blood and violence? When all he really wanted to do was feed his blood to another unsuspecting soul, but deep down he’d passed some kind of threshold. He’d convinced himself, regardless of how often people tried to convince him otherwise, that no one appreciated him. And the reason? Because none of them had asked to be here. None of them had asked for his favours or his concern. None of them had asked for his rules. So why would they follow them? In that light, why should he sire anyone else who wouldn’t appreciate the things that he had to offer? The myriad places where they could stay, the rooms and the amenities. The bar, the gym.

As he spent his nights circling Cerberus, he argued with himself. A man on the brink of insanity, he flipped between furious depression and bouts of reasonable understanding. People have lives. Had lives, that he ripped them away from. They needed time. There were so many things that weighed against him, however. How many people now populated the Fforde lineage? And how many of those had he seen within the last couple of weeks? How many made the effort to come and see him, to try to understand what he was going through? Three. Three out of about twenty. And how many of them actually understood?

As Grey disappeared into the elevator, Jesse was again reminded of his shame. Why did he have to make such a big deal out of it? Why did he stay here, anyway? Maybe he should have stayed out of sight, and out of mind, and then he wouldn’t be an inconvenience to anyone. They could use whatever shower they wanted, whatever room they wanted, and they wouldn’t have to walk through here as if walking on eggshells. The slightest tremor could set him off. He was a ticking time bomb.

The bedroom would be a mess. The fire was still roaring, though Jesse wasn’t in front of it. The cushions littered the ground; one of the lamps had been knocked from the bedside tables when he’d hefted the mattress out of the room.

While she had showered Jesse had crawled onto that mattress. He’d curled his paint-spattered body around one of the pillows, burying his face into the fabric so that he wouldn’t search for the lingering scent of blood. His phone was clutched in his hand; several times over he had started and stopped writing a message to Clover - to ask her to bring some blood. Lots of it. But he didn’t need it. He had only to boost himself and he would have all he needed. The hunger was a farce. It wasn’t real. The canines wouldn’t go away, though. Jesse bit into the softness of the pillow, the sharp teeth piercing the fabric. His body was tense and his eyes screwed shut as he willed himself to stay there. Just stay there. Don’t move. Don’t do anything.

The music had stopped, too. There was dead silence, and maybe it would look like he was asleep. When the elevator doors slid open, he did not uncurl himself. He did not turn over. All he wanted, in that moment, was to sink into invisible oblivion.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

They both knew how to hurt each other. They both knew each other’s deepest weaknesses. Grey’s mouth had been quick and fast, striking dead center in Jesse’s mentality that she had only come to regret it. Words hurt, though. Words had often times replaced thoughts and emotions.

**** emotions. **** life. **** death. Grey walked through the mess of what had once been their bedroom. She sorted through clothes, pulling out jeans and sweatshirts and underwear without even really seeing them. Her damp hair dripped, the towel absorbing the fresh wetness that trailed over her shoulders and her back.

She thought of the past. She thought of the connection that her lover and her had. She thought of the never ending laughter, the looks of joy, the whispers of concern, and the way he would wrap his arms around her in the middle of the night. Something, somehow… Had changed. She could feel the slivers of judgement and questioning slide between them. Part of it, in truth, had been Grey’s complete cross to bear.

She didn’t trust Clover. Hell, she didn’t even know Clover. The woman, in part, had been a driving wedge between Jesse and herself. Grey didn’t have the stamina to keep up with someone that was apparently more fun to be around. She couldn’t tolerate her within the same room let alone within the fact that they shared the same blood: Jesse’s.

Her eyebrows knit together in frustration, never once voicing this to the man that was going through so much in the moment. His tension had mounted over the last several weeks, and how was Grey to help him? How was she to get him through this when he was breaking her in the mean time? He had no idea. He had not a single clue. She knew that the members of the family had surrounded him and attempted to take his mind from his pain. She knew that some had come and gone.

Grey wasn’t one to reach out. She wasn’t like Jesse. She didn’t feel that she needed to go to members of Fforde and intrude upon their lives when they barely even said anything more than ‘Hello’ to her when the family was gathered together. She wasn’t at all like Jesse, a man who was the true Patriarch of the family.

She was not the glue.

She was not going to be something more. There was no reason for her to pretend to try to do more and be more when it was obvious that they had grown so far apart in such a short time that his curse was the height of it all.

She dressed in silence. Grey had opened the drawer of the bedside table that had not been overturned. Inside her backpack, she placed the iPad Mini, her Nook, and a few charging cords. She pushed clothes inside the pack and left it there on the bed. Seeing Jesse so distressed had torn a proverbial hole within her chest. He was hurting. He was angry. The blackness was sinking around her soul, making her own body quake as she sat down beside him. The weight of the edge of the mattress would dip.

She hesitated, but not for long. Her palm reached out, open and gently laid against his back. Her body was turned towards his. Her touch was skin to his skin. Grey sat there, closing her eyes as she bowed her head and quietly … sat with him. Because love was not for the weak. Because love was all she ever had to give the man that was so distraught with his face crushed into the closest cushion.

She gave him the only thing she knew how to give at that moment - herself.

