"Before. Before the person you lost. Before Ablation." He held Tav's gaze. "What did you want?" Tav watched the fire.
"To understand," he said. "I wanted to understand how things worked. Systems. Structures. The logic underneath the surface." "I read everything. I was — I wanted to know how the world was organized and why and whether any of the organization was correct."
"That's what you still do," Alistair said.
"Yes."
"You never stopped."
"No." He was quiet. "I just stopped believing it was for anything beyond the immediate application."
He studied the fire. "Until recently."
Alistair found his face.
"Until recently," he agreed.
They were quiet for a long time.
The fire did its work. The sea outside continued its patient conversation with the coastline. In the morning Lucien would arrive, and the inquiry would assemble itself, and Phase Two would begin to make its nature known. But that was the morning.
Tonight: the fire. The sofa. two people who had been through something significant and were, for the first time, not required to be anything in particular about it.
"I love you," Tav said.
Not as announcement. As fact. The simple indicative, said to the fire.
"I know," Alistair said.
Tav studied him.
"I love you too," Alistair said. The warm unguarded expression. "I've been waiting for you to say it again so I could say it back."
"You could have said it first."
"Yes. But I wanted to hear yours first." He settled slightly closer on the sofa. "It sounds different from yours."
"Different how?"
"Like you've weighed it and confirmed it and are reporting the result." "I find that very—" He stopped.
"Very what?"
"Specifically reassuring," Alistair said. "The fact that you would only say it if it were confirmed true."
They studied the fire.
"Sleep," Tav said.
"In a minute," Alistair said.
They were there for considerably longer than a minute.
• • •
• • •
Four weeks after the archive released, Voss gave his first formal statement. Naomi sent them the text.
