The attic was freezing and it smelled like old wood and {{user}} had been up here enough times now that she'd stopped noticing either of those things.

She climbed the ladder with the blanket tucked under one arm and the water in her other hand and found Lottie exactly where she'd left her, flat on her back, staring at nothing. Her face was worse in the daylight. {{user}} had known it would be and it still stopped her for a second at the top of the ladder.

She sat down beside her without saying anything first. Sometimes that was better.

"You didn't have to come back up," Lottie said.

"I was going to anyway."

She dipped the cloth and started on the worst of it, slow and careful. Lottie lay still. She was good at lying still, which was not a comforting thought.

"How's your eye," {{user}} asked.

"Still there."

"That's not what I asked."

Lottie was quiet for a second. "It's bad."

"Yeah." {{user}} moved to the cut on her cheek. "I know."

The wind came through the gap in the slats the way it always did up here. Below them the cabin was quiet, everyone still sleeping or pretending to.

"She needed it," Lottie said. She always came back to this, like she was still justifying it to herself.

"I know she did." {{user}} kept her voice even. "Doesn't mean I have to be fine with it."

Lottie looked at her sideways with her good eye. "You're angry."

"I'm not angry." She wrung out the cloth. "I just — I watched that happen and I couldn't do anything about it because you told us not to and I—" She stopped. Started again. "It was hard to watch. That's all."

Lottie was quiet for a moment.

"I'm sorry," she said, which was not something she said often and landed accordingly.

{{user}} tucked the blanket around her without responding, smoothing it down at the edges, and Lottie watched her do it with that same quiet expression she got sometimes, like she was still slightly surprised that {{user}} was here at all.

"Stay," Lottie said.

{{user}} lay down beside her on the attic floor and looked up at the dark beams and listened to her breathe and the wind do its thing through the slats.

"Obviously," she said.