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“I know.”

“That is sufficient.”

“For who?”

He stood.

Conversation over.

Except I understood something now.

Veyr hadn’t refused because the information was classified. He refused because he didn’t have an answer. And that realization made the stupid break room come back to me.

Burned coffee. The chair that rocked. A cup that had been mine because I always put it in the same place.

Things so ordinary I hadn’t understood they counted as a life until I no longer had them.

I could have answered my own question.

I liked coffee that was too sweet when I could get it. Hot showers. Music loud enough to cover machinery. Knowing which food in a shared storage unit belonged to me without checking the label. Having a routine I could complain about because I knew it would still be there tomorrow.

None of those things were important. That was probably why they mattered.

Veyr crossed the room and returned to the window.

Same position. Same angle. Same hand near his weapon.

But the room around him made the pattern look stranger now.

A domestic space trying very hard to be ordinary.

A male who had no idea what to do with ordinary except secure its exits.

And yet he had noticed I was hungry.

He had noticed which part of dinner I hated.

He had traded it without being asked.

Small things. Stupid things.

The kind that became dangerous because they were easy to want again.

Everything about Veyr still existed for whatever came next.

The next threat. The next order. The next place he might need to abandon.

He had called the mountain shelter a safe location, not a home. He had called this place temporary. His equipment remained packed. His weapon remained within reach.

Even sitting at the table had looked like something he was borrowing.

Maybe he wasn’t secretive because he didn’t want anyone knowing where he belonged.

Maybe he genuinely didn’t belong anywhere.

The thought sat heavier than it should have.

I looked down at the dead identifiers on the screen, then at the man standing guard over a perfectly ordinary street while somebody in the next unit dragged a chair across the floor.