Several years earlier…

After a quick jog past the elephant topiary, a not so quick scramble over the wall, and several whispered apologies to Kate and Constance, the Society sat in Milligan's red pickup truck, driving back to home base. The truck jolted over a bump in the road, nearly causing Reynie to spill the handful of Releaf he held.

"It's not a lot," he said.

"No. It isn't," Sticky agreed glumly.

Constance humphed, indignant. "Well, I didn't see you boys out there risking your neck,"

"Aw, cmon Constance. You know we were all integral to this mission's success" Kate warned her, but kept her eyes on the road.

"If we can even call it a success," Constance murmured under her breath. Reynie, sitting in the passenger seat, looked back at her. She was leaning her head against the cool window, eyes shut, mouth formed in a frown. He resisted the urge to ask if she was okay. "How grown up she is," he thought, and it was true. Constance was now older than he had been on the Society's first mission, if only by a little bit. Part of him swelled with pride at the young woman she was becoming, yet another part was filled with pity. Reynie's childhood had been filled with perils, and though he never regretted joining the Society, he had hoped Constance could have a more promising future. Yet here they were, times bleaker than ever before. He couldn't imagine the overwhelming fear Constance must be feeling. And that made him ever the more proud.

Reynie was not the only experiencing a turmoil of emotions. Kate also found herself in a state of muddled feelings. She wasn't fond of it. Kate had nothing against introspection, but there was a time and place to sort out complicated emotions. Driving in the midst of the night when danger could appear at any minute, was not one of those times. Emotions, she'd learned, could distract you. In the heat of battle, you need a clear mind and a steady hand; there is not a split second to be spared on emotions when it is time to act. Still, she couldn't seem to clear her head.

Perhaps the most dominant of all her thoughts were the angry curses. She'd been hearing them a lot lately. Every time she looked at Reynie and saw stress lines forming on his brow, each morning Sticky entered the kitchen with bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, and whenever she saw Constance clutching her head in pain, but refusing to take any more Releaf. All of these times and more, were when she heard the voices. They stirred a righteous fury inside of her, fury towards Curtain and the Ten Men and every person responsible for their hiding. They didn't deserve this life. Granted, she'd be living a life similar to this even if Curtain hadn't taken over. She craved the adrenaline rush, the life of a spy. But the others did not. Reynie deserved to attend an impressive university with a large library and cafe in which he could stay for hours, studying and drinking tea. Sticky deserved to work in a laboratory, filled with all the materials he could possibly require to do whatever it was he did in the Blab back at Mr. Benedict's house all day. Constance deserved to go to school and make friends and live the life of a normal teenager, free from stress and worry. And even Kate deserved better than this; for though she would always choose a life of danger, she deserved moments where she was completely safe. Moments with her family.

She looked at all of them in the rear view mirror; at Reynie counting leaves, Sticky watching passing cars, and Constance, perhaps asleep. They deserved a better life, and if that was all too much to ask, they at least deserved those moments of safety. Would they ever feel such moments again? Kate did not know, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.

Sticky was pondering a similar dillema to Kate's. He had never grown fond of constantly being in danger, though as time passed, he found himself growing rather tired of it. It was a peculiar sensation, for while he still felt great fear, there were moments that he caught himself thinking "Really? More trouble? We just did this yesterday." It was almost laughable. Almost.

If there was anything good coming from this situation, it was perhaps the gratitude Sticky felt whenever there was a time of rest. Times like these, when they were all together, not even saying anything. They didn't have to. He liked these times the best, because if he imagined hard enough (though Sticky had never considered himself to be of great imagination) he could pretend that it was only the four of them in the world. There was nothing beyond this car, this roadway, and the people inside of it. Once the background left his line of sight, it would disappear from existence. There was nothing else but them.

He knew this to be implausible, for it would be foolish to believe the world circled around him, telling some grand narrative in which he was the main character. In fact, there was a whole world out there, billions of people living lives as complex as his own. "How big the world is" he thought, "and how terribly small and insignificant am I,"

Constance was not asleep. Her fits of insomnia had been aggravated as of late, but it was not such that kept her awake. She did not want to sleep, only to rest her eyes and experience the void that came with closing them. When her brain no longer took in information through sight, it was more able to see other things. Thoughts, in particular. As a general rule, she tried not to pry into her friends' minds. But she was very tired (as were they) and so the thoughts came to her as if she were hearing words spoken aloud. As she listened, she thought of many things to say. She wanted to tell Reynie that she appreciated his concern, but he needed to trust her. She considered saying to Kate that she would never live a "normal" teenage life, no matter the circumstances. And when she heard a particular thought from Sticky, the vulnerable part of her, the part she tried so hard to hide, whispered, "You're not insignificant to me."

She could have said all these things. But she did not. After all, she was supposed to be asleep, and it was rude of her to be listening to her friends' thoughts. She had as many complicated emotions as her older friends, though being far younger, she had more trouble making sense of them. The lines were always blurred, and never were her feelings solid constructs. Rather, they were a haze, mixed in with one another, impossible to be separated entirely. Everything she did, everything she said, it was all based on whatever she felt most dominantly, and even that changed by the minute. Sometimes she was frustrated at her own capriciousness, and she had to remind herself that everyone else was just as complicated as her.

Of the billions of thoughts that would cross the Society members' minds during their lives, very few would go spoken. There would be a great many moments in their lives when words were not required of them, and this was one of such. Driving down that road in Milligan's pickup truck, no one said anything. But they all felt the connection. "Look at us" they thought, "All of us, complicated and imperfect. Sometimes confused, and sometimes afraid. How perfectly we fit together." And there was something so beautifully reassuring in that. Knowing that they were not alone.