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“When you’re a loner, there’s nothing more satisfying than finding another loner to be alone with” (Claudia, The Americans)
Luthen
He pulls Cassian aside again while Kleya checks for any updates from inside the building. He’s still thinking about what a mistake it was, to tell Mon about Erskin.
“Getting her out of the building and into the airspeeder is only the half of it. You can’t take her straight to Tomkip either. Go the long way round. Change speeders as soon as it’s safe. Don’t let her out of your sight.” He mentions only the essentials. Cassian can be trusted to fill in the rest. His response is as expected.
“The longer it takes to get her to Tomkip the more she’s going to question me. Especially if things don’t go well, getting out of there. If she doesn’t trust you and doesn’t know me she’s not going to trust me either, once there’s time to think about it all. Once she’s in that speeder, if we get that far.”
His reply is an impatient growl. “So you’ll do whatever you need to do to make her trust you. To put her at ease. Assuming she goes ahead and speaks. If she does it’s because she wants this - it’s nothing to do me. She has to want this, and keep on wanting it, no matter what happens in there or getting out of there. What you’ll probably have to do.”
A pause. Luthen knows what putting someone at their ease often entails. He's done it himself before and knows full well that Cassian has done it before too: words of reassurance and sometimes words with empty promises and outright lies. Sometimes it’s necessary to use more than mere words. He’s done that himself, too, more times than he would care to admit. But all this is wasting time and he grows angry with the fear that Kleya dared to voice: the fear that it all comes down. “Do whatever you need. She has to want this. Make her want to stay with you. If she runs or panics, going from speeder to door, we’re done for. Get her to the old Bohora Condos studio if you can. Get some nog into her. We’ll wait for your signal at the gallery.”
“Is there anything I can tell her, from you, that might work?”
Luthen ignores the surge of pain that still threatens, even now. “There’s nothing more I can say to make her trust me. It’s too late for that.”
“I know the feeling,” Cassian replies and it’s not as aggressively phrased or expressed as Luthen might have expected; even now, after all the lies and manipulation, after all the messing with himself and with Bix. It’s not much but for now Luthen will take it. They need to get on with it. But it’s not just Mon who he’s bent with secrecy and he needs to try to mend this man’s own broken trust now, because Mon isn’t the only one would might not do what needs to be done.
“Cassian.” Luthen says the name, and they both know this is manipulation but it works anyway. He focuses, eyes a little softer, the pain a little less well concealed. Seems to greet the words that follow as earnest just as Luthen had intended. Maybe they were. Luthen’s not sure if he even knows how to tell, anymore. “I don’t mind what you do. I don’t care what you do. I won’t be seeing her again and what’s done is done. Like I said: no Yavin for me. There’s no other choice.”
“You won’t be seeing me again either, after today,” Cassian tells him, his tone neutral. He adds: “I’m done, after this. That’s my choice.”
Luthen stays silent; he’s already expressed his opinion on Cassian thinking he is making his own decisions. He’s still wondering about that and senses that they both are. He could see how rattled the man was by his list; the litany of narrow escapes that were perhaps something other that mere coincidence. Always there, when needed.
There’s something else in his eyes, Luthen thinks. Something dangerous. Trauma. He knows it well. You try to bury it and function and Cassian has always been good at that, at least since committing. Even at its height it can be channelled, like Bix did with Gorst. But it’s a weapon that’s hard to control in the longer term and can seriously backfire. Cassian can still be extremely emotionally volatile before and after a mission even when laser-focused during it. But after what he saw yesterday, on Ghorman… who knew. Who knew what horrors were festering deep within this: his most mercurial, skilled and trustworthy agent. Horrors looking for expression or release at some point and in some form (Make it stop, make it stop…).
So Luthen speaks particularly carefully now. He needs to get this right. “You have a lot of feeling in you right now. Be careful. It’s not even emotion, as such, it’s not the same thing. It’ll stay with you. Like everything else you’ve seen. It’ll stay with you and probably change you because that’s what it does. So, like you know how to do, you have to put it away for the most part or use it very carefully. Using it is good if you can, if you can control or even a little bit of it. It could help the both of you. You talk about choices. Well, it’s like Kleya just said. For now, this is the only choice. The only choice is to try because if we don’t none of this will be worth it. None of it. So. Tomorrow you can feel it and let it do with you what it wants. Today, you need to choose to be in control of those feelings and use them for the Cause. You’ve done it before. Channel your feelings to make her feel better. You might feel better for it too. A little release. You remember all that.”
