Bucky doesn't brake.

The U-Haul's grille eats the revolving doors, shattering glass into a glittering storm that skitters across the marble like thrown ice.

Yelena slides off the tailgate first, guns up, a blur of braid and muzzle-flash; Ava ghosts sideways into cover; John punches the latch and boots the door off its hinges. Alexei barrels through like a red avalanche, laughing even as bullets spark off his outdated armor.

Cici hits the floor last.

A guard lunges; she knocks the rifle aside, turns his arm, drives an elbow into his throat, down. Another swings a baton, Cici ducks, comes up inside his reach, fangs click down on instinct, and she has to stop herself from finishing him. The old life claws at her, bite, tear, end, but she shoves it down, rips the baton out of his grip and hurls it into a third guard's shin.

Cici pivots left.

John's shield takes a burst of fire meant for her. Bullets chew the rim, whining past her ear.

Then, the ceiling speakers crackle.

Val's voice pours through the air, bright and sugar-poisoned.

"Jesus, you guys, I just put in that drywall. I left the door open, come on up."

The gunfire stutters. The last guard throws down his weapon and sprints for an exit. The team breathes, quick and hot.

They cram in.

It's too small for this many sins.

Alexei stands sideways, sucking in his gut; Yelena elbows him in the ribs until he stops humming "Kalinka." John plants himself between Cici and the doors without thinking; Ava takes the corner, wary as a cat. Bucky hits the penthouse button. The doors slide shut on a field of broken glass.

The car hums upward.

Cici stares at her reflection in the mirrored wall. A dozen Ceci look back. Some with blood at their teeth. Some with water in their hair. One with golden light on her skin that isn't hers. She presses her tongue to a fang until it hurts; the pain keeps her here.

The bell dings.

The doors open onto the room where gods used to argue.

The penthouse is a cathedral of glass and air, floor-to-ceiling windows pouring Manhattan into the room, the river a silver ribbon beyond. The exact spot where they pinned Loki a lifetime ago yawns like a stage. Now there's a low marble bar cut from a single slab of black stone. Behind it, pouring something clear over a fistful of ice, stands Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

She smiles without warmth, "Isn't it crazy to think about all the monumental battles that happened right here where you're standing?"

Yelena doesn't even blink, "I don't really care."

Val sips, "I mean, the place wasn't cheap, but... it has good optics."

Bucky steps forward, jaw a hinge about to break, "It's over, Valentina. This ends today."

Val gasps theatrically, "Wow, Congressman Barnes! I never thought you'd have a promising political career, but less than half a term? Yikes."

"We're taking you in," John says, shield up.

"I don't think so. JV team, Captain America. Oh, good to see you, Ava. Yelena, you look awful. Are you sure you're really ready for that public-facing role you asked me about?"

"Eat shit, Valentina," Yelena replies sweetly.

Val's gaze slides. Lands on Cici, "And look, you adopted a puppy. You're all so adorable."

Cici's voice is flint, "Where's Bob?"

Val tips her head, "Just think, I send you down there to kill each other, and instead you do me a solid and form a team." She glances past them, "Who's the old Santa?"

Alexei puffs his chest, "I am Alexei Shostakov. The Red Guardian."

Val blinks, "What?"

Bucky's eyes cut, cold, "Where's Mel?"

Val's lashes flutter like a blade, "Mel? Oh, Mel, yes. Mel is having a bit of a loyalty issue. But I'm very grateful she stayed long enough to lure you all in."

Bucky's hand lifts, slow as a tide, reaching for her lapel—

It stops midair. Locks. His tendons stand out like rope; his fingers tremble but don't move. Invisible pressure pins his arm like a nail through wood.

Val doesn't even look at him.

"I'm not alone."

She raises her voice, delighted.

"Robert."

Footsteps on the stairs behind the mezzanine.

They look up.

He descends like a sunrise wearing a man.

