Nah.
She doesn't play card games, she prefers to play mind games, actually.
New chapter.
CHAPTER THREE:
Richard's Analysis
Cloak decided that he had to go and ask Richard about that night. Qnd he had thought it best to do it before the sun went down. As it was a little past noon, he had little worry of that.
"Richard," Cloak said, as Richard was at his thread. "I need a word."
He nodded and invited Cloak into his thread, something no many people get to see. Not because Richard forebade it but because no one ever thought to ask. Cloak was, despite himself, surprised at the thread's interior.
He was expecting it to look more ostentatious and opulent than it was. It wasn't barren, but nor was it cluttered, like Cloak's thread could be at times. Especially when he was in one of his moods. Every was very fashionable, in a timeless way, and his room was actually decorated very economically, nothing really extraneous.
"What did you want to know, Cloak?" Richard said. Then, after a moment's hesitation, the founder of RAF asked, "Is this about Rotiart?"
"Yes," Cloak said, with earnest honesty. "We need to find his next of kin to inform him of his . . . his demise."
Richard sighed, "Don't think that I haven't thought about it, Cloak. But I don't know any more than you do on that. The night that he came to RAF, he said nothing about where he came from. He would fall into silence or change the subject whenever it was approached."
Cloak said nothing, taking a moment to digest this news. He knew that Richard wouldn't outright lie to him. It wasn't the type of guy he was. Though he was obviously a guy who has seen a lot, some of which that he'd rather not see.
"But," Richard said, breaking the silence that had fallen, "I could tell right away that he was running away from something. The way he was terrified to return from wherever he hailed from, his refusal of disclosing even the most basic facts about himself -- even I am not sure of his real name, as I am inclined to doubt that Rotiart was his true name. But seeing him that night . . . I could tell. I know it sounds strange, but his geetures, his mannerisms, the way he kept curling into a fetal position . . . it was an assumption, to be sure. But it seemed so obvious . . . I could tell it was a bad situation he had escaped from."
"Bad situation?" Cloak said, a bit sharper than he intended. "Bad how?"
"I think," Richard said, as if he was picking his phrasing carefully, "that you, of all people, know how Rotiart's situation was bad."
"What are you saying?"
Richard said nothing, knowing Cloak knew precisely what he was saying. But Cloak wasn't ready to believe it. In the end, Richard conceded to explain.
"Possibly the chief reason that he never got Banned, after all those antics," Richard said. "Perhaps I was soft, perhaps I was naïve, perhaps it was special treatment. But I could tell . . ."
"You could tell what?" Cloak prompted.
"I could tell," Richard said, with some sadness, "that Rotiart was abused."
"What?"
"I have no substantive proof," Richard said, "only circumstantial evidence."
Cloak fell into a guilty silence.
"But I have reason to believe that it was a combination of neglect and abuse of the physical, intellectual, psychological, and verbal variety." Richard said, somberly. "I admit my suspicions of this are one reason I was reticent to reveal this, one reason that I was hesitant to Ban him."
Richard heaved a sigh that sounded lke he held it for years.
"Yes, I'm aware that he was downright intolerable at times," he continued. "Arrogant and full of himself. But this one instnace, in this one instance, I saw him at his most vulnerable. He wasn't any of those things, not really. He was a good person -- one who felt that he had to cover up his own feelings of inadequacy with over-the-top bravado, and chose to hide his anxiety under an all-too- convincing veneer of sloth."
Claok said nothing. He never really thought of Rotiart as a smart-mouthed, little prick. But, even when people seem one-dimensional to us, there are usually layers that go unseen.
