I've never had anyone request a fic. So this is my first shot at that. The main character of this story is Shiranai Atsune's OC, Janice Robin.


I.

Don't you trust me? she had asked me.

Of course I did. Beth had been my best friend. I had trusted her and only her.

If you trust me, I need you to believe in one thing.

I had guessed she was going to tell me she needed me to believe in myself. But my best friend wasn't going to ask the impossible of me.

Believe that I believe in you . . .

I trusted her—

But tell me, Beth, how am I supposed to do that when you're no longer here?

What do I believe in now? Whom do I trust?

II.

Sometimes I see Hannah and Franz kissing in dark corners. They kiss each other very hard. It seems mortally urgent, so I can't help imagining that Hannah is dead, and Franz is breathing the life back into her. Because their kissing is just so passionate and intense and portentous. Hannah is a nice, pretty girl, Franz a nice, handsome boy, so I know how this story will end. It will end with a kiss and a symbolic ellipsis, those three little dots that imply a cut-off sentence, an incomplete thought, a last suspended breath . . .

I pass them, glancing behind my hair. Their faces are all-smiles and good-thoughts. Franz's hands gently follow the copper locks of Hannah's hair while Hannah gazes up at Franz (he's a full head taller than she) through the rusty, bold sweep of her eyelashes. Her lips are dark and plump with the aftermath of their kissing, and the apples of her cheeks are full with her smile. I imagine that they'll sneak out after curfew, find a place where they can be alone together, and kiss some more, undisturbed. Maybe they'll fall asleep in each other's arms, listening to the soliloquy of their synchronized hearts beating.

I know how their story will end . . .

I keep going. I walk to the cafeteria where all the cadets eat. The instant the door opens, the smell of hot food springs toward me, and the swell of voices abruptly balloons. Beneath it all, I hear the clang of a ladle in a metal pot, and my stomach heaves as I feel the imaginary tasteless lump of gruel hitting my palate. The door shuts behind me. I move toward the serving line, ghosting between tables.

I see Mikasa and Eren and Armin, and Eren looks at Mikasa as if he doesn't see her, expressionless. His eyes are on her face, though his thoughts are beyond her. Mikasa looks back at Eren, and whenever Mikasa looks at Eren, her black eyes become very still and focused and almost—vulnerable. It must be hard, caring about somebody like Eren Jaeger.

Sometimes I wonder if he has the subconscious goal of becoming a corpse as quickly as possible. We call him the suicidal maniac for a reason. But fate—or is it luck?—has a way of stepping in and keeping him from going six-feet under. What Eren wants, consciously or subconsciously, doesn't matter. He'll live—

Though I can't help sympathizing with Mikasa. I see the way she boxes him in, as if to package him away from peril and pain, like a precious pearl inside a treasure chest. But how do you stuff an impulsive boy inside a safebox when he's the source of his own destruction? How do you protect and save someone whose biggest threat is himself?

How do you save anyone at all?

Supper in hand, I don't sit down at a table. I head outdoors. The breath of nighttime sheds across my neck, and autumn leaves swirl up in a sudden wind, scattering over the moonlit lawn. I go around to the back of the cafeteria.

Already the mangy mutt is there, sitting obediently, its gaunt, crooked tail wagging through dry dust. With my fingers, I pick out dollops of gruel and allow the dog to lick them from my palm. Its teeth are yellow and its gums are black. It'll start losing teeth soon. What's a dog without fangs? I wonder. I think about that for a while, as the dog gives me a pleading, willful look, its black eyes boring into my face. I give in and set my entire tray down. I squat in the dirt, balancing on the balls of my feet, watching the dog's mouth slopping up my supper, thinking: What's a dog without fangs?

I know the answer.

I don't have fangs. Some people do, though. They have sharp incisors that look just like fangs. Eren has incisors like that. That's why he can manage to look like a savage beast when his top lip pulls back from his teeth. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a hot glare like that. I wouldn't want to be on Eren's bad side, ever.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my switch. The moon strikes across the silver metal, flashing it metallically in the darkness. I have something better than fangs: I've got steel. What's a human without steel? I wonder. I test the blade. I put it against the outside of my wrist and lightly scrape my skin, watching as the downy hairs fall away, in a close, precise shave.

I'm careful. I don't want to break my flesh. I wouldn't do that on purpose. I wouldn't do that on purpose, even though I know what it's like to be gripped by numbness. I wouldn't do that on purpose, even though I know how it feels to go through life in a washed-out drowse, a half-light gloom, wading through a sea of empty, endless nothing.