Blonde hair, slicked back, catching the light. A golden suit that seems to emit it. A wide black belt with an elegant S gleaming at the center. Black boots. A navy cape that drinks the room's brightness and returns it as a halo. The air around him hums, not the room, him, a pressure Cici feels along her gums and the soft bone behind her ears.

Bob.

Her lungs forget how.

Val spreads an arm across the room as if unveiling a statue, "It is my great honor to present to you, The Sentry."

He... waves. The shyest, strangest little wave, "Hi, guys."

Alexei whispers, awed, "Wow. That's cool name."

Val's smile sharpens, "All-powerful, invincible, stronger than all the Avengers combined into one, and soon to be known as Earth's mightiest hero."

Ava squints, "Did you dye your hair?"

Bob touches it, sheepish, "Yes, well, it was--"

"Yes, it was my idea," Val cuts in, bright, "People love a classic hero."

Bucky grinds out, "Okay, I'll bite. What's the plan?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet, Bucky?" Val purrs, "Well at least you're kind and cute."

Alexei points a meaty finger, "You're not going to hurt people."

"Oh, no," Val says, honey over a knife, "No, I'm not going to hurt people. I'm going to hurt you. The press is on their way up, and they're going to witness the amazing power of Sentry as he takes out this ruthless group of rogue agents, thus beginning a new era in which I decide how to keep the American people safe. Answerable to no one. I will be... unimpeachable."

"That's never going to happen," Bucky says through his teeth.

Val doesn't look at him, "Sentry, your first mission is to take these criminals out."

Bob hesitates.

Something tightens behind his eyes.

"I don't want to hurt you, guys," He says, "Why don't you just... surrender?"

"No," John says, "You don't want to do this, Bobby."

"You can call me the Sentry," He replies, softer than the words deserve.

"Please," Yelena says, palms out, "Don't do this. You don't need to listen to her."

Val's tone turns sing-song, "Robert, they don't think you're good enough."

"That's not true," Cici says, stepping forward before she knows she has. Her voice shakes but doesn't break, "You can trust me. I know you."

Bob's gaze finds her like water finds a slope.

The room falls away.

For a heartbeat, it's just the two of them, the girl with the knife and the man who swallowed a star.

His eyes, lit from within now, soften. That shy, human confusion she knows peeks past the glow.

"I don't think you do," He says, and it's almost a plea.

Cici swallows. The void hums between them, low and hungry. She feels it tug at her edges, the same dark that swallowed her at the lake, the same dark he dragged her through by accident. She takes another step.

"You touched my hand," She says, barely above a whisper, "We saw each other. You saw me."

Something flickers under his sternum. The golden suit gleams brighter for a blink, like a heartbeat under armor.

Val tilts her head, listening to butterflies die.

"Aw," She coos, "Touching."

Alexei can't bear it another second. He slaps his palm on his chest like a little league pledge, "Enough talking! Nobody messes with West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts!"

Val's brows lift,"Thunderbolts?"

"Name pending," Yelena mutters.

Alexei charges.

The floor shakes. His boots throw echoes up into the ribs of the room. He's smiling, idiot brave, dad proud, arms wide for a bear hug he intends to become a tackle.

Bob doesn't wind up.

He doesn't move like a fighter.

He moves like gravity remembers it forgot to restrain him.

A blur of gold.

A pressure wave, almost soundless.

And then Alexei is gone from where he was and in the wall, embedded in it, really, plaster webbed with spidering cracks, a man-shaped crater haloed in powdered gypsum. The impact rattles the bar; Val's ice clinks merrily.

Ava half-phases from shock, flickering like a bad signal; Bucky wrenches at the invisible clamp on his arm and manages a grunt of motion. John plants a foot forward, shield high, chest heaving.

Cici doesn't move.

She can't.

Her eyes are on Bob.

And his, oh god, his are on her.

Regret swims there.

Power, too. So much she can taste metal on her tongue.

"Please," She says, not sure if she's begging him or the universe.

