[Hamartia]
If innocence was something that could be taken up and set down at will, lost and forgotten and then found once again then perhaps, just perhaps Toby could lay some claim to it. But it was not. Hers lay in parties of too-rich freshmen at liberal arts colleges uptown, in the kinds of apartments where the roach problem had to be balanced against the electricity bill, and in the hands of the sort of men who weighed debts against what had been paid and found you always wanting. Toby couldn't claim to be innocent.
She ignored the question about lines, about blurring or erasing them because lines had a habit of doing precisely that when she least wanted them to and pretending they didn't was the way Toby dealt with it. Besides, it hadn't sounded much like a question -- more as though he knew what he wanted her to say, to think, as if he knew himself, and she looked at him quietly, and stayed silent. He fit too comfortably apart from the shock and horror and dismay of the onlookers, too clearly dispassionate to be normal -- for a Creation, at least. There were one or two openly crying.
"I hope not," her voice was thick, her expression more inscrutable than it had been before as though she was being deliberate about it. "There's no damn point." She pressed a hand against Lily's back, rubbed and murmured something soothing as if counterpoint for the roughness of her attitude. Lily didn't seem to mind; she held out the stuffed toy, proffered it to Ryder as if it might help and sucked her thumb, eyes closing.