The fabric covering the left side of her face is fashioned from a sleeper's mask, thin quilted cushion, slashed in half and refashioned. Her clothing is a short nightdress, red, soft material, stained around her hips with smears of paint and ink in finger streaks and hand prints. It's not one he'll remember. The swirls of color and darkness on her arms are a little different; new tattoos covering old, details indistinguishable in the darkness save for blacker lines and darker values.

Brass becomes string; the first voice responding to Karkat is that of the muffled stereo in her bedroom, low French, pleading, wavering notes.

There seems no give in her shoulders, in the tightness of her jaw and her neck. Her hand slips from the wall, falling to her side. There is recognition in her face, and suspicion, as guarded in the late hour as in the bright sun. Her attention flicks over him, at each little detail: where his hair ends now compared to where it had, the angles his arms hang at his shoulders, the wideness of his stance, the cut of his cheek and the shape of his nose and everything hiding in his eyes—those and his horns the only points of color in his desaturated appearance.

She pulls in her cheeks to keep her teeth from chattering; a shiver runs up her spine, having nothing to do with temperature. Her hands flex at her sides. Nerves are swallowed in a visible roll down her throat.

"Would it hurt you if I did?"