“It’s a really fucked up thing, if I consider myself one of the more trustworthy members of the group,” he said. He turned around to look up at me. “Rain—he’s in a bad place.”

“In more than one way,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to ask him, but… what Fallen family is he from? The last time I ran into Fallen, they were Crowleys, but… it’s not just Crowleys left, in Gimel, and the Crowleys would be bad enough.”

“I don’t think he’s living with the Crowleys,” Tristan said. “But he won’t tell me.”

“Okay,” I said.

If we were people who’d been powerless once, set out to help the powerless, that might mean Rain and Erin were people who were very high on our list of people to help. He’d brought her for a reason. Had he expected her to communicate with us? Or was her presence meant to communicate something?

“One last question,” I said.

“Go for it,” Tristan said.

“The hand signal earlier today,” I said. I mimed it, hand not with palm facing forward at Tristan, but at an angle, so palm would be facing his feet instead, were he standing up.

“Hm? I thought that was obvious.”

I shook my head.

“Stop,” Tristan said, palm out, facing forward. He pointed forward with three fingers, “Go.”

“And…?”

He made the gesture. “Go slow. Ease up. I figured it was intuitive.”

I chuckled under my breath.

“Not at all,” I said.

Tristan smiled.

“You were wanting to juggle the group,” I said.

“Feeling my way through it,” he said. “This is new to me. I’m worried I’m going to fuck it up. Rain’s my friend. I care about them all. Even Chris, God help me.”

I hesitated before speaking.

“Is it—is it okay that I’m here?” I asked. “I’m not making things worse by being here?”

“No. I don’t think you are,” he said. “We need the help.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good. It would be pretty hard for me to walk away at this point, if you said no.”

“Yeah. Probably,” he said.

We sat for a bit. There wasn’t much more conversation. I was tired, after waking up early, and the adrenaline was long gone, leaving me weary to the bone, even though I hadn’t exerted myself that much on a physical level.

When Tristan stood and stretched, I took that as an unspoken cue. We went back inside.

It would have been tidy and neat for more to happen before we packed up for the day, but it seemed everyone involved was licking wounds or replenishing their batteries in their individual ways. I could hear Ashley’s voice, volume lowered on the camera, as she ranted about something, and Beast of Burden chimed in with monosyllables. Prancer looked after his territory, cleaning up the rubble from the walls, talking to people, trying to get sorted.