I've disappeared. I disappeared a long time ago when Mom and Dad and Beth were taken from me. Titans took them from me, and a wound appeared deep inside my chest, festering into that thing that makes me who I am—my spirit, my soul, whatever you want to call it. I'm rotting from the inside.

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm real at all.

Suddenly I whip around, my switch blurring with speed. In the moonlight, it flashes white and hot across a strong, bare throat. Beneath the flat of the blade, I feel the outline of a throat column and the bulge of an Adam's apple and it'd be easy, simple, to snap my wrist and, in one swift stroke, slash right through the carotid artery and kill this person. The blight inside me wants to do it. It wants to wield the violence twisted within me. Two cold, pale, immobile eyes stare at me. I take my blade away.

On automatic reflex, my mouth prepares an apology. I stop myself. I don't want to apologize for my survival instinct. I won't apologize for that. I'm a survivor. I'm a soldier. I bear the Wings of Freedom crest. And nobody knows surviving instinct better than Captain Levi himself. Instead of an apology, I offer him a pristine, proper salute.

"Well aren't you on edge," he says. There's cold, aloof irony in his voice.

"Always," I say.

His eyes are on my face. They're very still and very cold. But wading through my drowse, I don't feel any injury from his unfriendliness. I hardly feel anything at all. "Even though you're surrounded by comrades?" he says, his voice flat, calm, indifferent.

I slide my switch back into my pocket and lift a shoulder. "I never let my guard down."

"Switches aren't used to kill titans. They're used to kill people. Do you plan to kill someone?"

Just as I reach for them, the words in my head evaporate and I have no words to grasp. I can't look at the captain. His eyes are on my cheek. I feel them, cold, steady, astute, and then he goes on past me. I watch the precise trim of his black hair, gliding farther and farther away, sinking into the darkness.

The words in my head return and I clutch onto them too late. They're neither clever nor complicated.

I don't know . . . I don't know if I plan to kill someone.

But I suppose I'll find out.

III.

I hadn't meant to. But I've opened my knuckles on some guy's skull. He's unconscious now, lying at my feet, crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. He's a massive man, all muscle and iron bone, and I've knocked him out cold. My fist is smarting, and my fingers twitch spasmodically, stinging pinpricks of pain shooting through my nerve endings. Scarlet blood emerges from starburst cracks in my skin. I hadn't meant to split my knuckles. I've hit him too hard.

The crowd hemming in the makeshift fighting arena breaks into cheers and cries and curses. The bulk of them are unhappy I've won. The majority had bet against me; I'm slim and not very tall. They misjudged me, hadn't considered my speed. I'm quick—that's my other talent. I'm disappeared, I'm rotted, and I'm fast.

To hide my identity, I'm wearing a papier-mâché mask. It's blank white and expressionless with two empty holes cut out for the eyes. It's not so different from my real face. Maybe it is my real face. Maybe my real face is all but papier-mâché and empty, cut-out eyes. Maybe that's all I am. A paper soldier.

These clandestine street fights are held at the edge of the slums. And impoverished slums are fertile ground for unbridled violence and rage. The crowd starts to violently churn, under the delusion they've been cheated out of their money; that I'm the cheater and they the victims. Their bodies knock against the feeble wood fence closing us in. The boundaries rattle, and I grip my black-handled switch. A man spits in my direction. His eyes gleam like cat eyes.

I want to fade. I want to plunge into the ground and vanish from all the black, savage stares surrounding me. If I were paper, I could fold into myself; I could become origami; I could let the wind carry me somewhere else. I could float away.

The ref seizes my wrist, raises my arm, and announces my victory. Warm scarlet bleeds down my hand. Pulled by gravity, little red rivers dribble down my arm, splitting off into branches that keep growing down my wrist. The ref drops my hand. I let it fall to my side, and the rivers retract. They follow their branches, inverting now, doubling back toward my open knuckles.

The crowd murmurs with disappointment. But they've stopped churning in a fiery horde, now begrudgingly resigned to my win.