The void between them surges.

He flinches, like the words struck a nerve the suit can't cover.

Val's voice cuts the air like a whistle, "Robert."

He blinks.

The glow hardens.

The moment fractures like glass dropped in a church.

The room tilts toward violence the way metal tilts to a magnet.

"Stop," Yelena says, and her voice is the only soft thing left. She steps between Bucky and Bob, palms up, shoulders squared, "Nobody moves."

Bucky's gun is already up.

John's shield is already flying.

The shield rings off Bob's forearm like a coin on marble, caroms into the bar, and embeds in a cabinet door. Bob doesn't flinch. He just looks hurt, in the small, human way of a man who didn't want this to start like this.

Ava phases, a blur of static at calf height, and whips a heel toward Bob's knee. He catches her shin in his palm without looking, like the air told him where she was. John is there too, a rapid strobe of fist–shield–shoulder, all aggression and training, and for a second the three of them are a knot of limbs and momentum, until Bob sighs, opens his hands, and pushes.

A pressure wave leaves him like an exhale. Yelena is thrown backward across polished stone, Ava is peeled off him and skids into a pillar, John is scooped like a yard sign in a hurricane and slammed into a couch that explodes in a breath of feathers.

"Don't," Yelena coughs, climbing to her knees, "Bob, please--"

Bucky fires.

Three shots, center mass.

The bullets make it halfway.

They stop.

Just... stop. Midair. Their spin dies. They hang like chrome seeds between breaths.

Bob turns his head. The bullets rotate in the air like they're thinking it over, then flick back the way they came.

Bucky's eyes widen--

John launches.

He cuts across the line, shield up. The ricochet slaps against metal and he and Bucky go down together in a shower of sparks and glass chips. They hit the wall in a human tangle; Bucky's gun skips away and clinks to a halt under a credenza.

Alexei has a knife now. Of course he does. He bellows and charges, blade high, heroic as a children's book and just as doomed. Bob lifts his palm like he's quieting a room. Alexei freezes two steps short, legs still windmilling, knife arrested inches from the golden suit.

Red Guardian snarls and forces the knife down. The point meets fabric and whines like a drill on diamond. The blade dulls, curls. Alexei stares at it, offended, "This is titanium!"

Bob's eyes go soft, almost apologetic, then bright.

Wind catches his cape from nowhere.

Alexei lifts without being touched, flung backward, through the window. Glass booms into the sky and becomes a halo of knives around him. For a heartbeat he's a red comma against the morning, then an invisible hand yanks him back through the same hole, fwip, and slams him into the ceiling so hard the light fixtures ring. He drops like a safe onto the floor and doesn't get up.

"Alexei!" Yelena's voice cracks. She scrambles, slides on marble, reaches him. He's breathing, but his eyes are wrong. She looks up, eyes wet, feral, "Stop."

Cici is already moving.

Yelena grabs for her sleeve and misses by inches, "Cic, don't."

Cici doesn't listen. She goes straight at the star in a man's shape. No knife forward, no snarl. Hands open. Empty. She reaches for his hands, not his throat. She catches them.

Heat sleeps inside his palms. Her skin prickles. The edges of her vision feather with ink. She can feel the Void waking up between their fingers, a living seam. Whispers creep in, not words so much as leanings, a returning tide, the sensation of a door without a frame.

"Please don't," She breathes, eyes locked on his. Up close, the glow in them is not a color. It's a pressure. It vibrates in her teeth, "Bob... please."

The world listens.

For five seconds, everything is quiet.

His shoulders lower. The gold dims a shade. The cape stops moving. Under the light, he's just... a man. The shy wave. The stutter in his smile. The guy who said cucumber to not sneeze.

"Cici," He says, like a memory he hid in the lining of his jacket.

Ava hits them like a cue ball.

She phases in at hip height and drives her shoulder through Cici's ribs, shoving her clear.

"Move!" She snarls.

The spell breaks.