Cassian looks at him then and there’s a wryness there now, a slight curve of the lips. Maybe he’s thinking of his formal and informal training in all this, from Sipo to Mimban to Aldhani and Narkina, and even to his education with Luthen. How to play people. Work them, sometimes for your own good or, on some level, for theirs. To get them to do what you wanted them to do. Needed them to do. Luthen thinks in particular of the early weeks after “Kill me or take me in” when Cassian was still seemingly and pleasingly unattached. Before he had drawn the line at further training in using sex for the Cause. Yes, it is indeed easier when they are alone. It’s true of their targets and it’s true of his agents.
Then the wryness is gone. Cassian scoffs: “Don’t tell me what to do with my feelings.”
A pause and he seems to be working through what Luthen appears to be suggesting. And as of old, his first response is the old anger, expressed in a quiet but spitting fury. A familiar sight from the old days. “Sure. I’ll fuck her, if you like. Like I did with that Steergard Captain. If you think that would work. Bix doesn’t mind. My heart is hers and she doesn’t care what I do with my body like that. What I choose to do. You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to at the time, but you would lie to me and lie to everyone because all you care about is how it goes for you. And if that’s what the Cause is for you I want nothing more to do with it because you might as well be one of them.”
Luthen simply lets the anger blow over him. He’s heard these words before. For many times and from many people, with Kleya the only true exception. He’s heard them often enough in his own head, of course. He hears them every day. So, he’s not angry when he replies, but his tone is carefully chosen to be the most likely one here to get Cassian to do what he needs him to do. Cassian is difficult to play, but not impossible. It’s a challenge that has brought pleasure as well as pain in the past. “I have no regrets about how I treated you. If you were fully committed to this Cause you would do the same. So, sure. She’d love it. She’d love you. I’m sure she hasn’t ever been with something quite as magnificent as you. So give her a damn good seeing to, as you used to say, because I think it would help both of you. She will relax. Love you even, just a little, while it lasts. You’ll let some of what you’ve got pent up inside you out and you’ll feel better. Then you can run away from it all and turn your back and know that your final act for this rebellion was fucking its future leader.” He puts a little extra venom into the vulgarity.
Cassian stares with a combination of horrified incredulity and frank admiration: it’s a strange mix but a common enough one when aimed at Luthen. Then he sneers, slowly and deliberately, “Fuck you.”
“Not this time,” is the caustic reply.
Mon and Cassian
***
He drives fast and it feels good: frightening enough to make her focus on the present rather than the recent past or the as-yet blank future. They don’t even use the Expressway but the lower routes, between buildings that loom close with the empty promise of destruction because somehow he always avoids a crash. He’s done this before. He’s very skilled. She’s never experienced anything like it; had no idea that the limo was capable of this kind of speed. She’s never felt before the gravity that pushes her down into the seat, like forcefully placed hands pressing upon her shoulders.
A day of surprises all round, she thinks, and supposes that it’s the shock of it all that brings an ironic laugh to her lips. He doesn’t hear it. She glances occasionally at the back of his head through the dividing window. The tiny bun in his hair. It grounds her, just a little, looking at that. The ridiculous detail. A strange calmness settles upon her. For now, she’s content to be driven.
She’s almost disappointed when they suddenly slow, land at a public parking lot near the Ambassadorial residences. Near to her embassy, her home, in fact. Perrin, she thinks, then the thought is gone; at least for now.
“We need a new ride,” the Friend who kills but saved her says curtly, and she stays slumped in his coat in what she’s already thinking of as her old limo while he does something with the door of the airspeeder they are parked behind. She can’t see much from her position but it looks like a professional tool of some kind that he’s using on the doors. A thief’s tool.
One of Luthen’s operatives. She had known, finally, about Aldhani and Vel - what he has them doing - and Luthen’s faith in this one can’t help but make her feel a little better because she is at last aware that he would have no need to lie to her about this. She’s seen the evidence now, of course. The Friend clearly has done this before too. He knows what he’s doing. When he comes to fetch her she goes willingly this time and shakes off his hand when he tries to take hers. It’s fine, I’m fine, and I don’t need to look at you this time or for you to touch me, she thinks, vaguely. Still, he stands close, observant, while she gets in for the next stage of this journey of increments, each another step away from what she knows for sure now is her former life.
