Being Wrong

The music coming through Charlie’s earphones just about managed to drown out the more cacophonous music coming from the stereo, but there was no avoiding the physical thump of the bass. It felt too similar to the hard, fast beat of a panicked heart for him to disentangle it from his own anxiety.

Pairs of legs walked past the table Charlie sat under in the kitchen, some bare as far up as he could see, some clad in wrinkled jeans. Nobody bothered him. Nobody knew he was there. Charlie had mastered the art of disappearing.

Charlie was six songs into his Best of the Nineties tape when a familiar pair of legs approached the table. His dad hadn’t seen him hide himself away in here, but he knew Charlie well enough to find him. Charlie hit pause on his walkman as his dad crouched down.

Pinprick pupils met Charlie’s gaze as his dad tossed three fifty dollar notes into his lap. “Keep that safe, okay? Don’t lose it.”

Charlie nodded as he gathered the notes, carefully folded them, and shoved them deep into his pocket. For simple things, he was reliable.

Charlie’s dad was just starting to get up again when someone laughed and dropped to the floor next to him. A young man, maybe university aged, with spiked up hair and a can of beer in his hand. “What are you doing on the floor, mate?”

The guy grinned broadly when his eyes landed on Charlie, but Charlie’s dad’s face was flat and annoyed. Even high he looked tired, old. He hadn’t shaved in days and he’d started looking like he needed a haircut a few weeks ago.

“Why are you under a table, kid?” the guy asked, then grabbed Charlie’s walkman without waiting for an answer. “Hey, you have one of these! One of these, uh, things.”

Normally Charlie was passive, quietly nonresistant, but his walkman was the one thing that mattered to him. He lunged forward and tried to grab it back, but he set himself off balance and it took barely more than a nudge from the guy to tip him backwards. His head thunked hard against something solid, sending pain strumming through his skull and scattering his thoughts. It took Charlie a moment to realise he’d hit his head against the table leg.

“Oh shit,” the guy said, but he was laughing. Charlie’s dad chewed at a hangnail and glanced around like there were places he’d rather be.

“Ryan, what the hell?” a female voice cut in. A woman, tiny and asian and around the same age as the guy, crouched down in front of the table. “Jesus, Ryan. What’s a kid even doing here, anyway?”

“He’s sixteen,” Charlie’s dad interjected.

“He’s your…” She looked between Charlie and his dad. “He’s your kid? You can’t bring a kid here. Holy shit, dude, he’s clearly not having a good time.”

“He’s sixteen,” Charlie’s dad repeated. Charlie didn’t like the edge to his voice, the growing agitation in his movements. The press of the building emotion in the small space under the table melted into the throbbing pain coming from the back of Charlie’s skull and created a confusing mix that disconnected the parts of Charlie’s brain capable of complex thought.

“And that’s too fucking young!” She twisted around and scanned the room. “Azza, he can’t have a sixteen year old kid here, right?”

There was a beat of silence before whoever she’d called out to responded. “Uh… nah, mate, maybe not. If the cops get called, you know?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “How about because it’s shit parenting, you know?”

Azza laughed. “Oh, fuck off. Yeah, sure, that too.”

Charlie’s dad didn’t respond, just grabbed Charlie’s wrist in a firm grip and hauled him up. Charlie managed to grab his walkman and narrowly avoided hitting his head on the edge of the table, and then he was being marched through the crowded house and out the front door. As soon as they were outside, Charlie’s dad snatched the walkman from Charlie’s hand and threw it hard against the side of the house.

Something lurched deep in Charlie’s gut at the sound of plastic cracking and he twisted out of his dad’s grip. The second his fingers had closed around his walkman again his dad pulled him up and dragged him towards the car. He opened the car door on the passenger side, shoved Charlie in, slammed the door and then stomped around to the other side to get in.

“You’re so fucking useless,” Charlie’s dad grumbled as he jammed the key in the ignition. “Why do I even keep feeding you? You’re like a retarded puppy that keeps peeing on the carpet. If I had half a brain I’d just fucking get rid of you, right?”

Charlie ran his fingers along the new crack running down the front of his walkman. Was it just the plastic casing that was damaged, or was it finally broken for real? It hadn’t been new when he got it and after a few years of love the purple paint was worn away around the corners and buttons. It was hard to imagine it being anything but indestructible, though. He’d dropped it in a pool once and it can worked as well as ever once it had dried out.

