Filled now with the influence of alcohol and that nasty, bitter feeling one gets when they overhear something about themselves, Vicar fell all too easily into a state of remembrance of his ruined past. Thinking once more on the peculiar group of students, he replayed the last day they'd all seen him, the last day he'd let them have their way of the library before he'd burnt it to cinders.

"No, dammit! She gave us nothing to work with!"

"...Pardon, but if you could just quiet down a little - "

"You knew there would be nothing of worth, it's only a story about love and family and the weather, above all things."

"Yes, well, we had to try, didn't we? No less disappointing, that."

"Really, I must beg you to lower your voices, there are other guests in the library."

"With all due respect, where are they?"

Vicar had been through quite the rough week. Suffering from the sort of cold that inflicts its unfortunate owner with a raucous headache and a never-ending bought of sniffles, concentrating on his translation of Les fleurs du mal into English for the French class's final assessment proved nearly impossible. His frustration with the Latin students could not have been more understandable. Refusing to quiet themselves, they'd been at whatever their next argument was for nigh on three hours consecutive, scaring off whoever else had been unlucky enough to seek out the quiet and isolation of the library for a spell. Vicar was not an easily angered man, but he was running on an extremely short temper when he was so rudely answered by the student with the glasses.

"Well now, you would know if you'd adhered to even the first rule of a library - Silence!"

The exertion of having yelled for one of the only times in his life brought on a wave of dizziness and coughing. Once he'd recovered, he collapsed into a chair nearest the table and scowled at the appropriately concerned students. "It really isn't that hard to argue in whispers," he added.

"Sorry," came the lame reply for the bespectacled lad, and his friends had the decency to share his shame.

"It's just rather difficult, isn't it," asked the smallish woman, whose features looked so alien to this part of the world. Her eyes were bright and peaked into tight corners, freckles danced mischievously across her nose and the tips of her lips. "No closer to any answers have we come, and where else to find this nonsense than in literature?"

The eldest student leaned forward and added his piece, looking decidedly out of place with his gray-peppered hair. "Science forbids it, religion condemns it, and morals quake at it. Who in this world is free to think upon the horrors of such a crime, if not an author?"

Vicar held his hand to his head and groaned.

"I'm buried in books all day, in languages ever-changing and ever-difficult. If you could," he begged, eyes squeezed shut, "please, speak as though you weren't writing a paper." Everybody had the sense to blush.

"Have you come across anything that shares the veil of life? That exposes the ways to contact the dead and peer into their - well, see what they have to say?" Airs of importance were of the highest priority for the students. It was proving difficult to limit their forced speech, so well-practised in each other's company, for comprehension of one not used to their ways.

Appreciating that it had finally dawned on the lot to ask someone who lived and breathed books for something they acknowledged could only be found in them, Vicar raised his hand and sniffed weakly.

"Nothing short of blatant fantasy," he replied, knowing very well that he didn't have their answer. Their disappointment was audible.

For some time, they all bickered about there being something out in the world, some way of reaching beyond this veil of life, until they all grew tired of talking in the same circles as they had an hour past. Vicar remained where he was, sure that as long as he sat and sneezed at the table, they would be reminded of their need to keep quiet. Eventually, he was left alone with the elvish woman, who had seemed the most reluctant to leave the library. Once she realised that Vicar wasn't moving from his seat (little did she know that he would remain there until he fell asleep, as the pressure of standing would be too much for his headache), she nestled into her own chair, just barely fitting her feet to the ground.

They said nothing for a moment. Vicar's head continued to throb, and her eyes darted continuously around her, as though something was alive that only she could see.

"Why did you decide to work here?" she asked after another prolonged silence. The question, while spoken in a soft tone, still startled Vicar from a faint daydream in which he was rocking gently at sea in a cabin surrounded by candlelight. He started and relaxed once he saw where he was.

"Ahh," he began, in a sort of disappointed way.

"I don't mean to ask, if it's terribly personal," the young woman rushed, seeing that the answer was not to simple as "The weather is quite nice here," or "I've always had a hankering for American soil." Vicar waved a sluggish hand.

"No, no, it's not terribly personal. I'm... rather, I'm running away from home, and America is about as far as I need to be to make sure nobody follows me."

"What about China? Or the Middle East?" Seeing an entry for a real conversation, the woman leaned forward eagerly. "If nobody would have followed you here, surely that would work just as fine."

