Author's note: I received a nice review for this story the other day. And I suddenly remembered I had written another chapter but never posted it. I read through what I wrote. Briefly edited it. And here it is. I'm not going to be continuing this fic. This chapter was just something sitting in my computer.

Thanks for the review. You're the reason I dug this out.

XIII.

The running path is hot and bald under my naked hands and naked knees. Faintness encroaches my vision. Heat wavers in the distance, thick as water. I'm drowning in it.

An open hand reaches into my view. I look at it, uncomprehending. Then I follow the wrist, to the elbow, to the head. Mikasa's hair falls, black and limp, around her face. Her muscled chest streams sweat. Bowed over, she waits with a patient hand held out to me. Despite her patience, I feel a temporariness. The recant of her hand impending. I watch it, I wait for it, I know it will come. The hand remains in front of me, open.

Taking hold, I let her pull me to my feet. She rests her hand by my elbow and prods me on. I put my right leg out and then the left, and then the right again, dragging forward. Mikasa jogs next to me, touching my elbow with just enough insistence that I overcome the reluctance in my knees and push on.

"Don't stop," she says.

"I'm going to die."

"Not here or now."

A few meters away, Eren is lying, outspread on his back, his chest pumping aggressively for wind.

I say, "Why are you doing this?"

"I don't know."

My legs continue to sprawl out in front of me. Her hand retracts from my elbow.

"Keep going," she says, her voice diminishing behind me. I don't turn around. I know she's returned to Eren's side.

I do as she says, and keep going.

XIV.

When I look in the mirror, my cheeks have drawn into the hollows of my face and gaunt shadows show beneath my collarbones. My body has started feeding on itself, unable to sustain the intense physical labor on my insufficient diet. Wasn't there a painting I saw once? of a snake eating itself, rung around in a perfect O. I imagine cells inside my body like little snakes, their mouths slipping around their own tails in self-cannibalistic rings.

With my eyes fixed to the glass, I turn my body around, inverting my head. I flex my spine, lifting onto my toes, and bring the scar into the mirror's view. I reach over my shoulder, brandishing my nails, and use their blunt edges to scrape, lengthwise, up the rubbery lump. The stiff, bulged tissue turns a dark, irritated purple. Keeping my head inverted, straining my natural alignment, I again reach my hand around to drag my fingernails over the long, purple slant. My nails pull aggravated heat to the surface of my skin. My scar doesn't feel it: dark, deep purple and numb. Beneath that though, if I dig deep enough, I feel a miniscule pinch where the nerves cower behind scar-tissue armor.

I let my heels sink against the tile and relax the tension of my spine, realigning my head to my shoulders. I put on my clothes, rub water from my hair, and walk out the washroom.

On my way to the barracks, I see two shadows flee into the dark, gripping each other's arms, flitting through the forest, toward the little pond at the perimeter of HQ. Pausing, I follow them with my eyes.

"You don't have to look so apprehensive." I turn. Bertholdt is slanted against the corner of the men's barracks. He's a long-legged boy with a subdued presence. "It's only Franz and Hannah."

"They should be careful," I say, turning again. I stare into the shadows where they've disappeared. "Going off alone like that."

"I think they'll be fine."

"What if something happens, though? Either to us here or to them out there? What if something unexpected happens and we're all taken by surprise and somebody gets hurt because not all of us are where we're supposed to be? What if that happens?"

I hear the tall sound of Berholdt detaching himself from the barrack wall. His gargantuan palm swallows my shoulder. "I think it'll be okay. If it's any consolation, I'll stand watch. Just in case."

I nod. "I'll trust you, then."

"Sure . . ."

I start to move out from under his hand.

"Jan."

I swivel around, surprised. Nobody calls me that. Bertholdt is looking into the trees. "I think we may be alike."

"Why's that?"

"You want it too, don't you? What they have."

I give nothing away in expression or tone. "I'm sorry, but that's not true about me."

Bertholdt's face begins to change color. He leans his back against the barrack wall again, his head bent low. He seems big and small, simultaneously. "Oh. I—don't know why I assumed that. I just—"

"I don't want it because I know how it will end."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you know."

His head goes up. A pale colorlessness has driven out the embarrassed blush in his cheeks. I realize then that he's only a teenaged boy. "Goodnight, Bertholdt."

"Yes. Goodnight."

XV.

"Please, don't make me run anymore."