Charlie’s dad strummed an agitated rhythm on the steering wheel as he turned onto the highway. There wasn’t much traffic around this time of night.

Charlie’s gaze cut to the speedometer. “You’re going too fast.”

“Who gives a shit,” Charlie’s dad mumbled. The speed crept up.

“The police,” Charlie pointed out. “And I do. And you should. You’re not even wearing your seatbelt.”

For a second Charlie thought he’d gotten through to his dad as he took his eyes off the road and shifted around, but then his dad pressed the button to release Charlie’s own seatbelt.

“Don’t!” Charlie shouted and quickly buckled himself back in. “You shouldn’t be driving. You’re too high.”

“Oh, you don’t want to be in this car with me right now?” The pointer on the speedometer crept lower as the car began to slow, to the proper speed limit and then below it. “I think we can arrange that, huh?”

“Dad…”

“I’m sick of your shit.” The car slowed to a stop on the side of the highway and Charlie’s dad pressed the release on Charlie’s seatbelt again. “Get out. You can walk home.”

Charlie looked around helplessly. He had no idea where there were in relation to home, but he knew it was too far to walk. His dad would have known it too if he was sober.

Charlie’s dad leant over him and opened the passenger side door. “Get out.” When Charlie didn’t move, his dad gave him a firm shove.

Charlie fell into darkness on the side of the road, hitting the ground shoulder first. The long sleeves of his hoodie protected him somewhat, but the area already felt bruised when he pressed his hand against it. Before he could get to his feet, the door slammed shut behind him and the car sped away.

It was a long moment before Charlie got to his feet, then only a few seconds before he had to sit again. He felt distant from the aches in his body, drowned so deep that even fear didn’t truly reach him. Part of him wanted to walk into the bush that surrounded the highway, to keep walking until he no longer could, to simply disappear. The thought of slowly dying alone in the bush didn’t scare him like it should have.

Instead, he started walking along the highway in the direction his dad had driven. Maybe he’d turn around and come back. Maybe if Charlie walked long enough he’d find his way home on his own. He’d passed eleven electricity poles before he realised he still had his walkman clutched in his hand.

It was almost on reflex that Charlie put his earbuds in and pressed play. Deep in his chest, something relaxed as the sound of a familiar song enveloped him. It still worked just as well as ever. Indestructible. Charlie only wished he were that durable.

Following the highway was the safest bet for finding his way home and the only way his dad would find him if he did come back, but it wasn’t a good route for pedestrians. Especially not in the dark. After a truck drove past him so close that the breeze from it made him stumble and then nearly falling down into a dry creek bed, Charlie took the next exit.

Nothing looked at all familiar. There was a row of shops, closed this time of night, and houses on the other side of the street. Just a regular suburban area. A bus pulled up ahead of him and somebody got off. If Charlie had money, he could…

But Charlie did have money. He had a hundred and fifty dollars. His dad would be mad if he spent it, but bus fare wasn’t much. There wasn’t time to think it through. Charlie pulled out his earbuds and hurried up the bus steps.

It wasn’t until Charlie had pulled out a fifty dollar note and held it out to the driver that he realised he didn’t know what to say, didn’t even know if he could make words come out of his mouth even if he could think of the right ones.

The bus driver, a slightly overweight middle aged woman, stared at the note for a second before shaking her head. “I can’t change that, love. You got anything smaller?”

Charlie slowly withdrew his hand. No, he didn’t have anything smaller. Belatedly he realised he needed to communicate that and shook his head.

“All right, don’t worry about it. Just get on.”

Charlie hesitated for a long moment, then turned and went to find a seat near the back. She had let him on even though he couldn’t pay. That had been a nice thing to do. He should have said thank you, but he couldn’t do words just then. He said it in his head instead. Thank you. Thank you.

He hadn’t really thought this bus thing through, though. There was only one right direction to go in and many wrong ones, and going the wrong way faster wouldn’t help him at all. But maybe, if the bus went to enough places, eventually he would recognise something. He could find somewhere he could start from to work his way home.

Three songs later, Charlie was almost certain they were heading in the exact opposite of the right direction. He stuck his earphone cord in his mouth and sucked on it. He should probably get off so that he didn’t get any further from home, but then what? This had been his one idea, his one chance at a solution. It wasn’t allowed to not work.

