“Almost,” I say.
He drops into the shelter, sits cross-legged. “Okay, next.”
I crouch in front of him, then toss a packet of waterproof matches into his lap. “Fire.”
He tears the packet open, finds the striker, then starts arranging dry twigs and pine needles in a pyramid. I watch him fumble, drop a match, curse quietly, then try again. It’s interesting, the way he refuses to give up.
After a minute, he gets a spark to catch. The smoke is thick, acrid, but it curls up through the lean-to and doesn’t choke us out. He sits back, triumphant.
I clap, slow.
He flips me off, but he’s smiling.
For a while, we just sit. The heat from the fire creeps into the little shelter, chasing the cold from our fingers and faces. Outside, the snow falls heavier, muffling the world even more.
Landon stretches out his legs, leans back against the trunk. “Is this what you did as a kid? Survivalist camp?”
I shake my head. “The Foundry was less about surviving the elements, more about surviving each other. But Brooks used to sneak me out here—he said the cold was the only thing that ever made sense.”
He hums, thoughtful. “Makes sense to me.”
We lapse into silence, watching the fire. My thoughts drift to the Director, to the kill order, to the inevitability of the world finding us, even here. But for now, it’s just me and him and the fire, the way things are supposed to be.
After a while, he says, “You ever think about what you’d be if you weren’t… this?”
I pick up a stick, draw a line in the snow. “Never had time for it.”
He studies my face. “You could have been anything.”
I shake my head. “Not true. Some people only fit one shape.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I think you could have been a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
He shrugs. “A teacher. You’re good at it, even if you pretend not to care.”
I stare at him, caught off guard.
He grins, then pokes at the fire with a stick. “You don’t have to answer.”
But I want to.
“I think,” I say, deep in thought, “that if I could pick, I’d want to be good at something that wasn’t about breaking things.”
He nods, accepting it. “You are.”
He doesn’t elaborate, just looks at me like he sees the whole story written on my face.
The wind kicks up, rattles the shelter. We huddle closer to the fire, shoulders touching.
I reach out, touch his hand. He grabs it.
We sit like that, two men in the middle of nowhere, no mission, no orders, no future except the next hour.
I listen to the sound of our breath, the fire, the world spinning away outside.
Maybe this could be enough.
