Turning toward him, she pulled her lips to one side and raised a brow. “What did you call me?”

“Roz. Sorry. Remember? Tipsy.”

“It’s fine,” she told him, wrinkling her nose. “Better than ‘chickadee.’”

“Clearly I’m missing something.”

She stretched her arms over her head, no longer able to resist yawning. Before he had seen her trying to hide it, swallowing her exhaustion with big, rounded cheeks and a gulp. Her hands came down with a slap on the table and she leaned against it, head drooping.

“It’s what Misato calls me. I have no idea why.”

Edison chuckled, feeling the whiskey swirl heavily through his veins. He had avoided drinking recently, finding that the hangovers were brutal, as if he were experiencing them twice, once as himself and once through the Foxfire. He wondered if he would sleep, if he would dream of the blue lady, or if instead, by some miracle, he would dream of Rosalyn. The last human woman he would ever live to see.

“You’re eminently nicknameable.” The words came out on their own, rather than staying put in his head where they belonged.

She glanced at him sidelong and rolled her eyes at him yet again. “And you’re drunk.”

“Guilty. And you’re exhausted.”

“Guilty.” Another yawn, one that turned into a helpless laugh. “This is all . . . so much. But you’re right, knowing how Belrose is wrapped up in this mess would make me feel better, but it won’t speed up the trip to the station. I guess that means I should try to sleep, if I can. I’m still wiped. God, I wish I could fit a whole mattress in the decontam pod.”

Edison watched her tap her fingers one last time on the table before she walked toward the rounded door.

“Wouldn’t risk it,” he called after her on impulse. “We need to keep you healthy.”

“Only half of you thinks that,” Rosalyn reminded him, but it wasn’t cruel.

“The important half. The half you find devastatingly charming, mm?”

She was through the door, just a vanishing silhouette, a shadow becoming a longer shadow, becoming nothing. “Ha! You wish. Good night, Captain.”

Then she was gone, and he stood for too long watching the place where she had been. There were other minds in the cluster with him, but that didn’t keep him from feeling intensely alone. In a way, it was more isolating, because he didn’t trust any of the thoughts that came spontaneously, prone to finding they weren’t his at all. Did it matter? Was this him staring longingly after a woman forever trapped under glass, or was it Piero? Was it Misato? Was it an unknown and unseen person far away, someone receiving his tics and habits, someone walking around with an inexplicable hankering for single-malt whiskeys?

Does it matter?