It was a nice day. Well, at least it wasn't disastrous, and it was as much as anyone could hope for while being around Tilly.

"You should play with me"

Weaver sighed and tore his eyes away from the paper he was working on.

"I hear this the third time today"

Tilly looked at him with feigned innocence, and it could probably work with others (like Rogers) but he was too steeped in the art of manipulation to know the difference.

"This is called sentence',

Weaver made sure that the look he sent her was foreboding enough - too bad it didn't seem to influence Tilly much, not since their second meeting. Or was it the first?

"Anyway, I'm just waiting for…"

"Detective Rogers. Yes, I know, you didn't fail to repeat that sentence either."

"Actually, detective Rogers isn't a sentence, it's…"

This time Weaver's look took the desired effect. There were times when even his past could come in handy.

He got back to his papers and realized that, thanks to the life-and-death important interruption, the thought was lost.

Tilly didn't seem too happy, either.

Her puzzle let out a few screeching sounds.

Weaver cleared his throat.

The screeching stopped and tuned into insistent thumping.

This wasn't going well. This wasn't going well at all.

Where was that damn Rogers anyway?

"So have you found anything?"

"Apart from Tilly, not much. Or wait, was that you?"

"Well, technically it was you."

Tilly let out a chuckle. Well, that was entertaining.

"How about you both agree that I found you?"

The look they both gave her sent her into a new fit of chuckles.

She knew that they didn't like agreeing on stuff, but that was alright. Some skills required time, and she had a feeling that they would be having plenty of it in the days to come.

'Plenty' ended up being not nearly enough, but the feeling still hadn't left her. And it was a good sign. Or so she thought.

Anyway, these were nice days. For Tilly, nice days usually consisted of marmelade, troll, a bit of chess and long, tiring walks. Now everything changed, though. Those things weren't enough anymore. They were her routine - something to keep her sane, to reason with her when she got too upside-down. They were her tether. Tether to the world.

And they used to be strong. Now, though, their strength seemed to magically vanish. A better thing could substitute a good one, she guessed. It was logical.

But logic couldn't in any way explain what she was going through.

Roger's painfully sincere smiles couldn't either. But it didn't mean she didn't drink them in as if she was dying of thirst. Sometimes she was indeed dying. Sometimes she didn't even mind it. Not much. But those 'sometimes' were almost non-existent now.

'I don't know if I have a tether to the world, but I do have this.'

Tilly smiled at the beautiful irony of it. He was right. He didn't have a tether to the world - he was it.

He made those 'sometimes' disappear. He made her want to forget them, to store them in her memory and lock them away with the hope of getting rid of them for good someday. He made her face go hot with a few disapproving remarks on her sometimes (often?) reckless behavior. He made her hide her eyes with his heartwarmingly genuine praises. He filled her insides with scaldingly hot embarrassment over the fact that she was still having those poisonous thoughts. In fact, she ached to reaveal, to share them, but then the worst of it would be gone and the only thing she'd remember would be his smile. His smile. No adjective seemed fit enough to describe it, and she wasn't going to try. Some things weren't meant to be put into words. Maybe some day, she'd find the right word, but quite honestly, she hoped that day would never come.

And now that marmalade, chess and lonely food-hunt walks became routine and her days actually gained some meaning, the possibility of a finale (whatever it might be) seemed even more frightening. In such moments, she'd be torn between the desire to never leave Rogers out of sight and be as far away from him as possible. The second urge actually gave her shivers and made her thoughts even more jumpy than before. But then she'd see him smile and everything would be alright again. Their days would grow and expand, like yeasty cakes, until they turned into incomprehensible blur. At this point, she stopped counting them because it would be the same thing as counting stars in the sky.

She tried it once but her father told her it wasn't something people could, or should, know. She didn't even remember his face or his voice and yet she remembered the words as if they were spoken a few days ago.

'I want to count all the stars in the sky. Do you think I could?'

'My girl can do everything she puts her mind to. But this is a tiresome task, love, and ungrateful one.'

'Did YOU ever count the stars?'

There were times when his laugh was the only thing keeping her sane and now she could barely remember what it sounded like.

'Yes, I did. A long long time ago. But I was glad I couldn't reach the end.'

'But why? You told me that the more numbers I know the cleverer I'll be.'

'Did I really say that?'

Tilly thinks she giggled then, probably because he was tickling her. It was a favorite practce of his to get her to confess to some harmless crimes she committed. This time the crime was called 'fibbing'.

'No!'

'What did I say?'

Tilly let out a huff and shook her head stubbornly. The tickling didn't stop.

His laughing eyes put a big smile on her face , even though she want ed to look sulky and determined. She d idn't exactly know what the last word meant but she like d the sound of it.

'What did I say, love?'

Now papa's voice sounded as if he was trying to sing. Usually it meant that he was in a good mood and wanted to play.

Tilly giggled then. This time from something that began with a... probably 'antipation'? 'Antipotion'? No, that sounded wrong. She could ask papa but they had a game to play and it wasn't wise to distract papa from it.

'Say the words, Tilly.'

Tilly. Who was Tilly? She closed her eyes and listened, hoping for an answer but no answer came.

'Tilly, are you alright? Tilly?'

Her. It was her. How in the world could she forget about that? How?

Her eyes burned from unshed tears but letting them go in earnest seemed even more of a struggle.

'He told me that I had to learn how to count. Numbers. But not stars. Stars should be left alone.'

Roger's eyes turned from confused to sympathetic but she didn't see that.

'You don't want to know how many there are because if you do, you'll have nothing to count anymore. And this is sad.'

'Well, I can assure you that you'll never count all the stars, however hard you try.'

Did he really think she didn't know that?

'Yes, coming from someone who never even looked at the sky.'

Exasperated Rogers was the most entertaining version of Rogers, hands down. So Tilly just sat back and enjoyed. Well, she didn't exactly sit but she definitely enjoyed.

'You do know that it's physically impossible?'

She's not exactly sure, but it should be there somewhere.

'Of course it's possible! Looking doesn't mean actually seeing.'

Not that she'd let him know it.

His sigh seemed to soothe the remaining pain in her chest. Apparently the term 'physcially possible' needed some serious expanding and she couldn't wait to tell Rogers all about it.

In the end, she might not have plenty of days but sometimes it just wasn't about the numbers.

And this kind of 'sometimes' didn't give her a panic attack for a change