Outside the ring is a dilapidated ticket booth that's usually employed to host street fight gambles. I walk up to an old man posted inside and collect my prize money. That's the reason I'm here: money. It's the reason most people are Here. I think of Eren Jaeger. Eren is here, on this Earth, for something beyond himself, something beyond any material item. He wouldn't fight for gold. He wouldn't prostitute his strength that way. Suddenly there's a tinny taste in my mouth, and my flesh starts to cringe away from my bones. The blight inside me has made me like this. And I don't know how to remedy the rot because losing everything isn't a disease. It's a state of being.

IV.

My pockets glutted with cash, I'm walking through town, my strides slow and even but deliberate. My legs have direction. I have a destination in mind. I'm on my way to repay my debt. It's the cloud that constantly hangs over my head, hovering above all that I do.

This part of the district is very still, the street desolate and baked by the day's heat. My footfalls, though hushed and mitigated, are the most distinct noises breaking the otherwise placid silence. I look out at the world through the cut-out holes of my mask. I haven't taken it off. Sometimes this is how I feel when I'm wearing my naked face; I feel as though I'm looking out through two gaping cutouts, passively watching the world, meaningless and disembodied like a figurine. Unnecessary to the fabric of things.

If I were to write it down, who would read my story?

Abruptly, I turn about-face and I see them—the two shadows that have been trailing me since the street fight. Now I see their faces. They're men with big bodies and plain, nondescript faces. I won't remember them tomorrow. I might passively retain an unfocused image of two large smudges. But that's all. I won't remember their eyes, their hair, or any of their details. Just their largeness and their plainness.

They're watching me, their eyes searching my clothing. It's a close kind of attention, but not a carnal kind of closeness. I don't feel their eyes on my bare skin or behind my mask. I feel their eyes inside my pockets. They want my money. Everybody wants money, even if it belongs to somebody else. Within the confines of the walls, away from titans, monetary greed dominates. If it's not the chains of mortality enslaving us, it's the shackles of the empire. Nobody is free. Nobody—except . . . perhaps a dog without fangs. Because a dog without fangs is—

One of the large, plain men comes forward. His hand flicks out by his thigh, lowered, tensed. I see his thick fingers flex and hear the metallic click before seeing the silver. He's snapped open a knife. My eyes go to it.

Switches aren't used to kill titans.

I reach behind my back, feeling the metal of my own blade, resting hot and ready against my belt. The muscles in my arm bunch up, the cracked skin over my knuckles pulling tight and sharp. Fresh blood runs over my hand.

Do you plan to kill someone?

I remember that stray mutt and its black gums, and I imagine its teeth falling out like shattered bits of bone until it's left with nothing but a tacky black palate and useless, empty roots. My jaw clenches, hard and ready, and I watch, clear-eyed with adrenaline, as the man raises his knife. It plunges toward me, silver and flashing. I fling out my wrist, clearing away the attack. The tip of my blade parts the flesh on the top of his hand.

With amazing clarity, I watch the crimson streak that I draw as I make it. For a second, I feel like an artist with a paintbrush instead of a soldier with a switchblade. For a second, I'm a creator, not a killer. Then I leap away, sprinting down the road, adrenaline hot in my blood. Homicidal shouts follow close at my heels, pushing me harder, faster, I've got to get to HQ before they murder me.

I cut to the right, bounding off one leg, swerving into an alley. There's a pile of crates stacked against a wall. I swing my arms back, squatting. I push off the ground, propelling myself to the top. When I land, the crates wobble beneath me. I lose my wind and my heartbeat, and my arms unfurl like wings, lifting my weight and steadying my equilibrium. Make me weightless, I think, Let me fly. The crates stop shaking. I take a deep breath and look up at the rooftop. I can make it. Leaping again, I propel myself onto the roof, landing light and catlike on the pads of my feet. I look on. A chain of rooftops unfolds before me like a runway and I take off, soaring. I see the tower of HQ cresting in the distance. It's not too much farther now. I'm in the home stretch—

Down below me, playing in the dirt street, I see the memory of three children. Two boys and a black-haired girl.

I like the blond boy. He has clear eyes and a clear face and a clear mind. He has dreams, even when he's awake, and I don't know anybody else who can dream that way, with their eyes open. He reminds me of a poem I read once: "Nothing Gold Can Stay." It's about how innocence and new beginnings must ultimately plateau, giving way to ennui and unfeelingness. That's what the title means by nothing gold can last. Nothing pure can remain that way. And this boy—he reminds me of the gold things in the poem. The innocence before the tragedy. He's nature's first green and leaf's early flower and all new budding things. He's good.

