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[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

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[abrightboy]

Of using them, not of learning how to use them.

[cactusy]

[She pauses to dig her spoon into the soup, hunting around for those beans.]

So it's about context.

Would it help to hear that you really don't sound much like your dad at all?

[abrightboy]

It always helps to hear that.

[It's a high compliment, in fact, and he directs the smile he can't help at the floor.]

I hunt the worst, most twisted killers and I've never shot one.

Stabbed a couple.

...Mostly my dad.

But I didn't kill them.

[cactusy]

If you did, it wouldn't make you like him.

[It's delivered flatly and wearily, but it is meant as a reassurance.]

That whole thing about how killing bad guys makes you just as bad as them - it's bull.

[abrightboy]

Only if you kill them when you don't have to. To save yourself or someone else, you have to do what you have to do.

[cactusy]

You and I can agree on that.

[abrightboy]

[He smiles brightly, because that's basically his guiding star.]

I'm glad. ...What happened during the Breach?

[cactusy]

Got bitten. Went and reported myself to the Guardians.

I don't regret it.

[abrightboy]

…Did they kill you?

[cactusy]

That was the point in reporting myself, so, yeah.

[abrightboy]

Not all the guardians jumped straight to that. Did you at least have a friend to do it?

[cactusy]

Nope. Stranger. I didn't want to put my friends through that.

I wrote them letters, so they'd know what happened.

[abrightboy]

We have something like that in the counselling office. A place to leave letters for people in case you disappear from here suddenly.

[cactusy]

That's not the same thing. If you disappear here, everybody knows what happened to you.

[abrightboy]

That doesn’t mean you got to say everything you wanted to people who were important to you.

[cactusy]

[Good point. She digs the spoon back into her soup.]

Anyway, Eiffel and Caffrey got the letters. Don't know about Cook, though; I haven't talked to her yet.

[abrightboy]

Neal didn’t mention Cook.

[cactusy]

They didn't know her. She was, uh, you know-- someone I visited when we came into town.

[A hook-up with vague burgeoning feelings! A true breach rite of passage.]

[abrightboy]

She was your girlfriend?

[cactusy]

We never talked about words. Uh, they never talked about words.

[Breach terminology is confusing; sheeee haaaaates thiiiiiiiiiis]

[abrightboy]

I’m sorry.

[cactusy]

... Why?

[She asks, as she eyes him warily, having the feeling that she might not like the answer.]

[abrightboy]

[He shrugs.]

Just that you had to lose that twice in a row, inside the breach and then by leaving the breach.

[cactusy]

[Yup. She sighs irritably, shoving a big spoonful of soup into her mouth.]

I didn't lose anything by leaving the breach, Malcolm. It wasn't real.

[Even less real than everything else.]

I'm pissed off that it fake-happened in the first place.

[abrightboy]

Because you don't want to carry it when it isn't yours?