I've placed myself prostrate on the floor before Keith Shadis. I'm in front of his boots, under the rigid fleshless glare of his eye-sockets. I put my forehead on my hands, shrinking myself into a small prayer of surrender.

"Please."

The creases around Shadis's eyes furl wider, sink deeper, so that his sockets stare at me under a cold parody of paternal sympathy. "There's no need to beg, cadet. Nobody can force you to carry out your punishment. The choice is yours. Would you like me to inform Commander Erwin of your decision?"

I shut my eyes.

Believe that I believe in you . . .

I bear my teeth down against the memory and hush the voice inside my head.

When I open my eyes again, I stare at my hands, flat on the floor. The bandages on my right knuckles are blotched brown. I have to find something else to believe in, and oddly I think of Hannah and Franz. I breathe out and resign myself. "No, you have nothing to report to the commander. I'll carry out my sentence without further complaint."

"I expect to see you outside in no more than five minutes—and look forward to a supplementary thirty laps, Robin."

"Yes, sir."

I push off my hands and knees, heaving to my feet. In the darkness, I see the liquid of staring eyeballs interrogating me. Those of the other female cadets. I take off my night clothes and put on light training gear.

A few hours in, and my running is drastically different from that first day. The exhaustion has set in all the way to my bone marrow. My head flops on my shoulders and my shoulders have folded into my ribcage and my ribcage has folded into my stomach, and so I look like a scarecrow with straw limbs and a straw spine, sprawling forward step-by-step. I blink hard against a salty sting and try to lift my shoulders out of my ribs, without hindering the sprawl in my legs. I can't stop, I won't stop. I come around to the end of the loop and start to move into the beginning again, but I'm summoned by Keith Shadis.

"Stop here, cadet."

I jog off the trail and into the grass, approaching him. I reach his side, stop, and put my hands on my knees.

"Straighten up, girl. Hands on your head." I put my hands on my head, opening my ribcage, feeling my lungs expand to full capacity. I hear my roaring blood deep within my ears and I feel my heart seizing the artery in my neck.

"There they are. Bastards took their damn time. Don't they know I've got things to do?"

I follow Shadis's line of sight and see the imposing figure of Commander Erwin foisting on the backdrop of HQ, tall, broad, all hard lines and blond military haircut. If it weren't for the captain's strange fluid glide, he wouldn't possess a single shred of prominence next to the commander, diminished in presence by the long impressive shadow pulled behind the commander's heels. It's almost as if the captain himself is a shadow, brought up from the ground, depthless and impalpable. They're in uniform—and accompanying them is a shallow, unexceptional Military Police soldier. The one who had removed my mask. As they approach, I see a black bruise on the MP's throat where my fist had been.

They come to halt. I wrought myself into a salute.

The MP takes stock of me. His eyebrows are crinkled a bit and his unthoughtful eyes take in the shifted landscape of my body, perceiving the new tension in my dehydrated flesh, the gaunt strain of my collarbones and cheekbones. My skin falls from the wire hanger of my clavicle. Under his scrutiny, I don't relax my salute, thrusting my chin high and lofty.

"Damn. Looks like she's been through hell."

Commander Erwin speaks. "Do you believe this punishment befits the extent of the crime?"

"I dunno, sure. She's not the first soldier to dabble in street fighting. I'd heard you Scouts were a bunch of hard asses. But— It's only been a couple days, and look at her. Is this even the same girl?" He reaches out a hand and I feel my eyes go wide, remembering the bold, knuckle hair sprouting from his fingers like fur. I turn my head to the side. He takes my chin. My mouth moves.

"Are you trying to say something?"

I cut him with a side eye. "No." He pushes hair from my forehead, thrusting my bare face in front of his stare.

"Hey . . ." It's Captain Levi speaking. "Where do you think you're looking?"

"I can't be sure it's her. She seems half the size."

"Do you require documentation?"

"That's not necessary, Commander." The MP leans down and tugs my chin. On the surface of his eye, I see my face swimming, caught in its dull, unthoughtful glass, shown on display there.