***
He thinks of another extraction, that Steergard Captain he’d worked two years ago, held after her arrest in one of their brigs. She had turned against the whole idea of being rescued once the reality of what was required of her started to sink in. That happened a lot, especially when they realised how much they had been manipulated. He doesn’t even have the full context of this woman, this Senator, beyond the spartan file details shared by Kleya. He’d never followed formal politics; had not before seen these politicians as important beyond the damage they could do. Also, of course, there were Luthen’s cryptic words about her distrust. He’d noted her attractive appearance and her age; that she was older. Married, of course, for many years. So: a husband she would probably never see again. A daughter. Cousin of Vel Sartha - he hadn’t known that, hadn’t guessed. That detail was potentially useful. He had processed the information quickly, filing most of it away for later consideration and possible deployment. What he might have to do or say to reassure this woman to go with him, stay with him and trust him no matter what he might have to do. Even if he had to lie. It was crucial that she deliver her speech and get safely away.
He takes off and this time joins the expressway. Their final destination is actually close but he wants to be sure, wants to change the airspeeder one more time. So they drive fast out towards the old retail center on the edge of the Financial district because he remembers a big and anonymous speeder park there. No cameras, unless they have installed some since the last time he was there. With Bix. Shopping for new towels they had only used for two weeks before leaving them and their life here behind for somewhere greener, because although this place was full of lives it did not seem alive to them. He has no plans to ever return to this planet either. Tomorrow, he is done.
All goes to plan as he steals a third and final airspeeder, but he’s worried about the Senator again. It’s been long enough now, half an hour or so, for the shock to have kicked in at last. This time he notices she does take his hand when he offers it, and he even has to gently push on the top of her head to prevent her from hitting it when she gets into this vehicle that is about a quarter of the size of her limo. So he can’t take her to Tomkip, not yet. She wouldn’t manage the walk across the bridge from the speeder-park. She has only the simplest disguise of his coat and her probable anonymity among his down-at-heel old neighbours in the district. But she’s shaking so badly, she wouldn’t make the walk without drawing the wrong kind of attention. And there is no hood on this coat; a design flaw he intends to tell to Kleya about should they live long enough to see her again as per the plan. This is not the ship I was trained to fly, he thinks, and scoffs a little. Welcome to the rebellion, indeed.
For now, he has to signal Kleya and Luthen. Let them know he has the Senator safely away. This woman who Luthen is betting on, in some way, for the future of it all.
Then I’m done, he thinks again, and the idea is enough for now to make him refocus and once again shove aside the shadow of his own pain.
Meanwhile, he has to calm this woman down.
He’s done it before. He’s good at this. That argument with Luthen… he doesn’t think that is making a difference to his decision making. But so what if it is. He is still making his own choices.
He circles them back towards the Senatorial district and brings the airspeeder down, down to a level he knows she would never have seen before. In the perpetual garish twilight, he lands in a compact private speeder park right behind the block of apartments containing the smallest of Luthen’s safehouses and even though she is swaying slightly during the turbolift ride and while he unlocks the door he knows that it won’t matter down here, where so many beings are physically worse for wear even if not quite as emotionally exhausted as she must be.
He thinks of Maarva then, out of the blue and, just for a moment as he takes the Senator’s hand again and leads her inside, his own emotions threaten to overwhelm him.
He swallows down on them for now. He is good at that too.
***
She sits dazedly on the damp couch and watches while he pours her something from a flask. It’s just this one dank room; presumably there’s a refresher off through the door to the side and this couch might even convert to a proper bed if one could be bothered. He does not seem particularly familiar with the place and opens a few cupboards before finding what he wants: a small flask and a bottle. Two cups.
“Mednog, just a sip,” he tells her as he hands her the strong smelling drink. “You can have water afterwards, if you want.”
His tone is carefully flat, almost nonchalant. It’s seemingly no bother to him, on an emotional level, whether she drinks it or not but he clearly feels a little duty of care towards her. Of course. She hadn’t realised how badly she is trembling until she takes the cup now and immediately spills some. She hears his intake of breath, almost as if he is annoyed at her wasting it. “Sorry,” she says automatically. Ever the diplomat.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says in the same tone and as if it doesn’t, none of it. At that she looks up at him at last. Looks him in the face for the first time since he shot dead her driver when she had told him the name that Perrin used to so regularly forget.