"I am not of the disposition to be on sandy ground," came the weary reply. "Nor, I suppose, surrounded by those whose language I have no footholds in."

"How many do you know?"

"Know? Goodness, I hardly know English, but if you'd like me to be less self-criticising, then German and French. I needn't say English, do I?" He emphasised his accent, here, much to the amusement of the woman, who at last felt the need to introduce herself.

Her name was Amy Lee, but she claimed everybody called her Amelia for reasons she'd never been privy to. As to the exotic nature of her face, her mother was Chinese, hence her initial suggestion about one of Vicar's possible destinations. She was studying Latin both on a whim, and because, while her parents had urged her to pursue medicine, she wished to rebel without losing them completely. "We still write and I'm able to understand some of the ridiculous things in this world they can only see through the lens of Latin." Vicar was too tired to make sense of it, so he inclined his head and gave her a rue smile.

"A better reason than running from a silly feud you've brought on with your father, then." Vicar couldn't quite place if Amelia was an exceptional busybody, genuinely curious, or a mixture of the two, but he found himself not really minding telling her any of this as she leaned forward with her eyes shining.

"I love a family feud," she stated, not meaning anything bad by it (he could only hope). "The best stories are told when father and son go to war, when mother and daughter plot against one another!" Vicar made a face at that.

"I wouldn't say the best," he snorted. "As you can see, I'm merely a librarian, devoid of any actual war or excitement. All I've got for my troubles is the promise that I'll never have to return."

"But think on what you will do here, that you never could at home!" Amelia leapt nearly a foot in the air, a reaction Vicar found strange until she prised a pager from her pocket and laughed with as much embarrassment as she ought to have. "Oh, well. They're going for pasta, and I can't miss that." With a polite inclination of her head, Amelia darted out of the library just as quickly as her friends had, and soon, Vicar was left to the suddenness of isolation, and the weight of her words settled on him then, as it did now.

Leaning up against the wall with the failing light of a candle at his feet, Vicar wondered what all he had done in America, that he couldn't have here. He didn't want to think about his tragedy again (even though it was terribly easy to do so), so he tried earnestly to consider what he'd done with life in that escape-fantasy land. Sure, he'd helped a few students out with their lessons (albeit from the sidelines - they needn't know he was the one who edited their textbooks and assigned readings for better comprehension), and he'd kept the library looking clean and organised (which, yes, the Professor who'd headed the whole building could have done himself), but somehow, it felt false. Had he actually done anything?

Vicar felt distinctly like a fraud. What was the use in running away if he was going to be just as lacklustre with his own affairs as he was at home? Where was his sense of "starting anew" and "making his own life?"

He slipped further down the wall and took a sip of the tea he'd poured himself. Usually, tea was the endlessly perfect balm to all of life's problems, but that wasn't the case today. It could have been the whiskey coating his tongue, or simply a lack of the cream and sugar he so often used, but his cup tasted far more bitter than he would have liked. This was supposed to soothe him, and all it did was reflect his flaws from another perspective. Oh, bother it all! He sniffed and took another pained sip.

Wishing to overcome his woes for just one damn moment, before he, too was dead and had nothing to show for it, Vicar picked up Winn Peterson's journal and stared hard at the cover. At least she, in her moving from one country to another, had purpose. She was like the energetic Amelia, if only more prone to illness: Excitable, vigorous with the promises of life, and eager to learn more, be it in direct line with their parents' wishes or no.

Vicar envied Winn, before he remembered where he'd left off in her story. Winn was in no good shape. Feeling rather lamely for his own life, he hiccuped and opened the journal, wondering if she was alright, and had managed to escape the grim clutches of the doctor. Was her friend spared of a rushed and unsettling marriage?

There was only one thing for Vicar to do, and that was continue where he'd left off. Perhaps by reading her tale, forgotten in the attic of a man she would never know, Vicar could spare her, save her somehow, even with just the security of memory.

"I won't let you be lost to time," he swore, feeling his lids grow heavy for a moment. He shook himself. He had the strong sense that Winn's situation would be dire enough to encourage him to stay awake and scare away the sluggishness of the alcohol that still sludged its way through his system. He rather regretted drinking all of it, but now, that was done and he had nothing left to do but nurse his bitter cup of tea and stop feeling sorry for himself. Without any further ado, Vicar set his drink down and bowed his head over the old journal and read with a sense of purpose about the miserable chain of events that would prove to follow Winnifred Peterson and Evelyn Thomas.