I tighten my fist. I don't like to be looked at. But just as my muscles seize up and begin to communicate violent motion through my arm, my bicep becomes restrained. I know it's the captain who has intercepted me, once again. I jerk my head around, glaring. He's not looking at me. I turn again to see the MP's boots skidding through crunched grit, as though the ground has been pulled out from under him, his arms wheeling in big, roundhouse swings to fight the impending backward fall. The captain's palm remains outstretched, poised flat with how he has shoved the MP in the chest. I watch his hand relax down at his side. Captain Levi's other hand remains a firm restraint on my bicep. We watch the MP tip further, reluctantly, losing the fight against gravity, and finally capsize on his back.

"What the hell are you doing?" the MP says, hot with fury, his legs akimbo in the air. He glares at Captain Levi through the gap of his upturned legs; it's more comical than threatening.

"You had something stuck in your teeth," Captain Levi says, his voice low and phlegmatic, "and I began to feel sorry that this cadet had to see it so closely."

The MP lunges to his feet. He puts up his fists. I stare at the MP, willing him to bow out because, surely, nobody is impulsive enough to challenge Humanity's Strongest. Captain Levi doesn't move, watching, very calm.

"It's usually the responsibility of the Military Police to handle law infringement," says Commander Erwin. "But you said so yourself: Janice Robin has been disciplined more than sufficiently. I believe there's no need for further involvement from the Military Police." The commander rests his hand on my shoulder, relaxing my posture. I lock my hands primly behind my back.

The MP glares at Captain Levi. Captain Levi watches steadily, keeping his chin low, cutting his eyes up through his hair. "The Military Police would've shown some humanity. She's young. Hardly out of adolescence."

"She's older than she looks," Captain Levi says, "and you lot within the interior are much more soft-hearted."

The MP's lip lifts in a snarl. "Listen to me." He seizes me by the shoulders. "I'm about to strike an offer you won't want to refuse. I've seen you fight. You've got a talent. Come with me, and I'll personally take you under my wing. In the Military Police, you won't be treated like a dog."

All four men turn to me. I have no words, no verbal repertoire. I can't project a single sound. The captain steps away, apportioning space between us. The commander waits, betraying nothing in expression or posture. Shadis watches me without any accompanying thought. I put my eyes on the sky.

"Why would you do that for me?" I say.

"The Survey Corps' discipline methods are too extreme. I can help you."

My eyes, a bit bigger than usual, fasten unseeingly to the MP officer. When I speak again, I try to emulate the captain's steady, calm tone. "It's funny, how generous you seem suddenly. But you're rather greedy with your eyes."

"What are you talking about?"

"The men here in the Survey Corps aren't like you. It seems all that any of them can talk about is titans. They're very strange men with even stranger pastimes. But normal people with normal pastimes wouldn't race into hell, would they?" He stares at me. "So let me ask you this: Are you sure you want a girl as strange as me under your charge?"

The MP leaves—and I'm left to the devices of the Survey Corps.

XVI.

I've been told I've done well and deserve a good meal. So once I'm clean and in uniform, I go to the cafeteria, hungry to the point of being sick with it. Little knives of emptiness stab at my ribs, as though to gut me open and grasp the nearest thing in proximity to fill me with. I pull open the cafeteria door—and the knives of emptiness rip at me. I gasp, smelling hot fresh food. There's the captain, to my right, seated at the head of a long table, with a spread of meat and bread and vegetables, and meat. I sit down at the other end, where there's an empty plate and clean silverware, facing him.

Captain Levi watches me, skewed in his chair, as though drawing his full mass onto the seat would put him out too much. His elbow is hitched up on the backrest, his legs swung off to the side. "Eat what you want."

I pave my plate with beef—and begin eating rapidly.

"So . . . you eat like a dog too, huh?"

I drag a napkin over my mouth, swallowing. "Not usually." I crumple the napkin in my hand and begin eating again, this time tempering the enthusiasm of my jaws. I drink from my water cup, then cut into the meat. Red juice bleeds up around the knife. I roll out my tongue and let a diced bit of beef fan across my taste buds. I chew, contemplate, and taste it luxuriously.

There's the sound of a clashing wood frame. I turn and see the kitchen doors part for Petra Ral. I drop my eyes to my plate and continue eating. In her hand, she carries a teapot. She goes to the captain and pours steaming tea into the cup arranged in front of him. Levi watches her hands. When her hands pull away with the pot, he watches the steaming cup.

"Thank you," he says.

"You're welcome, Captain. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, that's all."

I don't look at Petra, eating. I hear the doors open and close and chance a gander at the Captain.

"I like her," I tell him. "She's nice, but firm."

