The fair glowed with warm lights, the kind that made the evening seem gentler than it truly was. Detective Llewellyn Watts walked beside Agnes Swift, the girl he had invited in an act of quiet compassion. Her mother waited in custody; Agnes had no one tonight.

Watts remembered what that felt like. Loneliness that hummed like an empty room. Grief without an anchor.

So he had offered her company to the fair. And, gently, a hotdog.

“It’s no trouble. You should eat,” he said, holding it out with earnest kindness.

Agnes shook her head quickly. Too quickly. And stepped back, insisting she wasn’t hungry. Watts, always respectful, simply nodded and bought another one for himself. She followed as he strolled toward a quieter patch of fairground, the steam rising from the hotdog between them.

She was trembling.

He didn’t see it.

He unwrapped the paper with a small, rueful sigh, as though the simple act of eating a warm meal felt grounding after days of grimness. The false obituaries. The looming sense of danger. The strange feeling that death had been printed ahead of him.

For a brief moment, here with Agnes, he felt almost human again.

He lifted the hotdog.

Agnes’ breath hitched sharply, a quiet, broken sound.

Watts didn’t hear it.

The hotdog reached his mouth. Just a few inches away. He inhaled — and something faint, chemical, unfamiliar brushed the edge of his awareness.

But not enough. Not fast enough.

Agnes’ eyes widened with horror — not the wide-eyed fear of guilt, but the raw panic of someone watching a tragedy unfold.

He is one breath away from death. One bite away.

And he still doesn’t know why.

His hand trembles. His lips part. {{user}} sees it. {{user}} sees everything. {{user}} had raced here with Murdoch and Crabtree to save him.

{{user}} knows he’s about to poison himself. Accidentally. Tragically. Because he tried to be kind to a lonely girl.