Almost my inverse, he thought.

“I said it to scare her and hurt her, because I was hurt. She said no when I knew—I thought I knew she liked me. I tried so hard, working for their benefit, helping them design their costumes, being nice…”

“You can’t,” he said.

“I have to.”

“No,” he said. “You can’t change other people. The Heartbroken couldn’t do a thing to make their father less of a monster. I couldn’t do anything to change Skitter. Skitter couldn’t change Rachel.”

Lookout rose up, propping herself up, “You just said, before, that she did.”

“You change yourself. Set your boundaries, decide what you’ll do and who you’ll be to others. But you can’t change them.”

She put her head back to the pillow.

“Decide who you want to be,” he told her. “Refine that person. Study the skills you’ll need, hit the gym—”

“I totally do,” Lookout said. She held up one arm, bending it, like she was flexing her bicep. He was pretty sure he could have encircled three-quarters of her arm with one finger and his thumb. “Can’t you tell?”

He smiled. “The gym was where I went, when I had no idea of where to go. I told myself that no matter what happened, I was better off having gone, hitting the punching bag, lifting weights.”

“That’s my tinker workshop,” she told him, hugging the pillow tighter. “And studying, and clothes. I do that a lot. People tell me to stop.”

“After… one bad run-in,” he said, closing his eyes. Having his guard down in a room with a strange young tinker still made his heartbeat race. Especially while referencing the event. “I hit the punching bags until my hands bled. Imp made me stop. She did it because she cared.”

The little girl took a second, and he opened his eyes, to check. It took a few seconds before she nodded.

“I really want to go to my workshop, though. I need to.”

He shook his head. “Part of the self care, self-improvement, is resting. Hitting the gym or your workshop to be stronger is good, but resting well makes you stronger too.”

She didn’t fight him on that.

“Were you a good student?” she asked.

He smiled and shook his head.

“Was Imp?”

He didn’t manage to stop himself from an abrupt laugh.

“But she speaks Latin! And French! And reads classics!”

⊙

“She called in all the troops when it was done.”

“Did you run into him? Talk to him?”

“No,” Brian said. “I was unnerved enough walking into the building. I worried he’d forced her to call and lie. I… won’t get into the details.”

“I have cameras everywhere. I see stuff, I accessed databases with crime scene photos. We got chopped up by Cradle. That stuff doesn’t bother me.”

“It should.”