Page 169 of Compromised
Alistair watched him.
"That's very—" he started.
"It's accurate," Tav said.
"It is." He was quiet. "You're good at this."
"At what?"
"At being right about things that are uncomfortable." He looked back at the sea. "I've been thinking about what I want to say to him and nothing I come up with seems adequate. There's too much to go back and name. Five years of things." "But you're right that trying to assemble it in advance is — not the point."
"The point is that you're both here," Tav said.
"Yes." He exhaled. "Yes."
They stood at the window.
The soup happened eventually — not the carton kind, which Alistair had decided against upon further reflection, but actual soup, produced from what turned out to be more extensive stores than the initial inventory suggested. They ate at the kitchen table and said very little, not uncomfortable.
They had arrived with the ease of two people who could occupy shared silence without either of them feeling the obligation to fill it.
After the blanket situation in the main room, which turned out to involve a substantial sofa and a fireplace that, after some investigation, was operational. The fire took four attempts to start and one genuinely useless attempt where neither of them was sure what had gone wrong, and then it was going, and the room was warm.
They were on the sofa.
Alistair had constructed an arrangement that accommodated Tav's shoulder — his left side protected, the weight distributed, the joining of two people learning to occupy space together while one of them was functionally limited. He had done it without commenting, which tav noticed.
"Tell me something," Tav said.
"What kind of something?"
"Anything. Something about you before Ablation." He studied the fire. "Something I don't know."
Alistair was quiet.
"I wanted to study architecture," he said. "Genuinely. Before Ablation found me." He looked at the fire. "I was eighteen. I'd applied to three schools and been accepted to one that I actually wanted. And then someone from Ablation came to a weekend event that my school ran for high-performing students and I was — identified."
"You chose Ablation over architecture school."
"It seemed more important at the time." "I was eighteen and I wanted to matter. Architecture school felt like a way to build things. Ablation felt like a way to change things." He fixed on the fire.
"I was wrong about the comparison."
"Or right in the wrong direction," Tav said.
Alistair glanced at him.
"Architecture builds structures," Tav said. "Ablation was supposed to build something better. It was the same instinct in a different direction, and the direction turned out to be wrong, but the instinct—"
"You've been trying to build things that matter your entire adult life."
"Hm." Alistair considered this. "Is that what this is?"
"The archive," Tav said. "Helping Lucien. What we did tonight." He looked at him. "Yes. That's what it is."
"What about you?" he said.
"What about me?"
