He rubs at his eyes.
The desk light is painfully bright when he glances up from the documents strewn on his desk. He drops his pen.
He uncoils, stretching out his aching muscles, working out the kinks in his neck.
The sky outside the window is velvet indigo, stars wiped clear by the electrical light that shudders from all around the floating Garden.
The air is thick and musty, circulated and reused for the tiny office cramped with shelving drawers and scorched with the lingering stink of freshly printed paper.
"Someday I'll tell you about it. My romantic dream."
He smiles at the voice that echoes in his mind –he can't remember the last time he held his gunblade, the last time he felt the pressure of pushing through flesh and bone, the last time he saw the spray of blood scattering and colouring his vision.
He can't remember how defeat tastes or smells or feels – he had forgotten the way the dull throb of adrenaline blurred everything around him.
He stares at his ink-stained fingers, traces the old scar between his eyes.
So this is victory.