[ it doesn't matter, surely -- that she is real and rebekah isn't. that the nightmares surrounding him are not real. he knows they aren't, but he has spent enough time fighting them with his reasoning and will, and after, with his rage, with bellows and force, to know it doesn't matter. it's a soft-hearted thing, to consider looking at cami and considering her a tether to a world of comfort which doesn't exist no more than the hallucinations haunting him now.

he does not deal nor rely on those weaknesses, and her pleading with him to do so incurs little reaction. his gaze wanders; he ignores another illusion, another cry of his daughter in the shadowed corner.

his eyes close and fill with tears he doesn't shed. his jaw tightens. his gaze only returns to her, alert, when she deduces much more than he intended to give away. his eyes round with the fear he feels, but by the time she has finished, something in them has deadened. ] There are other children here. [ he begins quietly, seeming unaffected. ] One died yesterday. [ baelfire. he remembers the name, the young boy, though they never spoke. he says it with the express purpose to impress upon her the ruthlessness of this place. he knows of a girl, too: so young, wary and sharp. ] Perhaps they have all my family, maybe yours, tucked away in the morgue, awaiting usefulness. Why wouldn't they take her, use her? She would be perfect leverage, perfect torture.