Although she may not be good or gold or pure, I like the black-haired girl too. She has a scarf around her throat like a fluttering blood-red ribbon. She reminds me of a butterfly with plucked wings, her flight stolen by savage, rapacious fingers. She's the antithesis of the blond boy. She's the tragedy after the innocence. If he is dawn, then she is day; if he is Eden, then she is grief. If he's newborn flesh, then she's a scar. But I like them both. I think they're both inevitable and essential to this world. We could be friends, perhaps, if I weren't so afraid to say something.

The last kid, the dark-haired boy, I feel differently about. Not only do I like him, but I also admire him. His eyes blaze with iridescent colors. I think it's because his heart is kaleidoscopic, changing hues all the time, like a glass prism divided by light, spraying the brilliant, imprisoned colors of his soul upon the world. But, most importantly, he's got fangs. And fangs on a human being are incredibly rare. He's a rare and iridescent person. And I believe in him. I believe in his dreams.

I'm hiding behind the corner, watching those three with timid interest, my shadow pinned to the brick-and-mortar wall. I want to go out to them. I want to speak to them. I'm too afraid. My shadow won't move.

Armin.

Mikasa.

Eren—

When the world fell apart, I was on the outside looking in, my shadow far removed from their shapes. I was a reader of their story, an outsider, studying their history, predicting what would happen next . . .

I was too preoccupied thinking about their story that I forgot about mine. Then the world fell apart, and the titans came, and they ran, and I ran the other way—

The world was crumbling around me, around them, around us, and I needed to get home. So I ran, my shadow darting around the corner, flying over the ground, silent and fast. And I'm still running. I can't stop—

—STOP following those three. They're going to get themselves killed, running around like that. And you'll end up following them straight to the grave! Where in the almighty universe are their parents?

Mom, Dad, Where in the almighty universe are you?

Where did you go?

If only I hadn't been following them. If only I had listened to you. If only I hadn't wanted to be in their story. If only— If only—

"If only" leads down a road of regret.

I. Can't. Stop.

Run run run run. . .

V.

I'm standing under the shower, but I'm still running. I'm always running, running, even if my legs are motionless. The water is warm—too warm—it's scalding hot—

I don't care. I don't feel it the way I should. I'm freezing cold. My skin turns an angry pink color. I wrap my body into my arms. Shhh . . . I hush myself, I hush my mind, I hush my flesh.

Shhh, you're okay, you're okay.

With passing time, the temperature of the water drops, and losing my sense of here-and-now, wandering in way-back-when, I don't realize how long I've been standing there, visiting a litany of broken memories, until the water sprays, ice-cold, against my neck. At last I return from the past and shut off the faucet. Shivering, I step out from the shower and into the washroom. I scrub off with a towel until most of the water has been sponged up from my skin. I've remained a bit steamy. The humidity trapped in the washroom continues to tenaciously cling to my body.

The aftermath of bar soap and a good rinsing leaves me feeling pure and new. I can start again. That's what I believe in the first few moments after the shower. Those feelings pass once Mikasa enters the washroom. With her quality of a tragic, flightless butterfly, she floats through the door. She's a reminder that this world is cruel. And I remember my parents. I remember Beth. I remember my debt—

I need you to believe in one thing.

Now, standing in front of the sink mirror, wrapped tightly in a towel, I run my fingers through my short, dark, wet hair, pushing it back from my forehead. I realize, a sinking feeling in my stomach, that I've forgotten a change of clothing. A fever burns under my skin—it's a restrained, insular irritation. I berate myself, How could I forget my clothes? Now I'll have to go out there in a towel and hope to the heavens that the halls are empty and everybody is still training. I glare at the face in the mirror glaring back at me.

I scrutinize myself in the glass. My almond-shaped hazel eyes are a bit red and faded. I look tired and depthless, as though there is nothing under the skin of my face; as though, if you were to peel back my flesh, you wouldn't see bone. You'd see my papier-mâché mask without its cut-out eyes. Just smooth, blank paper. A boneless, featureless face crafted of parchment and paste.

I feel the intangible touch of eyes, close on my skin. My eyes go to Mikasa in the mirror, standing behind me in the back of the washroom. She's looking at my hand. Following her attention, my reflection puts its eyes on the dark starburst scabs breaking from my knuckles.

