[ heine doesn't think that angelika einstürzen has ever needed to be allowed to do anything. she just does what she wants, skulking about in the shadows underneath the city where—what was it that vanessa had said earlier? where decent people don't look, something like that.

for a moment, heine just blinks at the question. it occurs to him slowly that all the times he's imagined killing her, all the various and sundry ways he's envisioned ripping her limb from limb, he has never imagined a version in which he survives it. ]

...Haven't thought about it. [ he forces himself to, now. a world where einstürzen is dead, truly dead—not just her unholy avatars but the woman herself—and heine is alive. ] Free the others, I guess. Maybe... find a way to destroy what's left of the spine.

[ removing the spine from his own neck would kill him, so heine doesn't go down that path in this particular imagining. ]

I don't think much would be left for me after that. Maybe work.