“Maybe I’m a bad boyfriend, but I didn’t think of Cozen or Skitter. I thought briefly of Aisha, but mostly I thought we lost, that that was it.”

Lookout laid down on the cot, moving the pillow to put it under her head. Turned sideways, her head at a right angle to his, she stared at him.

“I think it matters to me,” she told him.

He leaned back, his head resting against the door. “I thought it mattered to me. A lot of my thought process was devoted to how hard it was to connect to people. I’m not even sure I liked the Undersiders, before. But that didn’t matter, because it was all about the business, the job. Skitter… if she helped with anything truly special, it was making that first contact, opening that door. She did that with Rachel too. She gets big credit for the Rachel that I just had a sandwich with. Then with Cozen, I thought I’d solved it. I still messed up here and there, but… baby steps forward. Something I thought I couldn’t ever do, I did it. It didn’t make a difference when the world ended, but it made a difference for the year and a half I was with Cozen. The weeks I was with Skitter. I think that’s what you hold onto.”

Lookout adjusted her pillow, pulling one end of it to her chest, while resting her head on the other end, taking a second to fix her hair so she wasn’t crushing it. Once settled, hand still at one side of her face, she heaved out a sigh.

“I really messed things up,” she said, barely audible, her hand mashed into one side of her mouth.

At least like this, the small, smiling tinker didn’t nag at his fight-or-flight response, didn’t make his heart race.

“Do you want to rest?” he asked her.

She smiled at him. “I want to talk, but I’d be keeping you.”

“No,” he said. He reached for the doorknob and used it to get to his feet, groaning at the pain in his shoulder. “Darlene said she needed to cut the connection to do some things. I’m going to tell her she can.”

He watched her face. The fleeting hurt, the smile.

“Okay,” she said.

He stepped out of the room. Into the darkened hallway, that would be pitch black and oily to anyone else. Back to the war room.

Tattletale was making a call, leaning over a desk.

“How’s the kid?” Aisha asked, quiet.

“On edge. Calming down,” he said. “Still remorseful. Scared.”

“Sure,” Aisha said.

“I’m going to go back in, unless you need me or something comes up.”

“Oh really?” Aisha asked, sounding amused.

“I wanted to tell Darlene she can stop using her power. And to ask for a stick-on bandage.”