He puts his knuckles on his cheek, says nothing.

I continue, "Cute too."

He drinks from his cup, still watching me. He puts the cup down. "Don't go getting any ideas. She's too good for you."

I pause, considering where I want to guide the conversation: Am I brave enough to plant a seed in the captain's mind? I decide that I'm not. "That's too bad." I eat some more.

"Why'd you join the Survey Corps?"

"To kill titans, why else?"

"You tell me."

I push my plate away and put my chin in my hands. "I'm angry. Revenge story. The cliché." I add, a moment later, "In short, I'm trying to fill the unfillable sieve."

He looks away from me. "You're quite the egomaniac, raving on about yourself like that."

"Tell me your story, and I'll tell you mine."

"Tch. I'll pass." He stands, pushing back his chair. "Finish eating and rest. Tomorrow you resume your regular schedule."

"Yes, sir."

When I go to sleep, it's still light outside and my stomach is full, and I dream that I fall into a clear blue sky and it wrinkles around me like soft fabric, then gently bounces me back, and when I come up again, the dog is there waiting for me, its tail wagging, its mouth full of strong white teeth.

XVII.

I've cut my hair, and now I'm a new person. A lighter person. I stand at the top of the wall, overlooking a quieting district. The falling sun sets the town to a red glare. I sit down, one knee drawn to my chest, the other hanging freely over the side, and I watch the time drop steadily toward the horizon. A breeze winnows through my short hair. I feel it cool on my scalp.

Past the wall, the sun is setting someplace—and I don't know where that place is. I don't know where the sun goes. If I took off on horseback, past the wall, would I find it? If this is hell, then paradise must be at that place where the sun sets. A place, at the other end of the world, where nothing hurts.

XVIII.

Somehow, Ymir got a hold of some booze and has kindly offered to share. I suspect she stole it from our commanding officers. We bunker down in the boys' barracks. It smells like stale clothes and briny sweat, and the beds are rumpled, as though the boys had collectively rolled out of bed, seconds before us girls invaded. We pass two dice around; if you throw an identical pair, you must chug your drink. Mikasa, an apparent lightweight, has passed out on Eren's leg. Hannah and Thomas are necking on one of the bunks; they do that sober, but not quite as exhibitionistic as they are now. Some of the guys groan and shout at them to get out. Connie hurls a pillow at them. It hits Thomas's head with a cushioned inefficiency and falls to the floor.

As the dice circulate, I (a bit intoxicated myself) entertain Christa with a coin trick, making a silver dollar appear and disappear in front of her nose. We're sitting cross-legged, parallel to one another. My face is melted with alcohol, and it's much easier to smile with a melted face. I flutter the coin between my fingers, toss it into the air, catch it in my right hand and open my left. The coin is tucked there inside my palm. I open my right one too, showing her that it's empty.

Christa gasps hugely, her mouth expanding into a gaping Oh. "How'd you do that, was it magic?"

"Don't be stupid, Christa," says Ymir. "It's an illusion." She's slanted against a bedpost of one of the bunks, her arms crossed. Her short, dark hair is unpinned.

"An illusion?" Christa stares at my hands in amazement.

"Hey, Jan . . ." Ymir says slowly. I look up at her, chilled by the way she's used an intimate nickname. She's smiling at me without any hint of warmth, her eyes holding only spite. "Why don't you teach me that trick of yours?"

I blink slowly at her and say nothing. The two drinking dice fall in front of me. I pick them up and throw two fives. I upend my bottle. I hand the dice to Christa. She throws a three and a five and passes the dice to Ymir. While Ymir is preoccupied, I get up and go out the door, unnoticed, rolling the silver dollar between my fingers.

My feet take me away from the barracks and I let them go without thought to pilot them. The night is silver with moonlight and the trees groan without leaves. My feet go on, tracking into nowhere while I think about everything, all at once. Filled with everything as I am, I want to speak to someone. I want to ask questions. I want to hear someone else's thoughts. I don't want to be alone with myself anymore. It turns out I'm not very good company. My feet go on, and my thoughts turn relentlessly. Before I know it, I've gone into the main building, down the hall, and followed the warm, orange light of a crackling fireplace.