His expression is carefully studied but there’s something there that belies the words. She thinks again, then, of Luthen. “I’m sending someone I count on, who I know I can count on. Someone I trust.” These words, coming from Luthen, ought to increase her wariness but for some strange reason they do not. “He’ll say: I have friends everywhere. I have friends everywhere!”
Someone has taught him to care, my new Friend, she thinks, all of a sudden. Something, too, probably, but also someone. Maybe many someones. Maybe that’s the difference, in comparison with Luthen, and whatever had been the reality beneath the mask with him. In all her years of knowing him she had known that he was committed to the same end result and she knew from early on, very early on, how this game would have to play out. For better and most definitely for worse. As for her own relationship with the Cause itself, that wider part of the rebellion that was not the end result, even after all this time she still isn’t quite sure.
He hands her the second cup with water poured from a flask. She looks at his face now and it’s as much as a mask as Luthen’s can be and she wonders what might be behind it. Another Luthen or something different. Everyone has their own rebellion, as Vel says, as she wonders if this man’s rebellion also defines the person that he is.
Contemplating this man, the Friend, makes her feel a little better because in thinking about him she doesn’t have to think about herself.
***
He’s fully aware even now of how this might unfold. It doesn’t matter to him. Yes, he has fucked for the Cause before. Part of his training, early on. “Compartmentalise”, Luthen had told him. “Shut out the feeling. Concentrate on getting access to theirs instead”. And it was easy. Even when he and Bix had committed it had been on the understanding that this was an emotional bond - love - and that, as before, sex in and of itself was something quite different. Sex was a tool. People talked, when they had sex. It opened as many doors as his lock-picking kit. So he had no moral aversion as such to having a sexual encounter if it would bring benefit. Chobb, he would even have seduced that girl Niya at Sienar if he had known that it might help with her wavering commitment and had the time and the place. As it was, she had seemed touched enough with his words; words he had used, in a few variations, many times over the past few years. In all of this, Bix didn’t mind. Or at least she hadn’t minded before, because since coming to Yavin he had stopped that kind of work, those kinds of missions. But even at her most vulnerable she had tolerated it. He could even practise, with her. Try out the different versions of himself that he could be. And she could taste those and even request her favourites, with their individual techniques and predilections, even when her most favourite these days was himself, unadulterated.
From tomorrow, she could have that core version of himself all the time and his personas could be permanently retired to the bedroom and used just for fun, once they had reached whatever sheltered place they could find away from all this.
Yes. Tomorrow… he is getting out. He has done enough. He is done.
Yes, but it isn’t done yet. He has to get this woman safely to the rendezvous. He has no wish to indulge anymore in thinking about that unsettling weird stuff like “she called you a messenger… what if it’s important? I’ve had dreams like that!” and “you appeared when I needed you”. All of it ludicrous and yet something even Luthen - Luthen! - had been flirting with. “Strength of spirit” and “let it in” and Chobb knew what other nonsense. He thinks of Maarva again now and the anger returns. But tears threaten too and that is a new thing. Probably, he is just exhausted. He has not slept at all, so there is as yet no period of liminal oblivion to separate him from all that he had seen yesterday so in a very real sense it is all this with him. He’ll need to sleep soon, just to function. But for now he feels wide awake. He can sleep tomorrow, when it’s done.
(“I’m done after this… he’ll know what I mean.”
“Let me guess. You’re tired. It’s too much. It’s too hard.” Kleya’s mocking haunts him still. Makes the anger translate now to something defiant.
“One would think there’d be no stopping you.”)
Shut up, Kleya.
He takes a swig at the mednog, from the bottle. More than he should but suddenly he doesn’t care.
(“…the Senator you’ll be rescuing is putting a voice to all you’ve witnessed. Tell her you’re done.”)
Shut up, Kleya….
But no, in his head she won’t shut up and so he knows, at least for now, that he isn’t done. Not quite yet.
***
“Am I… allowed to know your name?” she asks after a minute or so. She can feel the drink burning her, but the warmth of it is radiating out towards her extremities and her trembling is easing a little.
He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “Cassian,” he tells her. No last name offered, no rank. Interesting.
