It took a second to find a position where she was comfortable. Not being too far from Aiden, her back pressed against his. Her head in my lap, even though I wasn’t a person she knew.

My heart was pounding like I was in the middle of a fight, my thoughts were chaotic, and I was just sitting, trying to figure out how to handle this, worried that I was somehow doing this wrong.

“Lookout,” I heard Byron. “Lookout, stop—”

Lookout came around the corner, hobbling on one leg, a hand at the wall, the other leg she was using terminating at the ankle. She set the stump down, reached out to the wall for support, and paused as she looked at Darlene, Chicken Little and I.

Byron came around the corner, checking. I signaled that it was okay, even though I wasn’t sure it was.

“Don’t touch him,” Darlene told Lookout, sitting partially up. There was a panicked note in her voice. “You can’t touch him.”

Silent, Lookout started forward again.

“Lookout,” I said.

There was a grim kind of determination as she made her way forward, more extreme than a limp. I started to rise, but hesitated when she went straight past Chicken Little. I had to catch her as she half-crouched, half-collapsed, landing between Darlene and I. I eased her the rest of the way down.

“Thank you,” she said, quiet.

Just past her, Darlene looked wary.

“You can’t run on that leg,” I said.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. There was a pause. “It hurts a lot. But putting weight on it doesn’t hurt. It’s frozen like it is.”

Darlene nodded.

“This is doable,” Lookout said. “I’ve been hurt worse than this. Not that I want to say it’s minor, because it’s not, I want to sympathize and—”

She’d been hurt worse than this? With her parents? I found that really hard to imagine.

Or… not physical pain.

“Okay,” Darlene said, her voice tight.

Lookout was tense, fidgeting.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Either of you?”

Darlene shook her head. She didn’t, I noticed, insist that I stay.

“My helm—” Lookout started. I caught the hitch in her voice. “My helmet. The, um, I was thinking about what I was going to say when people showed up, and—can you help with my helmet? I—”

She reached up with both hands. One hand had a thumb missing. The other had been cut at a diagonal. There was nothing except a triangle pointing to the corner nearest where the pinky would be.

I hadn’t seen, glimpsing into the room before letting Capricorn handle our teammates, turning my attention to Juliette. I felt guilty having left Kenzie, but I would have felt worse, making a promise to Darlene and not following through.

“I have it,” I said. I tried to find the clasps.