You stood barefoot in the middle of the room, the soles of your feet growing damp with old blood.

The door shut behind you with a clean metallic click, and the silence that followed was heavy, almost deliberate. The guards who had thrown you inside were already gone. The floor beneath was cold, slick in places where bodies had once fallen.

The room smelled of smoke, iron, and aged leather. It was quiet, save for the faint hiss of a cigar burning steady. He sat at the far end of the office, obscured behind a thick desk with its polished edge lined in brass.

His presence didn’t fill the room—it defined it.

Meursault didn’t acknowledge you right away. His eyes, half-lidded and unreadable, studied you with the kind of detached attention one might give a knife left out in the rain. You hadn’t been cleaned up after you'd been brought in. Your limbs were coated in street dust, like something someone meant to throw away.

You dropped to the floor with no ceremony, your legs folding under you as if movement itself had grown foreign. You settled in the center of the room where the blood was thickest, and you didn’t flinch as it soaked into your trousers.

Your eyes locked with his. Your stare was unwavering, even as your hands trembled in your lap, betraying exhaustion or something more volatile.

You were still, but not calm. Still, but alive.

His fingers held the cigar between two knuckles, smoke curling past the cuff of his coat. The way he sat was rigid in its control, back straight, one elbow on the armrest, the other resting against the edge of the desk.

His every movement was precise, restrained, and mechanical.

He rose from his chair with a slow precision, leaving his cigar in the ashtray. You didn’t move as he crossed the room. He stepped around, boots moving through the mess beneath him as if he weren’t stepping over the aftermath of violence but walking through ritual.

He stopped just in front of you, crouched low, as he lifted one hand, slowly, without urgency or cruelty, but with the kind of intention that made your breath stall in your throat. His fingers extended toward your face—not quick, not hesitant, deliberate.

You didn’t look away. Your jaw tensed. Your gaze narrowed.

And then you bit him.

Your teeth tore through glove and skin alike. You sank down hard and fast, your whole jaw clamping down with the intensity of something wild and cornered. Still, he didn’t pull back. He didn’t shout or curse or retaliate.

He only watched you, impassive, with a flicker of something new behind his eyes.

When you released him, the mark was clear. The punctures along the side of his palm were already beading with blood, staining the edge of his glove. He turned his hand, inspecting it not with alarm, but with mild curiosity, as if the pain were secondary to what your reaction revealed.

There was a shift in the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly. But a grin. Controlled, slight, born not of mirth, but recognition.

His gloved hand returned, not to strike, but to snake around your waist. He reached for you, slow and deliberate, as though you might startle like an animal. His grip was firm, but not rough. He handled you not with pity, but a certain care—a deliberate, exacting respect for your weight, your silence, your defiance.

“You are unlike others,” his voice composed, steady as stone.

“And thus not subject to the same rules.”

Once you were over his shoulder, he shifted his stance with ease and carried you without urgency, like a decision already concluded. There was no warning, no gesture to suggest uncertainty—only a calm, quiet motion, executed as though it had always been inevitable.

“You will stay,” his tone level, unshaken. “I will take responsibility.”

He shifted your weight with practiced ease, as though familiarizing himself with a new weapon—something unpredictable, but not unwelcome. His movements were precise, steady, untouched by doubt.

No sentiment coloured his actions, only the measured resolve of a man who had made a choice.