The bus weaved through suburban streets, letting people off and occasionally collecting new passengers. It was a weekday night and most people were heading home from work. They came and went calmly, locked in the comforting tedium of routine, each one knowing where they needed to go and how to get there.

Eventually the bus pulled back onto a main road where the lighting was better and Charlie could at least try to find some familiarity in his surroundings. Had he seen the train station they just passed before, or did all train stations just look the same? And that pub across the street, was that… had he…

Something squeezed in Charlie’s chest and churned his gut, panic or excitement. He’d been there. Many times, sitting alone at a table with a glass of orange juice in front of him while his dad sat at the counter and talked with his friends. He remembered the ice cubes they had, the ones with the holes through the middle you could poke the black straws through. It had been years ago, back when the only time he spent with his dad was occasional weekend visits, but he remembered. Charlie slammed his hand on the bell.

The bus didn’t stop immediately, but that was okay because things only go more familiar from there. The bus headed up the hill, past rows of small shops and towards the shopping centre he’d gone to every weekend with his mum to get groceries. The bus stopped in front of it and Charlie got out.

Charlie smiled and felt like he might cry. He knew where he was, and where he was felt like home like nowhere he’d lived with his dad ever had. They moved around too much and his dad couldn’t be counted on to be the same person from one day to the next. Charlie was a block away before he even really registered that he’d started walking, but he knew where he was going. He was going home.

It wasn’t that close - far enough that he’d always taken the bus with his mum instead of walking - but Charlie knew the way. He felt distant from the aches of his body and the turmoil of his mind, but the simple act of walking without thinking soothed out the jitters in him. This whole event felt like a dream, like he could be swallowed whole by it any second and like whatever happened it couldn’t truly harm him. Halfway through the journey, the song Charlie was listening to slowed to a deep warble and then stopped as the batteries in his walkman finally died.

The apartment building looked different from his memories - a fresh coat of paint, different plants in the garden bed - but it was still the same. The same weight of the door when he pushed it, the same concrete stairs inside, the same numbers on the doors as he counted his way up to apartment 205.

A different person who answered the door.

Charlie hadn’t been expecting his mum. Not really. He hadn’t been expecting this woman, either, her curly dark hair or her flowery pyjamas.

She hadn’t been expecting him, either. “Um… can I help you?”

Charlie didn’t realise he’d taken a step forward until she took a step back, and once she was no longer blocking the door it felt natural to walk inside. It was the same mix of different and the same in here, too. The sofa was different, but exactly where their old one had been. The TV was bigger, newer. The walls were a slightly different colour, Charlie was fairly sure, and the kitchen area in the corner looked almost exactly as Charlie remembered it besides a few small appliances.

The woman was behind him, and she was saying things, but that didn’t matter just then. Charlie headed down the hall and poked his head into his bedroom, now her bedroom. It looked completely different, though in truth much better. He envied the fairy lights she’d weaved through her bedframe. On the other side of the hall, his mum’s room was now a study.

Charlie headed back into the living room and finally looked at the woman again. She looked angry, or scared, or both. She was holding a broom in front of her in a defensive stance. It hadn’t occurred to Charlie that anyone might ever see him as dangerous. Charlie sat down on the sofa in the hopes of showing her he was no threat, then lay down because he desperately needed to. He rolled over to face the back of the sofa and buried his face against a fluffy pink cushion.

With everything else blocked out it was easier to listen to what the woman was saying, but she wasn’t talking to him now. After a few confused moments, Charlie realised she was on the phone.

“Yeah, uh, this guy just walked into my apartment.” She paused, listening to whoever was on the other end. “No, I don’t know him, he just knocked on the door and walked in. And now he’s taking a nap on my couch. I think he might be on drugs.”

Charlie wanted to tell her that he was not on drugs, that he never used drugs ever, but he knew any attempt at words just then would come out a garbled mess and then maybe he’d cry.

“I mean, I don’t think he’s like… dangerous. He’s got his feet dangling off the couch so he doesn’t get his shoes on it. Just send someone to move him out of my apartment, please?”

Charlie knew he should probably leave now so that nobody had to come and move him, but even unburying his face and confronting the brightness of the room felt like too much. Besides, if he left, where would he go? He’d wanted so badly to go home, but home wasn’t here anymore because home was his mum and she wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t. He could still remember how cold her cheek had felt against the palm of him hand.

