Once upon a time the slacks he's wearing were the bottom half of a suit—which is to say, the pant leg'll be hard to roll up but easy to rip or cut, and Rust won't object. The situation where the top of the boot—less a hiking boot than a sort of heavy-duty, thick-soled shoe—meets his leg is bad, the skin under his sock red and raw. It's a safe bet his other foot's a mess of blisters and abrasions as well.

Aside from that: his left shin sports a fairly fresh gash. His left wrist is still in a discolored, sweaty brace. But the cabin-dweller seems to have contented themselves with inflicting pain just short of broken bones, targeting joints and leaving a map of bruises spanning almost Rust's entire body.

“I can take off my own shirt,” he grumbles, then goes still. Gaze fixed on something far off. He rolls one shoulder back, shakes his arm until it's free of the sleeve of his patchwork leather jacket. Pulls the jacket off his other arm with a slow, shuddering exhalation.

He brings his arms to his chest and closes his eyes, grinds down on his jaw, feeling for that first button. His fingers sluggishly work it free and his arms go slack, his head tipping back. “Too many fucking buttons.”

He lets her take it from there. Beneath the shirt—a grimy former dress shirt with the sleeves already lopped off—she'll find more bruising, a tattoo on his chest as cryptic as the markings on the bone. But nothing that points to cracked ribs or internal bleeding.

And through it all he carries on talking. “He was, ah...” Rust's eyes roll back—the color, to him, is bound up with taste, citrus-sour. Too specific for words. “Red, red-brown, like clay. All over scales. Wore clothes. Skins. I guess that makes some kinda sense, if you're cold-blooded.”