“Here,” Darlene said. She fished in a pocket of her belt, and pulled out a band-aid. “I just stopped using my power on her.”

He nodded.

It was hard to shake the trepidation, that general unease that came with facing a tinker head-on.

“How’s the fight going?” he asked.

“We’re losing,” Juliette announced, her normal speaking volume at odds with everyone else’s hushed exchanges. Tattletale turned her way, finger pressed to lips, before refocusing on the phone call.

“Breakthrough seems to think it’s a good thing we’re losing,” Aisha told him.

“Then let’s hope they’re right. Come find me in the darkness if you need me.” he answered, before stepping back into the darkness, a fraction cooler against his skin than the air outside of it.

He stopped to peer through the window at Lookout, aware that she was no longer connected to her friend. She wasn’t manic, hadn’t moved from her cot.

She watched him, her eyes wide, as he approached the cot, then knelt down. He tore open the small package for the stick-on bandage, then turned it around, showing her. It was glossy, white, and covered in hearts.

“From you?” she asked.

“From Darlene.”

“Good theme, for the Heartbroken to have these,” she said. “What’s it for?”

He tapped his own face to indicate.

Still lying on her side, she lifted up her face, and he bent down, removing the cover so the adhesive was exposed, and pressed it on. Covering up the tiny, inch-long scar.

She checked, touching it, then dropped her hand from her face, and then clasped her hands together, pinning them between her knees.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded.

He retreated to the other side of the room, and sat down, his back to the window.

“When you died…” she asked, her voice small.

“Mm hmm?”

“Did you see Heaven?”

“Maybe a part of me did,” he said. “But not the part that went to Valkyrie and came back. I wish I could give you a better answer than that. I’m not sure I’d get to go there, if it exists. I was a villain. I stole.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said.

“You were a hero. You helped people. The things you do wrong seem to come from a good place.”

“Except telling Candy I’d make her be my friend and stay by my side. I threatened to blackmail her and the team.”

“Mmm,” he made a sound, his head leaning back to rest against the window. “That’s not so good. I didn’t hear that bit.”

“I think if I went to Heaven, I’d get turned away. Or they’d offer me a chance to prove myself, and I’d mess it up. That’s the way it always goes—I get close to people, and I don’t want to lose that, so I go too far, and I push them away.”