“I could blast anyone. I could blast you, right here and right now. But I don’t because I don’t want to. I didn’t blast him because he’s a goblin of a man without even a single testicular smudge’s worth of manliness, who attacks people behind their backs. He’s not worth it. Does he redeem himself somewhat by giving me my hand back and listening to us a little? A tad.”

“You thought about blasting him and you held back,” Sveta said.

“I held back,” Ashley said.

“We need to discuss this. This pattern of behavior isn’t good,” I said.

“A pattern where I hold back?”

“A pattern where you need to hold back,” Sveta said.

“This is me. This is who I am.”

What was? I felt like I’d gotten to know her, that she’d let her guard down, dropped aspects of the self-imposed image she’d built up around herself, and become more comfortable. I’d liked the Ashley I’d gotten to know. Now… I wasn’t even sure about any of it.

People who broke down tended to reveal raw and vulnerable parts of themselves, and I’d thought that in the past events where Ashley’s facade had cracked, I’d seen glimmers of the Ashley who cared deeply about Kenzie and who could care deeply about others. The Swansong. Now I felt like the Swansong facade was cracking under the strain of keeping up the act here and it was revealing a Damsel beneath.

White with black beneath the surface or black with white beneath the surface, just endless beneath-the-surfaces. Always with a few limited constants.

There had been vulnerability here, though. Showing the missing hands in front of watching eyes. Declaring she wasn’t Slaughterhouse. Still, there was something I’d call darkness.

“Do you need to hang back? Take a break while we look after other stuff?”

“No,” Ashley said, sounding offended.

I was frustrated, and with how Ashley tended to ramp up when she got agitated, and the way my own frustration seemed to mirror that right now, I backed off, letting Sveta take over.

My phone was ringing anyway. I pulled it out and I checked the screen, and then I went very still.

“What’s wrong?” It’d been Rain who noticed. “Teacher attack?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

“What, then?”

“Someone caught some of what Gary was saying when he named names. It got out to Earth Shin. They want to meet.”

I didn’t want to do this. I was happier telling myself Gary had been wrong than I was putting myself in a position to know one way or the other. Knowing that she did what he’d alleged, or that she didn’t and that I had to wrestle with the word ‘innocent’ linked to her name.

“Family they?” Sveta asked.

“Family they.”

Breaking 14.4

Cue the damage control. Theirs and ours.