"There's nothing left of me worth saving," he said.
He said it quietly. Not dramatically. In the particular flatness of someone stating a thing they had been living with for a long time.
Tav watched him.
"That's not true," he said.
"I was built for exactly this." Alistair's voice was even. "Every person I've been close to in the last eight years has been operationally selected or incidentally useful or—" He stopped. "I don't know how to be something else. I'm not sure there's anything underneath the thing I was built to be."
"There is," Tav said.
"You can't know that."
"I've been watching you for months," Tav said. "I know exactly what's underneath."
Alistair looked at him.
"The sketchbook," Tav said. "You draw people because you're trying to understand them, not because it's useful. That's not a product of your training. Your training would have you catalogue them, not — not try to capture their attention."
"The way you talked about Elias," Tav said. "The specifics. The crossword. The narrated surveillance.
The way your voice changed when you talked about someone who thought out loud."
"That was longing. Not for an operative. For a person who thought out loud and didn't hide it."
Alistair studied the window.
"The burned butter," Tav said.
He felt Alistair go still.
"You made the coffee good," Tav said. "Every morning. You made it better than you needed to. "That's not a trained behavior. That's a person."
"Tav," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"That's not—" He stopped. "That's not evidence of anything worth—"
"You're wrong," Tav said. He said it plainly. "I have made a catalogue. Would you like it?"
Alistair found his face with the expression of someone who was about to say no and knew the no was not honest.
"Yes," he said.
"The coffee. The sketchbook. The way you told me the truth in the kitchen early in the morning when the easier choice was to continue deflecting. The way you touched the inside of my wrist in that café and then waited to see what I'd do with it." "The way you stayed in this city when Ablation gave you opportunities to leave. The way you told me about Elias with the way someone who is angry on behalf of someone else more than on their own behalf." He studied him steadily. "The way you're holding my hand right now while also maintaining the pressure on the wound, because you made a decision about what mattered and you're doing both."
Alistair's grip on his hand tightened fractionally.
"That's a person," Tav said. "A particular, irreplaceable person. Who I have decided—" "Who I have decided is not available to be reduced to nothing."
The car moved.
Alistair was quiet.
Then he pressed his forehead against Tav's shoulder — the right shoulder, always the right shoulder — and exhaled.
"You're going to tell me this every time I do the self-erasure thing," he said.
