“I liked him,” Byron said. “Coolest adult I knew that didn’t turn out to be an asshole.”

He was talking about the people in charge of Reach. The therapist.

“I hope he’s okay.”

Sveta caught up, the two Furcates and Armiger with her. Byron pointed in the direction the others had gone.

Sveta nodded, before she, Armiger and the Furcates ran off. Moonsong gave the departing group a thumbs up as they ran by.

Leaving her alone with Byron once more.

“I didn’t make any choices about other people’s loved ones that I wasn’t willing to make about my own,” she told him.

“You don’t have to justify it,” Byron said. He looked so weary, and he hadn’t even been fighting, by the looks of him. “I trust you.”

“Have they communicated the next part of the plan?” she asked.

There were still so many Titans. They’d baited the Nemean Titan out to the flanks. There was still the Custodian, Cinereal, Ophion…

“Some, I think. Playing defense?” he asked.

She nodded.

They couldn’t win this fight. The Titans were too strong and too concentrated here.

Their task was supposed to be to retreat to safe ground, get in contact with the Wardens’ command, and get their assignments. To pick a Titan and protect it from the others, prevent any and all connection. Teams down in the crevice were preparing to bomb any evident connections in progress, if things got too far.

Given how the last bombing had gone, it would be messy, and it’d hurt parahumans almost as much as it hurt the Titans.

“Come with?” she asked.

“I’m not very able,” he said. “It’d be Tristan.”

“Okay,” she said. “Alright.”

“Be safe,” he told her. “Don’t stand alone on battlefields against monsters like this. You’re needed. You’re important. We’ll catch up on things once we get through this.”

“The only reason I’d be anyone decent or important,” she told Byron, “is that you helped me get there.”

But he was already Tristan.

“He can’t hear while he’s inside. The head injury messed up the reciprocity there,” Tristan said. “I don’t think he caught that.”

“It was dumb anyway,” she said, really feeling like she could use a hit of Tribute’s emotional stability right now. She wasn’t prepared to look at Tristan.

“Wasn’t dumb,” Tristan said. “I’d like to think he helped me too. But I still have a way to go.”

“Me too,” Moonsong answered.

The distant fighting was getting uglier. Dragon and Legend were fighting in concert. The dull ‘booms’ of Chevalier’s gunblade were audible.

Mostly Wardens, holding the line. The other teams were retreating.

“We should go,” she said.

We, she’d said. The word was heavy, standing in the face of a whole lot of history.

“Okay.”