[ God damn it. He was hoping the implication would be enough. And normally, Jeff would consider it a good thing, that Athena thinks so well of him that she'd assume the best, not the worst.

But sometimes, in the wake of the ghosts of the past, the same thought gets stuck in his head, on a loop, like a fucking mantra: You don't deserve any of this. You don't deserve the good stuff.

(Sometimes he hears it in the demon's voice. Sometimes his own. Sometimes other people's, the people he's hurt over the years...)

He doesn't deserve Athena, or Cam. He doesn't deserve Mel, however far away she is. He doesn't deserve to be seen as Jeff Calhoun, the teacher, the dad, friendly and nurturing, and totally harmless.

He shifts to accommodate her. ]

To give it what it wanted.

[ At least that should clear things up. It's not like he hasn't told Athena what the demon wanted. She knows what it tried to get him to do, over and over again. Write a new song. Bring me into the world. I just want to touch things.

Yeah, he hadn't been thinking much about the 'what next?' What happens after a demon's brought into the world?

Best case scenario, it would've crawled from him into one of his bandmates. 'Best case.'

Or he would've been in about the same situation as when he'd started, only with that thing in the driver's seat and himself as the passenger in his own body. Is it even freedom if the damn thing is just using your body as a meat puppet anyway?

At the time, though... it was more of an attempt at a slow suicide. ]

I was strung out. I wasn't thinking clear--

[ He stops himself. No lying, no sugarcoating things. Not with Athena and the subject of his past. He does, after all, want to keep her away from making any of the mistakes he did.

Jeff rubs his eyes, then shakes his head. ]

No, that's bullshit. I just didn't care anymore.