The knock on the door was too loud, and Charlie wished he still had his music to drown the world out. He needed more batteries. If he knew the night was going to drag out so long he would have brought spares.

The sound of voices after the woman opened the front door was abrasively loud, but at the same time somehow too quiet for Charlie to figure out what was actually being said until they moved closer. There was a male voice now and another woman.

“I think he’s just confused,” the woman whose apartment Charlie was in said. “He went and looked around before he lay down. I think he just walked into the wrong apartment or something.”

“That happens a lot,” the male voice assured her. “We’ll get him out of your hair and figure out where he belongs.”

“Hey, kid, come on,” the new female voice said from directly behind Charlie. “Let’s get you home.”

Home sounded good. Charlie rolled over to look up at her, got a brief glimpse of a police uniform, then squinted away and pressed the crook of his arm over his face as the brightness of the room assaulted his eyes.

The sounds of fabric brushing against fabric indicated the female officer had crouched down next to Charlie, and then her hand was on his arm gently pulling it back. When she spoke, her voice was gentler. “Come on. Let me see your eyes.”

Charlie allowed her to move his arm, but he couldn’t help squeezing his eyes shut against the light. Slowly he managed to relax, then blink them open, but he could feel the grimace on his face.

“Pupils look normal.” She was looking at Charlie, but he got the impression she was talking to the other officer behind her. She had short, auburn hair. Charlie liked it. “What’s your name, kid?”

Charlie’s lips moved, but the idea of trying to speak just then made him deeply uncomfortable. He pulled his walkman out of his pocket and pointed to the faded letter stickers he’d arranged on the front to spell his name.

“Charlie,” she read. She smiled at him, but Charlie saw it slide off her face as she turned to speak to her partner. “I don’t know about drugs. Maybe an intellectual disability. Can you call in and check if anyone’s called him in missing? White male, brown hair, blue eyes, looks around mid-teens, goes by Charlie.”

Charlie did not have an intellectual disability, he was not on drugs, and his dad would never have reported him missing to the police. He could tell her none of this, though, so he just sat up and pulled his hood up so that it shielded him as well as it could.

“Okay Charlie, I’m Constable Kate Bradley. You can call me Kate,” Kate said, as though Charlie was likely to be verbally addressing her in any way. “My partner over there is Constable Lukas Lau. You can call him Luke.”

Luke was an asian man with hair shaved military short. Charlie wanted to touch it, but you could probably get arrested for that.

“Now, can you answer some questions by nodding or shaking your head?”

Charlie considered that. Yes, just then he could both process what was being said to him and respond nonverbally. He nodded.

Kate smiled. “Good. Have you had any pills or alcohol or anything like that tonight?”

Charlie shook his head. He wanted her to ask if he had an intellectual impairment, too, so that he could shake his head again, but she moved onto a different topic.

“Do you live in this apartment building?”

Charlie hesitated. He had, but that wasn’t the question. He shook his head again.

“Do you know anyone who does?” her partner cut in from behind her.

The unexpected voice in the mix distracted Charlie for a moment, and he had to run the words back through his mind a couple of times before they made sense. Did he know anyone who lived here? He had, but how was he supposed to know if they still did? Charlie gave an awkward shrug.

“You’re not sure?” Kate asked.

Charlie nodded.

“You’re not sure if you’re in the right apartment building, or you’re not sure if they still live here?”

That wasn’t a yes or no question, so it didn’t work with their response method. Charlie shook his head and then nodded it in an attempt to adapt.

Kate smiled. “Sorry. You’re not sure if they still live here?”

Charlie nodded.

“Did you think they lived in this apartment?”

Charlie shook his head. He was starting to feel even tireder than he had before and it was becoming harder and harder to focus on the questions he was being asked. He just wanted to go home.

“Can you show us where you think they might live?” Kate asked.

Charlie nodded and got up off the couch. It wasn’t far, just next door, where the old lady who used to babysit him had lived. Helen. Charlie hadn’t liked most people, but he’d liked her. She’d knitted him toys and let him watch his favourite movies on her little TV whenever he came over. But she’d been old, and it had been six years, and nothing seemed to stay the same that long.

The lighting was dimmer, out in the hallway. Gentler on his eyes. He knocked on her door and then sat down on the floor in front of it.

