Rosalyn watched her take a hip flask out of her left cargo pant pocket and chug it. She wouldn’t have minded a spot of liquid courage herself, but that would have to wait. Her AR display kicked in, highlighting the flask before Misato tucked it back into her pocket. C8H10N4O2. Coffee.

“This is all a waste,” Rosalyn told her quietly. She didn’t know why they were whispering; it was doubtful that their whereabouts were a secret to Piero and Rayan. “I could be in Mile End having a Pisco sour right now.”

“So why aren’t you?”

Rosalyn breathed hard out of her nose, shaking off the nostalgia. It wasn’t helpful. She could have stayed at Belrose Industries. She could’ve pushed harder to get Glen sacked. She could’ve filed the police report. Or just quit and stayed on Earth. Or taken a million other paths that didn’t lead to a knife in her hand and panic in her heart.

She had been so sure that the blaming voice in her head had been excised like a malignant tumor, but no, a few dangerous cells remained. This is your fault. Why didn’t you just divert to refuel that senator? Walters would still be alive. You might never have even ended up on the Brigantine. You didn’t have to sabotage the ship; look where that got you.

It had been like that after Glen, too, a never-ending series of twisting passages she walked in her head, each of them leading to a different outcome, each of them placing blame firmly at her feet. There were so many warnings. Angela had told her to dump him and get out. And when he snapped, when he proved everyone right . . .

It came to her like a flash. Edison standing there on the other side of the barrier with hooded, sad eyes, and her own words looping back toward her, and the way he had relaxed once she said it to him, like a huge weight had been torn from his body.

You didn’t ask for any of this to happen, and it’s certainly not your fault.

She breathed in, she breathed out. The words felt like something she could believe in, so she did. Blame was a labyrinth that never ended, and she wouldn’t get lost in that maze again. Couldn’t. She had survived Glen and she would survive this. Rosalyn glanced over at Misato, a woman she would have liked to meet under any other circumstances.

“I had to run away from something,” Rosalyn finally answered. “I needed some distance. Or perspective. I don’t know.”

“How’s this for perspective?” Misato asked with a snort. “Bet you’re wishing you hadn’t run away. I can’t imagine it was anywhere near as bad as this.”

“No, just different,” she murmured. “A different kind of hell.”