[Jesse Fforde]

In the other room, he could hear Grey going through the drawers. More drawers than were needed for a set of clean clothes, but that was why she was here, wasn’t it? To get her things. It was his fault, wasn’t it? He hadn’t replied to the text message. He hadn’t told her not to leave. Of course she would assume that he wanted her to. Jesse didn’t know what he wanted, as he listened to his fiance as she packed. But she wasn’t his fiancee anymore, was she? And even if she was, she wouldn’t be for much longer. Not after Jesse told her what he knew he had to tell her.

When her hand lay flat against his back, Jesse tensed. Once upon a time he would have reached around. He would have turned around. He would have tugged her into that bed beside him and wrapped his whole body around her, finding comfort in her. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d done just that. But it hadn’t been enough. Maybe then, that night, he should have opened up. He should have told her that he wasn’t doing so well. In words, spoken out loud, he should have laid it all down for her, clear and concise, rather than assuming that she would know. That she would remember. That she would be able to feel what he felt, and put the pieces together.

Maybe he should have called her when he had lost the plot. In that basement. Maybe he should have called her to tell her to come to him. To take him home. To help him clean up. But he had been stubborn. He had not been reasonable. He had waited to see whether she would notice. So often, these days, he did things and waited to see if people would notice. It fed his morbid self-loathing when they didn’t.

Instead of doing any of what he should have, however, Jesse had spiralled. The texted argument had not helped. There were things that she said, that she implied, that he could not forget. He couldn’t go chasing after her this time, to reassure her of her worth. He didn’t have the energy for it. And anyway, it wasn’t Grey who was not good enough for Jesse. It was the other way around - at least that was the conclusion he had come to, as he lay there. He lifted his face from the pillow so that she would understand him, when he spoke.

“It wasn’t me. The last few messages - it was Clover. And I was angry… she pretended to be me. But I couldn’t be angry for long, because she only said the things that I was thinking. That I couldn’t say myself…” he said slowly, his voice husky from the recent shouting match. A sign that he hadn’t had anything to drink for a long time.

“And she has been around. A lot. She has been…” he stopped. Whatever flagellation he received was what he deserved. Even if Grey picked up a knife and stabbed him in the back, he almost looked forward to it. He stared at the sheet in front of him - there was a bit of loose thread that begged to be pulled.

“I slept with her. With Clover. The night of Kaelyn’s party…” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to apologise. Was he sorry? Or did he want Grey to be angry? To take it out on him, rather than on herself? Yes. That was it. If she left in anger rather than in sorrow, it would be better. It would be better for her, that way.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

She had failed him.

And in turn, Jesse had failed her.

As she sat there next to him, with his flesh underneath her palm, Grey looked at the man she loves and her heart had finally begun to pull apart. Literally, within her chest, there was such a sensation that felt as if whatever lays underneath her left breast was dying again. The painful flip-flop sensation and the sudden tightness there was enough to dull her vision with each blink.

She wanted to act incredulous. She wanted to try to clarify the act of actually sleeping with someone in his terms. Was it sexual? Was it platonic? Was it holding hands and cuddling up to one another or was it the wham-bam-thank you ma’am type of sex that he had just enjoyed with Clover?

And then, ultimately, did it matter? He had chosen someone else over her. He had chosen to go to someone else for the comfort that he should have sought out in her. Was it easier to go to Clover? Did she understand Jesse better? Did Jesse pick her instead because she was fun and adventurous and seemed to drag Jesse out and about the town on their little escapades he was so fond of?

Grey could sit there all night and contemplate this, but suddenly she couldn’t breathe in the paint fumes any longer. Could a vampire hyperventilate? As her chest seemingly began to seize up on her, she leaned over her lover. No! Her… Ex-lover. Her ex-fiance. She couldn’t stay … promised to a man who had turned to another woman. He hurt. He was in pain. And she could no longer fix that for him.

Pressing a gentle kiss to the back of his neck, the wetness that she had left there were tears that she didn’t even realize had already begun to travel down her cheeks. In a rapid attempt to clear her vision, the blinks only forced more of the suddenly hated fluid from her eyes. She said nothing. She pushed from her seated position, careful not to touch him once more as the brick walls she was mentally building started to be layered and secured with so many emotions that she couldn’t even process them all at once.


She found his phone.

She found Clover in his message contacts.

Her engagement ring took the place of the phone.

She typed out a message to the woman that he was cheating on her with.

[Text] I need you.


She laid the phone by his arm. In a robotic sense, Grey’s walls were becoming thicker and higher with each step. It started in her fingers, that numb sensation. Soon, it was engulfing her chest, blanking her mind and allowing the mechanic to start functioning on autopilot.

She said nothing to him. Grey never opened her mouth in understanding, hatred, or hurt. She remained silent. It was, as if… She couldn’t decipher what she was feeling or what she wanted to say to him. But, ultimately, the woman knew that she couldn’t stay there. And that Jesse Fforde couldn’t be alone that night.

As Grey lifted that heavy backpack, she would once again be alone in the city. At least she had Brock, she suddenly thought. But, instead of going to her employer’s refuge… Grey went into the sewers. It wasn’t until she had left the Circle that the fire she was feeling burning inside of her had finally burned a hole through her chest.

That bond that she and Jesse had was no more.

Tugging her clothing away from her chest, at about half blood - 5 pints, it was easy to allow the clothing not to touch the painful area over her heart.

Pain. Physical pain.

No… Suddenly as the sewer grate closed that Grey stumbled through, she didn’t feel anything anymore.