It's no great revelation for Wrench to admit no desire for harm. Life has necessitated certain actions, but no amount of breaking a boy's spirit and building something up from the bitter ash can give him a taste for blood. It may serve him better if he could find some enjoyment or desire for the destruction, but he's not a wild animal with the flesh of man hanging from his lips. He doesn't want the pain that he causes any more than an accountant desires an abacus or a bricklayer years for a trowel. They're simply tools in a job.

Wrench thinks of men flinching under his touch, and that feels markedly different. He's had plenty of time in his short but lonesome life to interrogate his own intentions. He doesn't need to ask himself again the reasons why he leaves one startle in search of another. What spark it ignites to see someone overcome by his grasp. Wrench feels the burn in his lungs and across his own throat and knows he needs to breathe, but the control he asserts makes him forget the rake of the sterile cloth against the arcing wound. He doesn't forget the tail in his hand, though, and Wrench measures the weight of the spade and Kurt's reflex to the gentle movement of his hand further in his lap. From his vantage point he can see the length of it disappear up and around his back and he insists his own stillness.

When he focuses like this, Wrench can find quiet that's almost uncanny. He can slow himself into a stillness that seems to oppose his own long limbs, his efficient energy, and his restless spirit. Until Kurt moves around him, the air in the room scarcely belongs to his own lungs. But when the man moves into his line of sight, Wrench sucks in the breath of a drowned man and squeezes Kurt's tail reflexively. He knows what he's being asked. Rather than answer, he picks up his pencil and draws the straight line of a torso, and a single splayed arm.

His own joke draws the light back into his eyes, and he nods to Kurt slowly. Thank you. I'm fine.