I pushed out with my aura, hard. The flip side of my observation moments ago was true. I was supposed to be resistant to hits to my emotions because I could deliver those hits myself. Snag would be resistant to my aura for similar reasons.

He still let go, arms slipping back through the wall. I had a moment where I thought about grabbing one of his wrists as it passed me, and I hesitated a moment too long.

I backed away, staggering until I bumped into the window next to the broken one. My chest hurt as if I’d had my heart ripped out, and thoughts of Dean flickered through my head. It was a continuation of my thoughts from earlier, one sample in a long, long series of thoughts I hadn’t let myself finish over the past few months and years that the surge of emotion was now filling in and pushing to the surface.

It was loss, if I had to put a name to it. Nothing to do with the man on the roof.

It was me in the hospital, with Auntie Sarah and Crystal, not knowing what to say because Uncle Neil and Eric had just died. Crystal had been hurt too, and the place had been so busy and crowded that we’d gathered in the small curtained enclosure where her hospital bed was. My mom had been gone, trying to get news on my dad’s situation, and my sister—

It was going from that, the horrible feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, to hearing the curtain move. I’d known it wasn’t my mom—she’d left only a minute ago. It was as if someone had taken a want, desire, even a need equal to what I’d experienced in my childhood and early teens, when I’d wanted to be a hero, when I’d written letters to Santa and wished it during every birthday candle extinguishing and for every shooting star I’d seen from when I was four to when I was fourteen, if someone had gathered all of that feeling and compressed it into a single, concentrated moment of wanting it to be Dean coming into the enclosure to give me a hug. And then not getting what I wanted.

The PRT staff member had come in to let me know Gallant had wanted to see me while there was still time. Dean had.

Heart ripped out of my chest, just like that, just like this feeling here. Losses, losses, fucking losses. That ambiguous fucking word they’d used when they’d delivered the mass report. Not deaths, not the ‘downs’ that were injured just enough they were out of the fight, just losses because they’d needed to be brief with the list of names so long. Dean’s name had been on that list.