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Nico doesn't contact his new inmate immediately, but he doesn't wait much longer than a day or so before following the way the rays of the sun on one half of his coin seem to stretch and point this way and that, almost like a compass, until he comes to Dennis Collins' door. He'd rather introduce himself in person. And he doesn't want to crowd anybody, but he also doesn't want to be one of those wardens that doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with their temporary inmates.

He knocks. He waits. He knocks again. He tries calling through the door. Nothing.

The guy's inside. The coin hasn't been wrong yet. And now Nico's stomach is dropping, because someone died earlier. Someone he doesn't know.

Whether he can open the door and walk in or needs to shadow travel through it, one way or another he gets through. And that's when he discovers that the person who'd died had indeed been Dennis Collins, and the reason no one took care of it is because Nico's the one who needs to take care of it.

So, he does. When Collins comes back to life, he'll find himself lying on his bed with a pale, skinny teenaged boy in his cabin looking curiously through any records he might have to go with the player.

The old Irishman had definitely seen better days. When he awoke it was not with a start nor was it with a groan. It was simply with the blink of weary eyes and a thousand yard stare at the ceiling of his room. He recognized the feel of his new bed and choked down a mirthless laugh at the thought that provoked. Already testing out how that would feel while death tolling. Wouldn't the Marshal just get a kick out of seeing him now.

It was not, however, the Marshal that was waiting for him to revive this time. It was some new warden. New temporary pairings had been...yesterday, he supposed, if not too much time had passed while he wasn't conscious. Easy way to put it. Not that the ache would let that lie.

Collins turned his head and caught sight of the boy peering at the records on the shelves. He frowned. God, he hated this fucking ship. He propped himself up on his elbows with a grunt and glared in the direction of the young warden.

The sound of motion and the soft grunt gets Nico's attention, and he turns back around to eye the man on the bed, who's glaring right back at him.

"Hey. You probably already know you died, but I don't know if it's happened to you before," he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his black hoodie. "I'm Nico. I'm your warden this month. Do you know what happened?"

He knows it hadn't happened that long ago, but he's more familiar with assessing the stages of decomposition than actually reading a crime scene. Conveniently, the dead man is right here to ask. Formerly dead, even.

Collins snorted and muttered under his breath, "This fuckin' vessel." He did not seem impressed with his new temporary warden. What a joke.

"Of course I fuckin' know what happened," he said at normal volume. "I died, but that doesn't make me daft."

He shook his head and began to move as if to get off the bed. He winced along the way and stopped with his legs hanging off the side and his arm muscles ready to push off but remained there for a moment. This one was fairly painful for all that was said and done. Not that he would be admitting to more than the obvious without prying.

He knew most wardens were nosey bastards though. If they gave a shit. And most of them did for some damned reason.

Collins finally managed to push himself off the bed and stand. He wasn't particularly tall. Yet he glared at the youth no less fiercely for it. "If yer expectin' any gratitude you'll be waitin' till tha end o' time. If ya got somethin' ta say, say it be gone already."

He was never in the mood for new wardens. Even less so on a day like today.

Nico's eyes narrow, just a little, and he decides not to mention that just because you know you died doesn't mean you know what happened. Gods. Talking to the dead is easier, always has been, but Collins isn't exactly dead anymore.

"I'm not," he confirms, because he was not expecting gratitude. All the same, "If I'm your warden, then I need to do something about what happened. If you know what happened, then do you know who did it?"

Collins paused briefly at the question; he had moved over to the desk and begun going through some of his things. Notably there were books stacked there and he bent carefully to pick one up off the ground where it had fallen unceremoniously earlier. He set it back down on top of the others.

"I do know. If you paid any attention it wasn't as if tha fella was quick about it." He had been covered in wounds of various types of torture. His body was in one piece now but he could feel the aches where it had been the worst. It had been just as if he were the one doing it, too, seeing as how he had taught the entity what to do to hurt a person.

He hesitated to say anything more. He wanted a few more seconds to think about it. Whether the wardens would give a rat's ass or not. Whether there would be punishment fitting or not. He knew from experience that they didn't always do jack shit in recompense even for a murder. Like this was beyond all mundane consequences. Fuck this place for even existing. What was the fucking point.

"Didn't look like it," he agrees, because he saw the state the body was in, "but that still doesn't guarantee you know the person who did it. Like, by name. That's why I asked."

Because he sure doesn't know everyone on the Barge. He doesn't want to assume everyone else does, either.

"You don't sound overly broken up about it," he observes, leaning one hip against the desk and crossing his arms. "More put out than anything."

"Well that's tha way of this place, ain't it?" He asked the boy rhetorically.

He went to the record player next and examined it. He didn't think the entity bothered with any of his things. It had hidden in wait and touching his things beforehand would have given itself away. Then after Collins was restrained it had everything it needed to keep itself busy. And he doubted it stuck around afterward to do much either. Still, he went through the motions of checking what few personal items he had in the room as if to reclaim them as assuredly his own.

He removed the shellac from the player and replaced it in his housing, using the time to continue his train of thought. Should he tell the warden anything at all. Or should he take matters into his own hands instead.

Nico steps aside enough to let Collins examine his own record player, frowning as he does. "It seems like it," he agrees. He doesn't like it. He can accept that the Admiral somehow snatches souls before they're judged. But he doesn't like the way they're kept here in a glass jar, in an endless cycle of life and death and life again. That's now how death is supposed to work. Even when Nico brought Hazel back, when he wanted to bring Bianca back, it wasn't like this.

"But that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the fact that something happened," he adds.

He has to admit, whatever had happened... the scene he'd found had seemed very much like there was some kind of reason, there.

That made two of them. Collins hated this place, too. And for essentially the same reason. The dead should stay dead. Memento mori. He would have preferred death to this place.

"Then you better start sleuthing, boyo, if ya really want ta figure out what happened."

In other words, he wasn't talking. A small, crooked smile rested on his face as he continued to examine his things with his back turned to the warden. He'd rather handle it himself.

Nico's eyes narrow for a moment, but at some point, he's not sure what he can do to help someone who doesn't want to be helped.

What he finally says is, "If you die again, I'll know it was you. And if someone else dies, I'm going to have to make sure it wasn't you."

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