It leads me to the lounge where the hearth is going steadily. The fireplace reduces the distance between the room's walls so I feel protected and close. The light is thrown directly onto a pockmarked armchair set at the room's epicenter. The chair is not vacant. I see an arm first, propped on the furling armrest, then a fist braced against cheekbone. From an oncoming slant, I see flicks of black hair and the edge of a brooding jawline in hindsight of the fire's glow. I go in, letting my footfalls announce me. The captain sits motionless until my feet bring me into his peripheral. His eyes move from the fire. He lifts his head from his fist, turning his head now, to see me comprehensively. I am not the person he expected. I square my shoulders and salute him, bending my head a little in further respect.

"Captain Levi."

"Janice Robin," he says a bit languidly. There's a small coffee stand next to the armchair, hosting a decanter and a crystal glass of whiskey. I ease my salute. His eyes feel around my expression, and then a stitch of humor gathers between his brows without touching his mouth. "You're in a good mood, I see."

"I am," I say.

"Are you aware it's past curfew?"

"I am," I say again.

"Were you the little shit who stole our booze?"

"No. But I did ingest it."

"You like to test me, don't you?"

"No. I'm a timid person, I've told you that." The drink has loosened my tongue and so I continue. "And only an idiot would do something that stupid. You scare me, you know."

He reaches across his shoulder and takes up the crystal whiskey glass in his hand, withdrawing. He puts the rim to his lips and stares into the fire. His eyes are dark. He tosses back two-fingers and holds it in his mouth. He sets the glass aside. It clinks against the table. His throat moves in a long swallow.

"It's not that I'm afraid, exactly." I fold my legs and sit within the tightest, strongest light of the fire. I open my hand and catch the heat on my palm. "I think very highly of you—and I don't want that to change."

"You hide behind your illusions."

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Children do. You may have a young face, but you don't seem like a child to me."

"No?" I turn over my shoulder, seeing the captain bathed in light. "Have you ever been a child?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"You know what I mean."

The captain's dark eyes bear down on me, but I feel too good to be self-conscious. His hand slowly glides out to the stand. "No, I don't suppose I know what it's like to be a child."

"I'm sorry. It must've been hard, to never have been young."

Taking the glass, he contemplates the gold whiskey, staring into it with a kind of unwilling nostalgia. "I think I was a child for a moment. When my mother was around."

"Did she hold you?"

His expression is dimensionless. He doesn't look at me. "Yes." The light shifts on his throat as he throws back the drink. He takes the decanter bottle. I listen to the sound of liquid and glass and underneath that, the comfortable sound of fire consuming wood. "It's an illusion I remember well," he says, refilling his drink. "It seems more concrete than . . . " His eyes are orange with firelight. I look at him hard, as though trying to see past the rippled surface of water to the very bottom of a deep, dark well.

"I'll tell you why I joined the Survey Corps," I say.

"Do you need this?" He generously proffers his full whiskey glass. Standing, I take it and luxuriate the pleasant flame in my chest. I drag my hand across my lips.

"And I'm going to tell you this, only because I'm drunk. If I were sober, none of this would be happening." I return the glass and grab the sides of the armchair, steadying the alcoholic vertigo swimming through me. He finishes what's left of the whiskey. The bottom of the glass rings melodically against the coffee stand.

"Will you regret it in the morning?" he says.

"Of course." I look down at him sunk in the chair. He's loosened and warm, his face tilted up at me. I stare a moment. He appears softened. "Do you mind following me outside?"

In the forest, tree branches and bushes and patches of grass have been bent beneath Franz and Hannah's amorous escapade from the other night. I can track their passage where their scurrying departure lingers in intermittent signs. My eyes follow the signs, and I imagine their shapes stumbling into each other, their legs and arms colliding in a passionate urgency, Franz tugging playfully on Hannah's hand, and their quiet laughter spiriting through the trees, as they sprawl quickly away from HQ to be alone together. Now I'm leading the captain down the same trail, bending branches away and picking our way across the pine-needle slide of the forest floor. It might be the alcohol, but I feel like a teenager again. I look back at the captain. He's pushing past a branch, ducking his head. Booze has impaired the ease of his stride, and his cheekbones appear hot to the touch.

The forest gives out onto a pond where the moon bleeds its white, heatless light into the water. As I walk closer to the shoreline, my footfalls change from a grassy mutter to a sandy whisper. The sky is open and clear. At the edge of the water, I look out at the liquid moonlight. The captain's whispering footfalls close distance until he comes up beside me. We both fluctuate inside our bodies, trying to keep balance. I hold onto his shoulder. He clasps my wrist back, hard, in his fist. My fingers curl at the pressure, and I feel my pulse squeezing through constricted veins.

