“Of course I fucking am, Antares. I’ve been working my ass off to save those people. I’ve gone without sleep, I’ve had migraines every third fucking day. So if you want to convince me, you’ve got to tell me it’s somehow worth it to end every single one of those people’s stories where they currently are. Miserably unfinished.”

I raised my good arm, then let it fall. “That’s… not an argument.”

“It’s an argument you don’t like.”

“It’s… if it comes to that? Any one of those people? Those bad endings? I think we’re willing to do it for their own reasons.”

“We are,” Sveta said, from beyond the curtain.

She slipped through. Her tendrils were writhing. I saw a glimpse of Rain on the other side. Grue, too, his back to the curtain.

“A story half-finished is better than no story at all,” Sveta said. “If we die, there’s nothing. No legacy, nobody to remember or carry on sentiments. There’s no point to it all.”

“There are so many other people out there with their own lives,” I told Tattletale. “Civilians. Jerks. Capes who ran from these battlefields. It’s basic fucking empathy to not want to end their stories either. The world doesn’t start and finish with the people you know.”

I heard a sound, a deep voice. Brian, murmuring words that sounded agreeable, though I couldn’t make them out.

“This world isn’t worth keeping if they’re not in it,” Tattletale said.

“That’s a big if and you know it,” I said. “I don’t know if you’re disagreeing on principle, given your past—”

“A horrible, slow nightmare-filled death for thousands? That may be pointless? That’s not principles,” Tattletale said.

“I think we let people choose,” I told Tattletale. “I think we give them the information, we let them choose. If we don’t end up getting enough… they’re just getting a head start. I think you know that we should, and that’s why you’re standing here arguing with me, wanting me to say words that make this easier or simpler. Or wanting me to force you to tell me, so you’re absolved.”

I knew, telling her, that there was a chance she’d realize and walk away, or hit a wall, or anything. When using my aura to evoke an emotion, I knew there was a chance that a certain person’s lens for viewing the world would alter the response. I could give a man fear and get anger in response.

Words were the same.

I watched as Tattletale took in that information through her particular lens.

I watched her turn, pushing aside the curtain with more force than was necessary, giving people a view of me wounded and unarmored, before Sveta closed the curtain.