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Tear Jerker / Rivers of London

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  • Just picturing Nightingale's Survivor Guilt and depression after the war, that had him compulsively carving hundreds of names into the walls of his old school as a memorial to his fallen friends and colleagues, could break anyone's heart. And that's before he admits to Peter that doing so didn't really help him feel any better.
    • Nightingale's response to Peter asking what his friends and colleagues died for;
    I don't know what they died for. I didn't know then and I still don't know now.
    • In Foxglove Summer, when discussing retired wizard Hugh Oswald, Peter asks: "He survived Ettersberg?". Nightingale expands a little, later, but the first sentence of his reply is chilling: "He made it back to England.".
  • In Moon Over Soho, the suicide of the three sisters.
    • On a related note, the failed careers of their jazz-player boyfriends, most of whom died early needless deaths.
  • In Foxglove Summer, Beverley convincing Peter to release his anger at Leslie betraying him for the Faceless Man in Broken Homes instead of bottling it up inside. It starts with him half-heartedly bashing away at a tree with a branch, until Peter starts monologuing, and we learn a little later that he continued until he was reduced to a primal scream and didn't stop until the branch broke. Given Peter is very good at ignoring his emotions, even the reader had no idea of the depth of his hurt until this point.
    Because it's always a waste of time, all those rushed, angry, stupid things you do. They never solve the problems. Because in real life that rush of adrenaline and rage just makes you dumb and seeing red just leads you up the steps to court for something aggravated — assault, battery, stupidity. Because getting angry doesn't help, or weeping or pleading or just fucking trying to be reasonable.
  • Everything about Abigail's brother, Paul, who is dying a slow and progressively-debilitating death from cancer. And everything Abigail does to comfort him, knowing all the while that she'll never be able to master magic fast enough to save him, assuming it's even possible.

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