The image Charlie had of Helen in his mind was vague and indistinct, almost forgotten, but somehow he still recognised her as soon as she opened the door. Her eyes found the two officers behind him first, then drifted down to Charlie and squinted in confusion. There was no recognition in them.

“Sorry to bother you so late, ma’am,” Luke said. “You don’t recognise this kid at all, do you? He’s a bit lost and we’re trying to figure out where he’s come from.”

The veins on her legs were big and purple and her skin looked loose and thin. When he was ten, she’d let him touch the protruding veins on the backs of her hands. He’d like the way they felt.

“Oh, that is a worry,” Helen said, her voice weak and scratchy. “I’m afraid I don’t really get out much these days. There are some college boys two doors down who might have seen him around.”

Kate thanked her for her time and apologised again for bothering her as Luke bent down towards Charlie.

Luke’s fingers wrapped around Charlie’s arm and tried to pull him up, but he made himself into a passive, immoveable weight. When the door in front of him began to shut, he kicked his foot out to block it.

“Kid…” Luke said, and tugged Charlie’s arm more firmly. If he’d used his full strength he probably could have moved Charlie easily, but he was still trying to be gentle. Was refusing to stand up when a police officer told you to illegal? “Charlie, come on.”

The door pulled open again and Helen stared down at him. “...Charlie?”

Charlie couldn’t put a name to the emotion on her face, but there definitely was one. She knew who he was now. He tucked his knee back against his chest.

“You do know him?” Kate asked.

“I-” Helen hesitated, then nodded. “I didn’t recognise him. It’s been… oh, let’s see…”

Charlie held up six fingers.

The laugh Helen let out sounded fragile. “Yes, it would have been about six years. He lived next door with his mum, and then…” She paused, took a shaky breath. “Everyone thought his father had probably taken him, but the police couldn’t find him. Is that what happened, Charlie?”

Charlie twisted the cords on his hoodie together. He knew better than to give out any information about his dad in front of the police.

“So his mother is-” Kate began to say, then abruptly stopped. Charlie could see Helen shaking her head vigorously out of the corner of his eye. “Do you know if he has other family?”

“Yes, his grandparents on his mother’s side. They were very worried about him.”

Charlie popped the knotted end of one of the cords on his hoodie in his mouth and bit down on it. His grandparents? Even before he’d gone to live with his dad he hadn’t seen them for a couple of years. As far as Charlie knew, they’d never even liked him. They’d been so incompatible with him that they had barely known him as anything more than a screaming mess.

A couple more exchanges passed between the police and Helen before Charlie even noticed he wasn’t listening anymore. He tried, briefly, to tune back in again, but promptly gave up. It was their job to solve this problem now. He wasn’t needed anymore.

It wasn’t long before Kate gently encouraged him to his feet and led him down the cement stairs, out of the apartment building. He didn’t like the feel of the light touch of her hand against his elbow, but he did like how it directed him so that he didn’t really have to think. She got him into a police car and sat with him in the back.

She talked to him and asked him questions, but Charlie wasn’t listening. His brain kept trying to fill in the blanks of what would come next, but he had no answers. He knew they wouldn’t be taking him back to his dad.

They ended up at a hospital, which made no sense at all. Charlie wasn’t sick and his only injuries were a few bruises nobody had even seen. Hospitals were bright and busy. Things went beep and a baby was crying. Every sheltered nook they passed called out to Charlie to crawl into it and hide himself away.

He ended up in a room with a female doctor and with Kate. The doctor tried to get him to take a tablet, but when he pressed his lips firmly shut and leant away from her she didn’t push him.

The doctor made him take off most of his clothes and looked him over carefully, pausing to take pictures of bruises and scars. It was cold. She didn’t touch him much, but every bit of contact made him want to hit or bite. He would have when he was ten, before his dad had taught him consequences. Now he just imagined himself doing it.

While the doctor examined a scrape on Charlie’s knee that Charlie couldn’t even remember acquiring, Kate bent down and picked up his jeans. She must have seen one of the notes poking out, because she went straight of his pocket. She held the money up for him to see. “Is this yours?”

She didn’t sound accusatory, but she was a police officer and the money had come from his dad selling drugs. Charlie pretended not to have heard her even though he was looking right at her.

“Okay. I’ll keep hold of it for you until we can figure things out, then.”

