“Not emotionless. But… smarter about it. The idea I keep coming back to is I want to be a warrior monk.”

“A warrior monk?”

“Just—centered when it counts, I guess?”

“Why the warrior part? Do you envision yourself fighting?”

“I don’t honestly know. It never occurred to me.”

Jessica smiled.

“What’s next for Victoria Dallon?” she asked.

“You need to mock me, say Victoria Dallon, warrior monk,” I said. “I deserve it.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “If everyone in costume could remain centered while doing what they do, it would make a world of difference. I think it’s good. I’d think about that more as you take your next steps.”

“I know I want to move forward, because… I dunno. I feel like I’m a shark that drowns if it stops moving, or a bird that drops out of the air like a stone if I’m not flying forward. I know I need to get some of the basics of life squared away. I’m okay for money for a couple of months, but I can’t stay on Crystal’s couch.”

“In my brief interactions with Crystal, I did like her,” Jessica said.

“She’s great. But not great to live with long-term, I don’t think. You’d never know it to look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s fashionable, and very well put together, but if you looked at her apartment…”

I trailed off, using my expression to convey a bit of the horror to Jessica.

“Ah,” Jessica said. She smiled again.

“I don’t know what to do next.”

“Well, I’d think about how to apply the warrior monk role to your day-to-day life,” she said. She pulled off her jacket. The weather had warmed up enough. “What it means to you, why it’s the first thing or the recurring thing in your thought processes.”

“I just want to… do.”

“You said you regretted yesterday, but Jasper thanked you. Would you rather have not done it? Is it the ‘want’ in wanting to do things that’s problematic, or is it the ‘do’?”

I drew in a deep breath. “That’s… a very complicated question, I think.”

“You don’t have to answer it right now,” she said.

“I think I can, though. I think… I had to. And as much as it was hard and cost me my job, I preferred it to the alternative. I can’t not do things that help out. I just want to do it in a good, centered way.”

“Could it be a mundane job? Construction? Desk work? Would you want to do something like you were doing with the Patrol?”

I thought about it.

I couldn’t see it. Not long-term.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” she asked.