"No--" Cici wheezes, rolling, air gone hot and wrong in her chest.

Bob turns and swats Ava with an open hand like she's a mosquito. She sails across the floor, phases instinctively, blinks through the bar, and still hits the back wall hard enough to leave a you were here dent.

John is already up. He brings the shield across Bob's jaw, committing to the hit with all the faith a soldier can store. The blow would rupture a cinder block.

Bob's head turns a fraction. His lip splits. Light spills, not blood.

He looks at the shield.

Puts his fingers to the rim.

And bends it.

The metal complains like a ship in a storm, squealing in a tone that makes Cici's molars vibrate. The circle collapses into a sloppy U, an aluminum taco with history written all over it. He drops it. It lands with a dumb clang beside John's boot.

"Okay," John says to no one, and that's all the time he gets, Bucky is there with a knife drawn from nowhere, low and mean, and Bob steps inside, taps Bucky's sternum with two fingers, and plants him in the floorboards. The impact booms up the structure. Bucky's breath leaves him in a hard huh, limbs askew, eyes swimming.

Yelena is screaming again, but she's on him, on him, small and lethal as a backpack bomb. She wraps herself around his shoulders, legs cinched at his ribs, wrists snapping forward to brace on his collarbone. "Stop, Bob!" The Widow's Bites spit lightning into the joint of his neck, white-hot arcs flashing along the golden seam.

He looks mildly inconvenienced. Flies straight up. Yelena hits the ceiling with a grunt that scrapes. He peels her off with a twist of one arm, throws her down. She bounces, gasps, rolls to avoid the follow-up that doesn't come only because something else catches his attention: Ava, ghosting at the edge of reality, trying to circle behind him.

He turns through her camouflage. He sees her while she's phasing. She doesn't have time to be surprised before his hand closes on her throat and forces solidity back into her. She spasms, choking, fingers clawing at a hold that isn't flesh so much as a verdict.

"Let her go," John grinds out, drawing his sidearm left-hande. He fires twice.

Bob looks at him.

The gun sags, puddles in John's grip. The slide liquefies like wax and drips onto his boot, hissing where it hits the floor.

Alexei groans, alive after all, and heaves a bar stool like he's in a hockey fight. Bob flicks two fingers. The entire bar answers instead, skidding off its mounts with a screech of stone on stone and launching into Alexei like a thrown door. The Russian disappears under mahogany, glass, and a shower of bitters.

"Alexei!" Yelena again, throat raw.

Cici moves without knowing it. She's between Bob and the heap before she can think of why, too slow to get there, too slow to matter, and then John tackles Bob at the waist and gets his hands around his throat, which is like trying to throttle a lighthouse. Bob's hand comes up, closes on John's jaw, and squeezes. John's eyes bulge; his boots leave the floor. His windpipe hisses a bad note.

"Stop, stop, " Cici hears herself say, but her voice is a hallway too long.

Bucky, bleeding from the ear, staggers up on one knee and tears off his jacket in a practiced move. The metal arm underneath gleams dull gunmetal; he swings it like a hammer. Bob snags the forearm neatly, like taking a present from a child. His eyes flare, a white that isn't white, and the seams of the arm glow. Metal whines. The mounting at Bucky's shoulder softens and peels, a flower of steel. With a wet, surgical pop, the arm severs itself. Bucky's face empties; his body follows. Bob lashes the disembodied limb across Bucky's chest; the blow knocks him skating across marble into the elevator bank. The arm clatters down next to him and spins to a stop.

Ava is still in Bob's grip, toes scraping at air, lips purpled around the word please. John is strangling in stereo, one of Bob's hands now occupied with each throat.

Then he throws them.

Ava and John slam together like matched magnets and slide toward the elevator, carving two human arcs in dust. They smash into the brushed steel doors hard enough to dent them. Both drop, rolling over each other in a coughing tangle.

Silence, except for glass settling, a cracked bottle weeping its last, and Alexei's subterranean groan.

