I brought my hand up to my hair, to push it back behind my ear, before I flipped up my hood to try and give my hair some shelter. My eyes were on the road, my ears on the honking and on the slams of car doors, as people opened them and leaned out the side of their cars, trying to see what lay ahead.

“It would be nice if we could wave our hands and get all of them home,” I murmured. “Get the obstacles out of the way, dedicate some time, help with reconstruction, and make it happen. Give the ones who missed dinner because they’ve been on the road for the last two hours and there aren’t any rest-stops. But doing too much is a problem too. We do what we can.”

“I want to find the middle ground between not doing too much and not being self-indulgent.”

“That’s—self-indulgent? That’s not what I think of when I think of you,” I said.

“Except I am, aren’t I? This body paint—some like it but it’s by me, for me. The wig, it’s for me. The body, the hassle others go through for me, to help me with the little things. The trip I took with Weld, all for me, and the errands surrounding getting this body put together—he didn’t have that much time before he started with the Wardens, and it all went to me.”

“Ah, this is about Weld? Even the parts you talked about that aren’t about Weld.”

She paused, deer in the spotlight. “Yeah. Am I that obvious?”

“There were hints. For what it’s worth, I think he’s the kind of guy who gets invigorated and refreshed by helping others. He seemed pretty genuinely happy that you were where you were at, that first meeting.”

“I dunno,” Sveta said. She shrugged, shoulders squeaking slightly. “I wanted to make him something for dinner the other day, and he said no. It took me a bit before I found out it might be a bit of a chore, trying to find things he can eat. He came home so mentally worn out that he didn’t have it in him to pretend or feign interest. What else do I do for him, if you cancel that out or call it a chore? What can I do for him? It’s supposed to be a partnership.”

“It’s not an answer, but… one thing I found, that I talked to Dean with a few times, is that guys can’t always wear their hearts on their sleeves. They can’t turn to their friends and cry it out. So they bear it, carry it.”

“Dean would know that stuff, huh?”

“Some. I’m generalizing a lot. Thing is, a lot of the time, guys only have one outlet, if they have one at all. And even then, they—”