I pretend not to see it. My reflection turns and strides toward the door. The image's black hair drips water down the nape of its neck, onto its shoulders. The image is me. I know that. But I don't feel like we're the same person. I feel distinct from it, alienated from my own image. I feel the separation as distinctly as I feel the separation between You and Me.

As I'm leaving, Mikasa doesn't say anything, and I don't expect her to. But I feel her gaze on my back—the ugly, rotted part of me—so I turn over my shoulder. She's turned away now, her attention at the buttons down her shirtfront. I wonder if I've imagined her looking. I wonder if my deep-seated self-consciousness heightens my levels of paranoia and provokes me to feel people looking when, really, nobody has expended a single thought on me.

I push out of the washroom. The cool, spacious air of the hallway pours over me, and my skin tightens into chilled gooseflesh. I feel that my bones may pop through my skin, the way sharp corners break through tight plastic wrapping. Enclosed inside a towel, I hurry to my room. Chilled to the bone, I'm hurrying so recklessly that my legs don't cease moving when I see a door come open and a body careen into the hallway. Someone is hurrying in the same way that I'm hurrying, cold and reckless. Our trajectories collide. We hit each other.

I gasp in shock when I feel warm, humid, bare skin against my warm, humid, bare skin. I look up into familiar iridescent eyes—for once, they're cooled and calm, merely at a smolder rather than at an uncontrolled inferno. His soaked hair is stuck to his forehead. A towel is spun around his waist. I avert my eyes. His eyes avert too. We apologize at the same time in the same mumbling tones and then we step around one another and continue hurrying in opposite directions. I'm embarrassed. I wonder if he's embarrassed. I promise myself that I will never forget my clothes again. Before I turn off into the girl's hall, I hear behind me, a distance away, "I will murder you, Connie. I swear I'll kick your—"

For a moment, I had felt real.

VI.

Dressed and dry, outside behind the cafeteria now, I set my supper tray on the ground. I've surrendered to the mutt again. It's slopping up gruel and bread and leaves nothing behind. It still has its teeth, but they wriggle and draw blood. An empty mouth is soon imminent.

Sitting on the back steps of the cafeteria, I look up at the sky. The patch of sky that I see isn't very pretty. Clouds obscure the stars and there isn't any moon right now; it's hung behind a shapeless black mass. Laid out in front of me, the dry autumn trees appear clawlike, reaching from out of the ground, with their sharp, scanty branches piercing the black velvet sky. I exhale and bend my head. I feel the back of my neck open up, vulnerable. Without any hair to hide it, my nape becomes a perfect target. I wonder how a titan feels when my blade shreds apart their central nervous system. I hope they feel pain. I hope the sensation of steel is agonizing.

As I sit there, with the moon behind the clouds, the trees tearing at the sky, my nape perfectly exposed, the dimensions of solitude seem vast around me, and I feel inviolably alone. It seems that nobody can penetrate the intermediate space between my heart and the skin wrapping my bones. I think of Hannah and Franz, and the way they gaze into each other's eyes. And as I think of those two, a nonspecific jealousy seizes me. They've found a way to break through the inviolable loneliness between You and Me. They are Us. And I want to know what it's to be Us. Beth and I were best friends; we understood one another at a depth that I haven't reached since then. Now I'm alone, barely here, with hot steel in my pocket.

"Which of you is the dog?"

The voice startles me. My heart jumps—then it pounds, fast and hard, like I'm running. But motionless where I sit, I haven't moved from the steps. I withhold any change from my face, pretending that I haven't been taken off guard. It isn't difficult because my face has lost much of its expression, anyway. I have flat, mute eyes now—and a flat, mute face.

Staring at the ground, I don't look up because I know who it is. I recognize the voice instantly. Without finding him with my eyes, I find his presence by listening for his movements. I hear the rubber treads of his shoes, nearly silent on the grass, as he comes toward me.

"I don't understand what you mean," I say. I stare at the ground, but I don't see anything in front of my eyes. My vision has gone blurry as I focus on listening, concentrating on Captain Levi's motions, the hiss of his clothing, the rubber of his shoes.

He doesn't explain anything, continuing, "It looks to me that you're the dog. That creature's got a whole plate of food, after all, and what've you got?" There's calm, dry, irony in his voice again, and I start to think about how this is my second time talking to him; that it's unusual to entertain, on more than one occasion, the company of somebody with Captain Levi's clout or the celebrity of Humanity's Strongest. Some people would find it a gift, a dream come true, to talk to Captain Levi in this casual setting. I find it terrifying.