Cici is the only thing still standing in the middle of the room.

Her chest heaves. Her hands shake. She can taste copper and ozone. Her ears are ringing with the bass note of a god's heartbeat.

Move, move, get them out.

She runs.

She drags John first, a hand under his armpit, his feet fumbling for traction.

"On your own," She hisses, and he is, soldier muscle memory lit like a fuse, using the wall to stumble the last feet. She palms the button. The elevator dings, offended.

Ava is next, coughing, eyes watering, one hand to her throat. Cici slides an arm around her waist, ignores the way the other woman flinches at touch, and hauls her across the polished wreckage.

"Up," Cici mutters, "Come on." Ava nods, can't speak, and staggers into the elevator car, bracing herself across a corner.

"Yelena," Cici calls, voice gone hoarse.

"Got me," Yelena says through teeth. She's crawling already, dragging one leg that doesn't want to answer, blood in her hair, eyes bright with pain and fury. Cici hooks a hand in her vest collar and yanks, "Ow. Careful."

"Sorry."

They spill into the car, knees banging metal.

"Alexei," Yelena gasps, "Please."

Cici turns and sprints back into the lion's cage.

Bob stands where she left him, breathing like a man after a sprint, not like a storm. His gaze is on her. He doesn't move to stop her.

She heaves the bar rubble just enough to find Alexei's shoulder and drags, legs braced, back screaming. He's heavy as a secret, dead weight and dad-bulk combined. He groans in Russian and apologizes to someone who isn't here.

"Shh," Cici mutters, "you're fine," and lies with all her heart. She gets him sliding, inch by damning inch, a smear of bitters and blood in their wake.

"Bucky!" She yells, half-turning.

He's conscious, barely. His face is grey-green, breath short. With his remaining hand, he's already pushing himself toward the elevator by hooking fingers into the seam of the floor and dragging. The detached arm stares at nothing. Cici curses, darts back, scoops the arm under her other elbow because life is stupid now, grabs Bucky's collar and hauls. He tries to help; it's messy, it works.

They reach the threshold.

Everyone inside shifts, making space they don't have. Alexei's boot catches the rail; Yelena swears and frees it. John wedges himself as a human doorstop. Ava slams a shoulder into the close button like it owes her money. The doors start to slide--

Cici's still outside.

She pivots and looks back.

He's exactly where she left him, golden and impossible in the ruin, cape settling, hair bright as a lie. The city pours its light around him and never touches him.

They lock eyes.

There's too much said in the quiet between them.

All the way back to a lake.

All the way forward to a sun that might burn her world to chalk.

Her lips part, "Bob--"

His glow falters half a heartbeat, the smallest stutter in a flawless machine.

"Cici," He answers, and it's not a warning. Not quite a plea. Something between.

A crack of elevator cable above them. A bell dinging the arrival of a press car two floors down. Val humming, almost bored, somewhere out of sight.

"Now," John grates, arm sliding against the door, tendons white.

Cici doesn't blink.

She steps backward into the elevator, eyes never leaving his. She hits the Ground button with the heel of her hand. The panel chirps. The doors bite into the view inch by inch.

They hold each other through the narrowing slot of the world.

You could fit a promise there.

Or a goodbye.

The slit becomes a line.

The line becomes nothing.

The doors seal.

Val tips her chin toward the windows, "The camera crews are assembling. Finish the job, Robert."

Bob's head cocks, the cape settling against his calves like a midnight tide, "Finish the job? No."

Val blinks, "What?"

"They're not a threat to me," He says, baffled by the assignment, like a child parsing a cruel math problem, "So why do I need to kill them?"

"Because," Val replies, the word cherry-lacquered, "you have to do what I tell you, Robert."

He studies her, a crease finding his brow, "Why?"

Her smile sticks, "Why?"

"It has to be more than a collaboration," Bob says, glancing at his reflection, the hair, the suit, the myth, "The hair, for example. Maybe I should have had more of a say."