“And.. you were with Vel. Aldhani.” She is trying to get him to open up. For the distraction but also because she’s curious. So much that has been kept from her. So much she’s been keeping from herself, too, in a way. “I’m only telling you what you already know…”
“We bled together there,” he says simply but this time the words themselves are so steeped in unspoken emotion that it makes her shiver, and not with the same variety of shock this time.
She opens her mouth on the first syllable of the next question - “and Ghorman?” - but cannot follow through because she is aware all of a sudden that he would not be able to cope with that, not right now. What were just numbers to her - the real numbers, of the dead - were to him faces. Crushed, bloodied and broken. She had seen two people die this morning but their deaths had been surreal in their cleanness, their suddeness. Lights out, she thinks wildly, and there’s all of sudden a laugh on her lips instead, the kind she’s laughed before in those secret little rooms of her life. The places she could retreat to to try to find whatever remained of herself, beneath the constant performances in her gorgeous prisons.
So what comes out is a kind of grotesque gasp of a sigh, a grimace with a touch of mania, and as soon as she hears it she knows he will understand. Because she has picked up this already: this man is highly perceptive, can read her easily - at least the pages that she cannot help but put out for display. And some hidden ones too. (We have bled together…)
***
He hears the strange sound, half laugh, and recognises its source. She reminds him now of some skittish creature, dangerous to approach despite appearances because of the kick she could deliver. But in his earlier days, before Bix and after and at all the points in between, he had been keen to rise to a sexual challenge. Because it seems to him now that she wants him even if she hasn’t yet said so, and he’s good at predicting things, seconds or minutes ahead. Knows when to shoot and when to spare. Knows that sometimes waiting is best; sometimes, action. But here, she needs to come to him, to his outstretched hand, and take it once again, and willingly. Needs to trust him. Needs to open herself up. Needs to… relax. For the future of the Cause, she needs to relax and get through this.
She is also, he can now freely admit to himself, extremely attractive. The tiniest arch of one eyebrow tells him that she had caught him just now, had caught him glancing at her neck and her lips and he lets his gaze linger on her now so that she knows he’s not shy about the offer. He wonders if he will have to vocalise the idea, for propriety’s sake. He’s had a little experience with women - with people - of her station but only when undercover. Seducing becomes part of the act when the seducer is part of the act too, but here would be different. Here, he would be himself.
Bix wouldn’t mind, he tells himself. Maybe it’s true. There’s nothing different here about the end objective after all. She knows he fucks for the cause. Or at least, that he used to. And this would, after all, be the last time.
The rebellion comes first. We take what’s left. Sometimes… what is necessary can also be a pleasure.
***
She gets it, at last. She understands what’s being offered here in this dark little room with its sickly lighting down here deep in the belly of this city-world that has never felt like home and to which she will probably never return. I lived here once, she suddenly imagines herself saying, years from now and after the war that will surely come openly whether she lives or dies today. She imagines herself returning and saying this to whatever companions she should have left by that stage. And it’s in this moment that she feels it, all of a sudden, that she will never see Perrin or Leida ever again.
There’s almost a cry or a sigh from her lips at that but she channels the energy, the sudden pain of it, instead. She rises to her feet and practically grabs, like a greedy child, at this man Cassian’s head, brings her mouth to his and kisses him hard, closed mouth but intense with pressure, over his own. For a moment she briefly thinks that this alone might be enough but when she feels his hand brush lightly over her hair and into the lightest of carresses down her cheek at that she is all aflame. She snarls his mouth open and for a moment their teeth clash. Then he is kissing her, and he is so very, very good at this and she hasn’t realised quite how much she has needed this until now.
He had put his coat onto her and now he pushes it down over her shoulders and she shrugs it off, just like she had shrugged off her blue Senatorial robes. Putting on the brown coat that smelled of the promise of something new and raw, even a little violent, had felt like becoming something reborn even in the horror of the moment. “I don’t think I can do this”… “Welcome to the rebellion”. Condescending little bastard, she might have thought if she had had time to process that. But now she had a better idea of what he meant. This is the new reality of this kind of commitment: a reality that is open, raw, naked, defiant. And as he starts to unfasten the remaining layers beneath those protective shells of the coats of office and of the rebellion she feels his commitment. Not to her, but to whatever it takes to win. Apparently, this is something he wants too. Or feels is necessary. Perhaps there isn’t so much difference after all.