Charlie chewed at the inside of his cheek, but he didn’t respond. He knew he might never see his dad again, but that didn’t stop him panicking about how angry his dad was going to be when he found out the money was gone and that a police officer had taken it. The lights in the room seemed brighter than they had been a minute ago.

Charlie didn’t notice his teeth digging into the back of his arm until the doctor and Kate both saying his name pulled him back into the present. There were teeth marks in his skin when he pulled away, but nothing that wouldn’t fade soon enough.

Less than a minute later Charlie was allowed to put his clothes back on and Kate led him to a small waiting area with some chairs. Nobody else was there, but it was still too bright and even the more distant sounds of activity made Charlie’s brain itch. He wanted to be at home, in his bed, buried deep under blankets with music in his ears. He wanted this to all be a dream, and could almost believe it was one. It definitely didn’t feel real.

Kate talked to him, and he wished she wouldn’t. It was just more sound. She stopped him when he tried to bite his hands, but she let him chew on his hoodie cords. What were they waiting for? Why were they still here?

Kate stood as a small group of people approached, but Charlie stayed sitting, head down and fingers and mouth occupied with his hoodie cords. He didn’t want to be noticed. He felt like he was going to explode, but the part of him that was capable of that had been burnt out years ago.

He heard his name mixed in with other words, spoken by a voice tinged with distress that only put him more on edge. Charlie’s eyes flicked up. Luke was back, and there was a man and a woman with him. Older, but not elderly. Upset. The woman’s eyes looked red and wet.

“Charlie-” Kate began to say as they turned towards him, but the other woman was already moving.

Close, too close, and then before Charlie could process what was happening he was confined in arms that felt too stiff, too unyielding. He wanted to scream and claw and bite, but instead he just tried to sink down in his chair to slip away. It didn’t work. The perfume the woman was wearing made his head hurt.

“He’s still a bit, uh… he might need a little space for a while, ma’am.” Kate had moved closer, hand extended towards them but not touching. “Charlie, you remember your grandparents?”

The body pressed against his retreated, and Charlie looked up at a face that should have been familiar but wasn’t really. He had probably been around eight when he’d last seen his grandmother. It was half a lifetime ago.

He did remember them, though, as a set of events and incidents.

He remembered the cricket game his grandpa has taken him to, the noise of the crowd and the overwhelming smell of food. He remembered how he'd cried and tried to crawl under his seat until his grandpa had picked him up and carried him out of the stadium while he screamed and flailed because he didn't want to be touched.

He remembered Christmas dinners where his grandma fussed at him to try new foods, then fussed at him some more when he picked even the things he did like apart. He remembered his mum desperately trying to play peacemaker, to calm him with every trick she knew, and he remembered how it had always ended in tears despite her best efforts.

He hadn’t liked them and he hadn’t given them any reason to like him. Why were they here? Why was there hugging and crying?

“Charlie,” Kate said, and he realised he hadn’t been listening again. “Your grandparents are going to take you home with them now. Okay?”

Charlie wanted to ask why, but instead he just nodded. He wasn’t sure it was a good thing, but it was an answer to the problem of where he would go. He needed that.

He didn’t sleep in the car, but he did shut his eyes and let his head loll to the side and pretend. His grandmother sat with him in the back, her hand stroking down his arm repeatedly. He didn’t want to be touched, but he knew if he opened his mouth what would come out wouldn’t be a polite request. He doubted it would even be words.

There had been a vague map of his grandparents’ house in his mind, pieced together from various memories, but he felt no familiarity as he was led through it. The broad landscape of it was the same, but it was too faded in his memory for anything to really click.

The room at the end of the hall was the guest room, now his room, and as soon as he was led into it he took the opportunity to leave his grandma’s side and bury himself under the thick blanket on the large bed.

“Yes, I suppose you would be tired,” his grandma said from the doorway. A moment of silence stretched. She didn’t move. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie. Sleep well.”

It wasn’t until the door clicked shut behind her that Charlie allowed himself a long exhale. These people may as well have been strangers to him. Everything was different. He didn’t know how to live this life.

All he wanted now was to sleep, to rest in the only way he could when everything was so confusing and uncertain. He was definitely tired enough. Even his mind had given up on tormenting him with worries, and instead, as he shut his eyes, supplied him flashes of random images as if it was attempting to dream while he was still completely awake. The busiest of days tended to fill his head with interference like that.

There was no reason to fight it. He settled in and let the strange slideshow draw him into sleep.