CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The back seat of the car.
The city moved past the windows in its early-morning colors the amber of streetlamps, the occasional bright white of a business with lights still on, the moving headlights of the first delivery vehicles beginning their day.
Tav was aware of all of this in the peripheral way of someone whose attention was substantially occupied by a different variable.
Alistair's hands. Maintaining the pressure that mattered. Steady without being rigid, the application of force that was care rather than fear.
Lucien was driving without commentary, which was the appropriate choice and which Tav noted with the distant part of his attention. Lucien had been very precisely not saying things that were
available for him to say for the last hour, which told Tav something about the kind of person he was and the care he had for his brother.
"You're watching me," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"What are you looking for?"
"Nothing. I'm looking."
Alistair's hands made a small adjustment. His right hand moved to hold Tav's, loosely, while his left maintained the wound pressure. A decision about what to prioritize.
"There's nothing left of me worth saving," he said.
He said it quietly. Not dramatically. In the particular flatness of someone stating a thing they had been living with for a long time.
Tav watched him.
"That's not true," he said.
"I was built for exactly this." Alistair's voice was even. "Every person I've been close to in the last eight years has been operationally selected or incidentally useful or—" He stopped. "I don't know how to be something else. I'm not sure there's anything underneath the thing I was built to be."
"There is," Tav said.
"You can't know that."
"I've been watching you for months," Tav said. "I know exactly what's underneath."
Alistair looked at him.
"The sketchbook," Tav said. "You draw people because you're trying to understand them, not because it's useful. That's not a product of your training. Your training would have you catalogue them, not — not try to capture their attention."
"The way you talked about Elias," Tav said. "The specifics. The crossword. The narrated surveillance.
The way your voice changed when you talked about someone who thought out loud."
"That was longing. Not for an operative. For a person who thought out loud and didn't hide it."
Alistair studied the window.
"The burned butter," Tav said.
He felt Alistair go still.
"You made the coffee good," Tav said. "Every morning. You made it better than you needed to. "That's not a trained behavior. That's a person."
"Tav," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"That's not—" He stopped. "That's not evidence of anything worth—"
"You're wrong," Tav said. He said it plainly. "I have made a catalogue. Would you like it?"
Alistair found his face with the expression of someone who was about to say no and knew the no was not honest.
"Yes," he said.
"The coffee. The sketchbook. The way you told me the truth in the kitchen early in the morning when the easier choice was to continue deflecting.
The way you touched the inside of my wrist in that café and then waited to see what I'd do with it.
" "The way you stayed in this city when Ablation gave you opportunities to leave.
The way you told me about Elias with the way someone who is angry on behalf of someone else more than on their own behalf.
" He studied him steadily. "The way you're holding my hand right now while also maintaining the pressure on the wound, because you made a decision about what mattered and you're doing both. "
Alistair's grip on his hand tightened fractionally.
"That's a person," Tav said. "A particular, irreplaceable person. Who I have decided—" "Who I have decided is not available to be reduced to nothing."
The car moved.
Alistair was quiet.
Then he pressed his forehead against Tav's shoulder — the right shoulder, always the right shoulder — and exhaled.
"You're going to tell me this every time I do the self-erasure thing," he said.
"Yes."
"That's going to happen with some regularity."
"I know."
"You're committing to a significant amount of—"
"I know," Tav said. "I've done the calculation."
"Okay," he said finally. "Okay."
His grip on Tav's hand was still there — loose, certain, he had made a decision about letting go and had decided against it.
Outside the windows, the city was beginning to arrive at its earliest version of morning. The grey-blue of the sky before dawn. The long shapes of the streets.
"What you said earlier," Alistair said. "About needing people."
"Yes."
"I need you," Alistair said. "Not as a variable. Not for the mission or the Protocol or any of the rest of it." He turned his head so he was looking at Tav again. "I need you and whatever this is between us and the calm mornings in that kitchen."
Tav looked at him.
"I know," he said.
"You're not going to say it back."
"I already said it in the kitchen that morning," Tav said. "I told you I needed you to stay. I don't usually say things twice."
Then, very softly: "Right. Yes. You did say that."
"I did."
"I heard it," he said. "I heard it very specifically."
Tav held his gaze steadily.
"Good," he said.
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lights passing intermittently, the city thinning to its northern edge, Alistair's hand maintaining contact.
Tav was aware of each component separately and also as a composite.
This was something that had been developing since week three — the capacity to be aware of multiple things at once without the awareness compromising any individual element.
He had always had the analytical version of this: the simultaneous processing of operational variables.
What was new was the personal version. Being aware of the shoulders complaints and Alistair's hand and the city's amber lights simultaneously, with none of them requiring the others to pause.
This was what it felt like to be present, he thought.
Being in this moment with this open awareness, not for any reason beyond the moment itself.
He was in the moment.
The shoulder: hurting in the way of things that have been more badly damaged than their owner was prepared to admit. He had been telling Alistair it was manageable, and it was manageable, and it was also significantly more than the first wound had been.
He was prepared to tell the physician the accurate version.
He was less prepared to tell Alistair the accurate version, because Alistair's response to the accurate version would be to be significantly more concerned than he already was, and the concern — while reasonable and accurate and appropriate — was something Tav found he wanted to manage at this moment.
Not because the concern was unwanted. Because it was too present. The weight of Alistair's worry for him had been present since the staircase and was the most real thing in the back of the car and Tav was in it and did not want to increase it.
This was new. The management of someone else's emotional state in the service of their wellbeing rather than his own operational requirements.
He thought: caring about someone makes you manage their worry.
He thought: I have been doing this incorrectly by not telling them what's accurate. The management is not helpful. The accurate information is what they need.
"The shoulder is worse than I've said," he said.
Alistair's hand tightened fractionally.
"I know," Alistair said.
"You know."
"Yes." He held Tav's gaze with the steady quality. "The way you've been holding it. The way you've been breathing for the last hour." "I know."
"I was trying to—" Tav stopped.
"Not worry me," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"I know." His hand maintained the contact. "I know you were. And I know why." He held the look.
"But the accurate information is what I need."
Tav watched him.
"Yes," he said. "I know."
"Tell me."
"The second wound compounded the first. The bone took more of the impact than the first wound's soft tissue damage would have allowed it to. I believe there's a fracture." "I need the physician to assess it."
"Yes," Alistair said. "You do." He looked at Tav with the expression he used when he was being very precise about something. "Thank you for telling me."
"Yes," Tav said.
"Accurate information," Alistair said. "Both ways. We established this."
"Yes." He held the look. "I know."
Alistair's hand stayed where it was.
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