They do not bother to convert the couch into a bed.
***
He had quickly got very used to the compartmentalising, perhaps because even his recreational sex had been like that back on Ferrix, after finally breaking up with Bix after years of trying. No need for complicated deep feelings that can just end up hurting you. Better by far to risk the physical threat of an angry husband than the emotional one of genuine attachment. He can be groaning in authentic physical pleasure and yet have his eyes wide open, his senses turned up so as to scan a room for information or listen out for what might be said in the moments of the rawest vulnerability. The power of that can be intoxicating and feed into genuine pleasure that the target might even mistake for love. But he doesn’t need to perform like that for her. She is lucky, this Mon Mothma, this older woman, this politician who Luthen so values. He can give her a glimpse of himself because it doesn’t matter now if she sees it. Feels it. He will be gone from her life tomorrow. This is the ultimate one-time thing. So he relaxes, gets genuine pleasure this time from feeling her relax around him and knowing that he is making a difference to her right now. Giving her something that she desperately needs and he can give it freely and as himself; whoever exactly he is right now.
Her body tells intimate secrets. She is sopping wet for him, yet her cunt is tight. Years of being careful. All released today in the Senate, in the speech that had marked for her the crossing of a new and terrifying threshold. How brave… how brave she is, he thinks and instead of shushing her a little as he probably should with the thin walls here he allows her to wail in gutteral ululations of emotion as she comes for the first of what will be several times over this half hour or so of this … whatever it is. A necessary break. Fucking, for the Cause. He comes quietly seconds later and keeps his eyes open because there is a certain beautiful pain in seeing the tears on her cheeks and feeling the shuddering of her body around him as her spasms become sobs.
He goes down on her afterwards and is only slightly surprised at how quickly and easily he can once again bring her to climax and how long it lasts. He is amused, even, when she suddenly starts swearing at him because he did not think she had that in her. He looks up, over her belly and between her breasts to her face and her expression is an extraordinary mixture - even more contradiction. Pain, fear, need he thinks out of the blue and frowns a little at that. The Force healer: the ultimate passion killer. Fuck her too, he thinks, and lets out a snort of laughter. The Senator, Mon Mothma, glances down at him then and there’s a little smile there now, something more like calm. She can’t know, of course, what he is thinking so he simply says aloud “Fuck you too,” in response to whatever filth she had just let slip, and it seems that at that they both feel better.
***
She lies there, reeling. Her body is trembling again but this time with aftershocks and the spent sobs of her catharsis. My back will be killing me later, she thinks, absurdly.
She knows they will be moving on soon. He has just been muttering about that. There is a radio here, apparently, hidden in the kitchen. He needs to signal Kleya. He uses the name, knowing that she will know it. She wonders how he knows that. Who knows what else he knows.
Still, she feels she can ask one thing, one question about which she is genuinely curious. “So. You live on Yavin.”
He’s lying on his side next to her, leaning into her so as to stay on the narrow couch. His breathing is still a little fast, his cock, lips and beard still slick with her. One hand is resting lazily between her thighs, his fingers warm and rough, his thumb casually stroking at her folds. He smiles. “Yes.” Something a little darker then, flittering across his features. “But this will be a one-time thing.”
“I know,” she says. But even as she says it there’s the slight tang of disappointment and even a little hurt at the implied rejection, even though she knows that’s an absurd thing to feel.
Then he looks away, withdraws his hand and his attention just like that. “Time to move on,” he says again, and she supposes that it is. They dress awkwardly. She is even tempted to turn away, to hide what he’s already seen. Nonetheless, he helps her back into the coat and at that they exchange the smallest of smiles, and because his is small she feels that it is likely to be genuine.
She can walk unaided the short distance to the rickety stolen airspeeder, can get in without the need for his guiding hands and perhaps because he sees this he stands back this time. As they drive back to the expressway towards their final rendezvous presumably with Luthen and with Kleya she thinks again of what he had said as he had withdrawn after that first hungry bout, and rolled over and out of her… because it had seemed incongruous. She thought now that perhaps there was something more to it.
“I’m done,” he had said.
Now, why would he tell her that.
And so it is that even before their next encounter when he will haltingly tell her about his thwarted plans to leave all this behind, she finds herself thinking: No, you’re not; we are neither of us ‘done’.
Not yet.