"Why have you brought me here?" he says. His grip is firm and imperative on my wrist. I hold onto his shoulder, despite the unreliability of that pillar, trusting the iron of his backbone, even though he too has been melted.

"You were right," I tell him. "I was coming unhinged."

"About your hand . . ."

"Yes?"

"You're unwell."

"I think all of us are unwell. If we weren't unwell, why would we choose to fight titans?"

"What are you exactly, Janice?"

"I don't know, exactly." I begin to laugh. "I'm sorry, Captain. I'm very drunk. I'm not making any sense."

"You do that sober."

"Yes, I know. But I can tell you that when the decisive moment arrives, I'll take the role of a soldier. And I'm quite good at it." I reach down and pick up a stone. "It's these walls that make me insane. I can't stand them. When we're here for too long . . ." I throw the stone across the water. We both watch it skip across the surface until it slips out of sight.

"Why did you join the Survey Corps?" he says. "Answer that, and I'll decide if I can rely on you."

"It's as you said: I'm an egomaniac. I can't endure knowing that one day I'll disappear and time will move on. I can't imagine becoming nothing. I can't imagine missing out on what will happen tomorrow. Everything that I've experienced will just—blink out."

It's the longest speech I've given in years—and I'm not through. A skein of words spins out of my mouth as though Captain Levi has gotten hold of the thread of my thoughts and is pulling it from my throat.

"And it scares me that I'll always be inside myself, that you'll always be you and I'll always be me, and we'll never be able to fully understand one another." I smile to offset the panic quickening my heart rate. "I mean, I'm bound to this past, to this mind, to this body, and I can't leave it and nobody can see inside my head, and so I can't know what you're thinking and you can't know what I'm thinking, and everyone is inside their own hermetic seal that can't be violated. And it's all very lonely. Why are we like this? Why is being human so lonely?" By the time I finish, my smile feels wan and unnatural.

The captain is looking at the water. I know that I've said nonsense, and he's taking the time to diagnose my unwellness.

"I'll be honest," he says carefully. "You're not wrong. But the way I see it, you've fanned the flame to your own fear." He looks at me. "The only way I can know what you're thinking is if you tell me what you're thinking. It doesn't have to be as lonely as you say."

"But I can't—" I gesture with my hands, spinning them away from my mouth, as though miming vomit. "I don't know how to do that."

He touches my wrist and I understand the meaning behind the gesture: There are other ways to communicate. I move my hand away. He reaches down for a stone and flicks it into the air. He catches it in his fist.

"Seems to me you've isolated yourself for so long that you've distorted your solitude into a much bigger problem. Does that sound accurate?"

"Yes, that sounds accurate."

"And do you know the reason for it?"

"No, I don't."

"I'll tell you the reason." He snaps the stone across the water. It goes much farther than mine. Almost embarrassingly so. His mouth has softened a little, and he puts his hand in his pocket. "It's because you're a goddamn romantic. And in this world, that happens to be the most dangerous philosophy a person can subscribe to."

I say, "How reckless of me."

XIX.

Back in the lounge, the captain has occupied the armchair, with loose arms and loose legs, and I sit on the floor, beside the chair. I lean my chin on my knee. I feel warm with booze—and invincibly content.

"One way or another, I'm going to die," I say. "And I could either die inside these walls. Or I could die outside, fighting for something with meaning. The choice to join the Survey Corps seemed a clear path for me."

"Yeah," Captain Levi says. "It seems a clear path to an abridged life."

"Another perk."

"Tch." He leans his face on his knuckles, looking at the fire. "Tell me, Janice, were you ever a child?"

"Yes, before the fall."

"I see."

I look up into his face. The fire pulls shadows beneath his eyes.

"Is that not the right answer?" I say.

His eyes slide down to me. He doesn't reply.

"What did you want me to say?"

"Who knows," he says.

"Captain Levi . . ."

"I thought we might be the same."

I relax my temple against the chair. "I'm sorry we're not the same." I reach up, opening my hand to him. "But even though we're different, you don't have to feel alone." He puts his fingers against mine. And I suppose this is a kind of communication, too, my fingers communicating to his a sense of closeness, despite that we're two separate people with two separate lives, two separate pasts and two separate futures.