Nights. Wordless and wearying. Nights worn rough at edges. Nights spent in total or partial darkness. Under or above ground. Sometimes in prayer. Often not.

Alone, almost always alone. Save for the Beast, never far. Which burns and burns, smoldering inside or exploding across the scarred map of his flesh.

Yes. Save for that cruel and constant companion, almost alone. By instinct if not by design. Cross has no real taste for the company of others of late. No patience for the foibles of Kine or Kindred, Lamb or Wolf. A change in himself he understands dimly, if at all.

Almost alone. Save for his constant thoughts of Alice. Her. If they can be called thoughts. Often, it is a torrent of feeling, ill placed in his dead chest: longing, fear, desire, anger, resentment, disquiet. It's all there, churned by the implacable rage of the Monster. Resolving down into a silent, persistent litany:

When? When? When?

In the stillness of their sepulcher, in the dank and echoing blackness of the catacombs, the once calming confines of the Caldarium. In his car, racing down benighted highways or slow-rolling through city streets awash in the orange glow of high pressure sodium lights. Stalking some back alley or dive bar. The litany never stops:

When? When will She be restored to me?

And all the while something else grows. Some deeper darkness, beneath the flames and strains of his Beast. A kind of dread. For, as much as he longs for Alice's return, Cross also fears it. Will she be changed by her time in that horrible Sleep? Will she blame him for missing her call at the crucial moment? But more than anything else, it's this question that haunts him: How will you react, Cross?

Because he knows. Way down, whether he cares to admit it or not. The Burned Man knows that he's yet to forgive her. For going to Alessandra without speaking to him first. For going alone. For putting herself in harm's way. Without thinking of her own well-being. Without thinking of the Family. Without thinking of him.

And no matter how much he tries to calm himself, to tell himself that it was her choice, he can't quite put the matter to rest. Can't get right with it.

And so he waits. Waits and waits. Wrapped in an expectant and unsettled silence.

Asking himself When? Again. And again.