I nodded. “It’s why we got to talking in the first place, kind of. Um. There was something he told me once, privately. And it feels weird to just talk about it now, like I’m somehow betraying his confidence…”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s just…” I trailed off. Just what? “…He told me once that every single person he cared about in his life let him down. His mom took things he told her in confidence about a friend and used those things against that friend’s mom for some advantage in her social circle or some bullshit. His dad just casually said that if he wanted to move out of Brockton Bay and pursue a bigger cape life outside of the city instead of taking a hand in the family business, he’d be essentially disowned. Teachers, aunts, uncles, people he counted on, they all let him down.”

“Except you?” Vista asked.

I made a bit of a face. “He told me that during a fight. Accusing me of being the most recent one. But venting a lot of stuff he needed to vent. I made it up to him, fixed what I’d been doing wrong, and he later told me I was the only person who didn’t let him down, so… I think I did okay.”

“Good,” Vista said, in a serious, profound way, not like there was an ‘or else’, but like it really was ‘good’.

“Except I let him die,” I said.

“No, Victoria,” Vista said. “No, no, no.”

I frowned.

“No.”

“I’m kind of getting what he meant, you know? Feeling let down. Like I can’t get close to anyone I’m supposed to rely on without it turning out to be a trap or vulnerability. My mom, my dad…”

I glanced at the conference room.

Jessica had been here to attend to regular work, to do the psych profile on Colt, and for whatever other roles she had with the Wardens. And we’d chanced on each other. Now the team got to talk to her, and—

Vista drew closer and gave me a one-armed hug.

“What can I do?” she asked.

I wanted to have an answer, because I suspected Vista was being genuine. She had that stripe of heroism in her that I really respected. There were people who needed to be dragged into goodness, who were good except for, or who were good because. And that except for could be a vice or a bad thing they’d once done. The because could be a justification, a motivation. People who were heroes except they’d killed a person, who were heroes except for the fact they did drugs. Who were heroes because it was the fastest, safest way to make money. Many risked falling from the path, getting dragged down, or finding themselves in water so muddy that ‘heroism’ wasn’t much more than a label. And then there were the genuine heroes, who could go through hell, be given any temptation, and they would always gravitate toward a baseline of doing what was lawful, right, and moral.