[ heine doesn't even shift, except to adjust his arm around kaveh's waist to keep him more or less upright as he drinks. it's easy, he's surprised to find. easy to just let himself relax into another person like this. ]

Me and Badou? [ no, he guesses kaveh hasn't, although that's not surprising in itself. ] The Bishop introduced us.

[ no, no, back up. kaveh wouldn't know who the bishop is, either. ]

After I... jumped, [ he says, very delicately tiptoeing around the reality of what he was actually trying to do at the top of that tower, ] the Bishop found me. He runs a church nearby and he took me there and kept me in the back to recover. [ he's also, technically speaking, heine's older brother, but that's probably a story for another time; they've already dwelt for too long in the underground tonight. ] He and Badou met sometime after Badou's brother died, I think.

[ heine thinks about it, tilts his head. ] He knew we were both alone, so he got us working together.

[ a part of heine thinks, although he's never validated this, that the bishop—ernst rammsteiner—knew that dave died investigating the place that had spit him and heine out into the world, and brought them together for that reason. ]