One selfie of her and Weld, with slivers of two other capes on either side to suggest they were sitting on a bench on a plane, helicopter, or truck. Her head was tilted to rest on Weld’s shoulder, and the selfie was supposed to be focused on the fin-blade at her arm, which was absorbed by Weld. The caption was a simple ‘stuck to him’. I used ‘supposed to be’ to refer to the focus, because she had an easy, infectious smile that suggested nothing untoward.

That was just going by smile, though.

“You have to scroll. Nighttime photos,” Sveta said. Her voice was as empty as I’d felt earlier, after reading the diary.

I scrolled. Past photos of this twenty-something woman gardening, more gardening, a faintly unhinged photo of her showing off a cut on her face, post-fight. Her hanging out with capes. Her unmasked face was kept out of photos. Nothing betrayed her secret identity or location.

Then the nighttime photos. Twenty, twenty-five pictures of her at what I took to be a wind-down from a Wardens operation, a bunch of capes, Patrol officers and military-types drinking and lounging in an apartment where one wall and part of the ceiling were glass, giving it an open-air feel. A good eighteen of those pictures, she was within arm’s reach of Weld. In four of them she was touching him. For balance, possibly. Together, but never quite in a way that suggested they were together. They could have been friends, but if I’d seen it I wouldn’t have assumed they were friends.

I tapped the photo. I saw the name above her face. Slician. I’d heard of her, but hadn’t ever seen the face to put it to the name.

“Is there context?” I asked.

Weld didn’t volunteer an answer.

“Not exactly,” Sveta said. “I asked about her, and you know, I may be dumb—”

“You really aren’t,” Weld said, before I could.

“I’m—I don’t know how to put it, then,” Sveta said, quiet. “Because I feel so fucking ignorant. I feel like I never get it. I lost a childhood of memories, and then I spent the next few years killing anyone I might have interacted with, I—I spent the years after that in a hospital, and the time after that with a team that it turned out I never really knew or understood. When was I supposed to ever learn all of these things that everyone else seems to get? You know?”

“You do okay,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know my boyfriend. I do know when something’s wrong. I’d like to think I’m good at knowing when he needs space or when he needs someone to talk to.”

“You are,” Weld said. He looked pained. “Better than Armstrong, better than any teammate, friend, or girlfriend I’ve had.”

Sveta continued, not to Weld but to me, like she was making an appeal, “I try to look after him. I try to nag him if he needs nagging, usually if he’s not trying hard enough to push his boundaries and starts falling into a rut.”