"Don't let those idiots get in your head. The blonde is great."

"Sure? I don't know, I thought I liked it." He touches the slicked crown, gold catching gold, "And now I'm not so sure."

"Enough about the hair," Val snaps.

"It's not just about the hair."

"Are you still talking about the hair?"

"No," He says, and the word is a hinge coming off the door, "It's everything. My suit, my name, my missions. I mean, what? Why would a god take orders from... anyone at all?"

Val's eyelids flutter, an eye-roll too disciplined to be messy, "I think you're using the word god a little loosely there."

"No, no," Bob says quickly, earnest as a bruise, "Because you said I was all-powerful and invincible and stronger than an entire Avengers team, which includes at least one god. So I thought I was starting to..." He loses the sentence, finds another, "I think maybe you don't know what I am."

A crack of something real slips in Val's mask.

"Oh, damn it," She mutters.

"Or what I'm capable of." His gaze goes strange, distance folding inward, "Perhaps I need to show you."

Valentina's right hand, tightens on a small matte device, a kill-switch disguised like a car fob, "This is very irritating."

The air tilts.

Bob moves without moving, a rip in space that ends with his palm around her throat. In a blink she's pinned against the nearest load-bearing column, heels scratching marble, drink still balanced on the bar until the ice tips and falls like glass rain.

"You were going to turn on me," Bob says, calm in the way of a storm center, "just like the rest of them."

Val grins with her teeth, "I'm not afraid of you, Robert."

"It's not Robert you need to be afraid of."

His hand tightens. Lights dim. The room's pressure drops as if the building itself holds its breath.

Bob's glow falters. His pupils blow wide. The hum around him drops an octave and tears.

He collapses.

No struggle. No drama. A god turned marionette with the strings cut, crumpled gold and navy on cold stone. His cheek presses the floor. His breath doesn't fog the air. The cape sighs and goes still.

Val falls forward off the column, coughing once, twice, a tidy hack delivered with theatrical restraint. She smooths her lapel before looking up, eyes narrowing at the figure standing in the mezzanine's shadow with the kill switch in hand.

Mel.

"Good girl," Val says, voice syrup again in an instant, "You've come back to your senses. Come here, help me up."

Mel descends two steps, doesn't move further, "I want a raise."

"Fine, fine," Val says, already half-smiling at the corpse-like shape on the floor. Mel takes her elbow; Val rises, composure knitting itself flawless. She flicks dust from her sleeve as though dismissing a thought.

"Clean up the body," She says, "And tell Holt it's finally time to go lethal on these losers."

Downstairs, Alexei lurches forward first, crusted with bitters and glass freckles, one sleeve torn open to a spectacular bruise.

"Okay," He says, breath whooshing, palms out in a huddle motion only he recognizes, "We need new plan."

"No, no new plans," John growls, holding the taco-ruined shield like the dead pet of a proud lineage, "The thing is too powerful."

Cici kneels by Bucky on the curb. His jaw is set in that stoic angle pain chisels into veterans. She lifts the metal arm, heavy as an anchor, edges glow-cooled, and helps him line socket to scar. He grits his teeth. The latching claws whirr, bite home with a series of clicks like a lock remembering the right key. His fingers flex, once. Twice. A tremor runs through the prosthetic's seams, then settles.

"There," Cici murmurs, hands steady despite the tremor in her ribs, "You're back."

Bucky nods once, eyes hooded, "Thanks."

Alexei is still conducting nobody, "Let's just regroup and think. There has to be a way to stop that guy."

"We're not regrouping," John snaps, "This isn't even a... team."

Alexei reels back as if slapped, "Of course we are a team! We're the Thunderbolts!"

Bucky squints, "I don't know what that means."

"It's her peewee soccer team thing," Ava mutters, voice scraped raw, fingers rubbing her throat where Bob's hand had made a memory.