"Taxpayer money goes to feed soldiers," he says, "not animals."

My heart doesn't slow. It keeps racing as he sits down beside me and now I'm nervous and self-conscious because I'm not very good with people. I'm clumsy in conversation; I let too many silences go unfilled. Even now, I let a moment of silence pass between us. He sits so close I can feel his body temperature.

"This is the second time I've seen you give your supper away to that mangy mutt," he says. And I'm thankful he's talking again. Captain Levi isn't known for his sociability—in fact, he's infamous for the opposite—so I'm grateful that he's talking again. Otherwise, he'd be saying nothing and I'd be keeping my mouth shut and one of us would have to leave.

"Its teeth are rotting," I tell him.

"That so?" he says. But he doesn't sound very interested, and I realize I've said something uninteresting. But, much worse, I've said something insignificant. Meaningless. I've wasted both my breath and his time. Apart from myself, who gives a damn about this dog's rotting mouth?

I wish he weren't sitting next to me. I feel as though I'm under a magnifying glass, the all-seeing eye of authority bearing down on me. I can't mess up. I can't stumble. I must be perfect. I'm afraid that he can see the blight inside me.

"They'll fall out soon," I go on stupidly. "And when that happens, what'll it do?"

"Liquefy its solids," he says, and I could laugh if I weren't so tightly wound right now. There are iron cables in my back, taut and rigid, anchoring me to the ground. Right now, I don't have the lightness of being to laugh. I'm heavy with memory and debt.

It takes all my courage to lift my eyes to his and hold them steady.

"What's a dog without its fangs?" I say, a bit too intently, a strange earnestness in my tone. Captain Levi keeps his eyes level with mine, and I don't look away. I won't until he answers me.

"A dog without fangs," he says, his voice low, calm, inflectionless, "is a dead one." He's still looking at me, his eyes steady and cold without being unkind.

Turning away, I nod. Yes, a dog without fangs is a dead one. Exactly. And a human without steel is—

"Cadet," Captain Levi says. "Your name, what is it?"

"Janice Robin."

"You're older than the other recruits."

"I—" I lean my elbows on my knees, not knowing how to respond. I'm twenty. I don't tell him that. "Wrinkles?" I finally say, and there's enough darkness in the way I say it that I communicate to him my resistance to discuss anything about myself, including my age, however trivial that may be.

The captain stares at my face, probably searching for wrinkles. If I have any, they're infinitesimal. "Demeanor."

"What you're saying is, I act like an old hag."

"That's right."

"If I'm an old hag, what does that make you? My great uncle?" I've called my superior officer old, I realize after I've already let the words off my tongue. I've said something unacceptable. I look out at the forest, concealing my apprehension under a blank-paper face.

"I would hope not," he says.

"Why, too ashamed of coming from the same bloodline as me?"

The captain looks at me, his eyes very still. But I'm turned in profile, looking away. In my peripheral, I see his hand rise, then it falls away from sight and I feel the static of his fingers, not quite contacting my hair, but near enough to trigger the sixth sense on the back of my neck, my skin seeming to pull away from his touch without a single muscle moving. He doesn't touch me, though, his hand suspended unmoving in my personal space.

"You trimmed it," he says.

Beth had long hair, and my mother had long hair. Long hair doesn't do anybody any favors.

My eyes go dim, and it is quiet until the trees beyond us let down a whispering sound of dry leaves. His hand withdraws, returning to the peripheral of my vision. I see his fingers go to his leg and rest there.

"I'm assuming you have a reason for coming here?" I say. I'm looking at the ground, but I'm watching the captain's hand. The skin on the back of my neck is still prickled with static.

"You're suspected of being involved in illegal activities."

"Which activities?" I say.

"Street fights and gambling."

I see his hand, immobile and strong, veins lazily dividing the skin. I do not speak.

"You're not going to deny it?"

I don't look at the captain, instead moving my eyes to watch the pale shreds of moonlight cutting through the trees. "I have a debt to pay. And I can't do that with our lousy salary. So I've found another source of income."

"You sound like a regular underground thug. They've always got debts to pay."

"I'm no thug."

"What are you, then?"

"I'm—" My eyes go to his. He's watching me, his face inscrutable, serious, calm, uncritical. I look away at the shredded ribbons of moonlight again. "An unreliable friend," I say. "That's what I am."

And I'll be making amends for as long as I'm still breathing—