Alexei jabs a finger toward an imaginary war table, "We need to go somewhere to discuss this."

"Discuss what?" John barks, waving the folded shield like a punctuation mark.

"We're going to regroup!"

"He turned my shield into a taco!" John yells at the sky, as if the sky will file a complaint with a manager.

"Oh my God, stop!" Yelena shouts, the word breaking like chalk under pressure. She's swaying slightly, a nick bleeding into her eye. She looks at each of them and sees the mirror, scorched, cracked, uneven, "There is no us. There is no us. Look, Bob transformed into that thing and... there's nothing any of you can do about it."

"And what exactly did you do?" Ava fires back, the flatness in her tone sharpened with humiliation, "Because I seem to recall you got your ass kicked way worse than mine."

Yelena's laugh is small and knife-bright, "Yeah, yeah, I suck! I'm terrible. We're all terrible. Ava, you're not a hero, you're not even a good person."

"Bitch," Ava mutters, looking away so the word won't show.

Alexei steps toward Yelena, palms up, voice softening in a register he reserves for exactly one person, "Slow down, um-nichka."

"I am not your um-nichka," Yelena snaps, the syllables brittle, "I haven't heard from you or seen you in a year."

John lifts a hand wearily, "Okay, go easy on him."

Yelena turns, all teeth, "So you're nice now?"

John blinks, "Is it my turn?"

"No," She says, and the word knifes clean, "You know you're a piece of trash, Walker. Your family too."

John absorbs it like a body blow, shoulders dropping half an inch, "Jesus."

"Yelena--" Cici starts, rising from Bucky's side, but Yelena steamrolls the syllables.

"We're all losers," Yelena says, voice lowering to the tired truth under the rage, "And we lost."

The word hangs, heavy as scaffolding.

Traffic inches. Phones lift. Somewhere a news anchor practices her solemn tone.

They peel apart without agreement, orbit lines broken: Yelena walking fast, a metronome of fury; Ava turning away on a diagonal that promises disappearance if no one calls her back; John shouldering his not-shield with the gracelessness of grief; Alexei shuffling after Yelena, calling her name in a voice that tries to be big and ends up small; Bucky standing last among them, jaw set toward duty like it might be enough this time.

Cici doesn't move.

The crowd eddies around her shoelaces and leaves her untouched. She stands on the sidewalk with the Watchtower's shadow cutting her in half. The building's glass ribs catch the sun and spit it back as something colder. High above, the penthouse mirrors the city into a cruel infinity where she can almost pretend none of them exist.

She tilts her head up.

The light knives her eyes; she lets it. Behind the glare she can just make out the shape of that room, the ring of windows across which he walked, the pane they broke, the ceiling he slammed her people into. The place the word god tried on a human throat and liked the taste.

Her breath empties.

She closes her eyes and sees him instead: pajama-soft and apologetic, the shy wave, the dorky "hi," the boy who yelled cucumber because the sneeze scared him more than the guns. The man who moved a glass with a thought and was surprised he could. The glow that warmed when he said her name like he remembered where he'd left it.

Is he gone?

Is he there under the gold?

Cici presses her teeth into her bottom lip until the skin yields and climbs away from pain the only way she learned, up, not back. The city is a hive that doesn't care. The shadow line creeps an inch.

She keeps looking up as if the answer might be written in the reflections, as if the glass could spell mercy backwards, as if he might step into the sunlight and remember which way is home.

Somewhere above, in a room marbled with money and old ghosts, a body cools on the floor.

Somewhere below, in the hearts of a fractured handful of wrong people, a decision begins to knit itself into bone.

Cici breathes.

She lifts her chin another inch, daring the tower to blink first.

"Bob," She says, a sound almost too soft to be language.

The Watchtower doesn't answer.

The wind does, a breath through the canyons, a hush over the crowd, a finger along her hair. For a heartbeat it feels like the whole city is holding very, very still, like even the concrete is listening for the next crack in the sun.

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