“You don’t mean that,” Danae said.

“What, that we’re awful? We are, Day. Ammer didn’t say it, but I know why he didn’t want to press charges against mom. Not because he was forgiving – though he is, Day, he is – but because he couldn’t. I could press charges against mom, for damaging my property. That’s sick. And he knew, and I know, that it would make him look like the weak one. Remind everyone that in the eyes of the law, he’s not a person, he’s a thing. My thing.”

“Inna…Ammer said it himself. He trusts you. And he’s on Avalon right now – you encouraged him to go. A record in a computer…don’t let that define you. He doesn’t.”

“It’s not that,” Inna said. “It’s…I knew. I knew mom was…I thought, when she said she wanted to talk to Ammer alone, I should grab him and go. But he said it was a good idea…and I let him. I should have…I could have grabbed him. Taken him. Would have taken a second. And he would have been safe. He would have been okay. It’s my fault. I left him with mom. Hells, I brought him to dinner in the first place.”

“You didn’t think it would turn violent,” Danae said. “Mom never hit us. She’s obnoxious and verbally cutting – ‘Danae, you like drama, but when will you look into more sensible pursuits.’ But she never hit me.”

“She slapped me,” Inna said. “Right before dinner. When I called her a racist. I should have known then….”

“You called her a racist? Wow. Like…to her face?”

Inna’s lips twisted into an involuntary smirk. “Well, she was being a racist. She called Ammer a shaar a few minutes later, so I slapped her back.”

Danae’s eyes went wide. “You…and she didn’t kill you.”

“Just tried to kill Ammer. I should have grabbed him.”

Danae looked out the window, and back at her sister. “So why didn’t you?”

“Don’t know, Day.”

Danae looked out the window, then back to her sister. “Yes you do.”

“Huh?”

“Yes. You do,” Danae said. “You said it yourself.”

* * *

“So you think it’s a bad idea, me being with Inna?” Ammer asked, as they headed back toward home, Ammer carrying the bag of baklava, bread, and other baked goods. “I mean, because she’s a Titan?”

Thio chuckled. “Not at all, Ammer. If your namesake had shown the slightest interest in me, I would have dated a Titan myself, and you may or may not exist. There’s nothing wrong with dating a Titan. Still, I think you’re right to worry.”

“Because she’ll see me as…well…a human.”

“No!” Thio said. “Not at all. She’s not the problem, and you know that, deep down. The problem isn’t her. It’s you. Because you’ll see you as a ‘human,’ as someone less valuable, less important. And unless you can get past that, you’ll manage to destroy the relationship on your own – it won’t be up to Inna.”

Ammer simply sighed.

“Tell me, Ammer, did Inna’s mom give you an out, or just try to strangle you immediately?”

Ammer chuckled. “She offered to send me to Avalon.”

“My, what an offer. Well, why didn’t you take it? Don’t misunderstand – I’m not saying, ‘Why didn’t you leave Inna?’ I get that. But why didn’t you pretend to accept it, and then when Inna showed up, and you had back-up, only then decide against it?”

Ammer shrugged. “I was stupid. Didn’t think about her attacking me physically, and I was damned if I was going to agree to leave Inna.”

“And if you had thought about it? Would you have agreed then?”

Ammer shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” Thio asked, though Ammer knew it was not because his father questioned the reason. “Politically, it’s the expedient thing to do. Feign compromise until you can get to a more secure position.”

“Yeah, it is. But….”

“But what?”

Ammer sighed. “But some things, you don’t compromise on. Damn it, I’m a person, and I’m not going to agree to give up innanae. I will leave only if she asks me to leave, and I won’t be happy about it then, but….”

Ammer trailed off. Thio let him, and kept walking.

“I’m a person,” Ammer said, finally.

“Yes, you are.”

“And sometimes, you have to stand up for yourself, your personhood…no matter the cost.”

“But why? I think if Xene was a knife-wielding maniac, you would have tried to placate her.”

“There was no placating her,” Ammer said. “Not as long as she saw me as a thing. If I’d agreed with her proposal, I would have been admitting I was a thing.”

“So you didn’t.”

“No.”

“And you planted just the tiniest speck of doubt in her mind. Not enough for her to see you as fully sentient…but enough that she could see why Inna does.”

Ammer stopped dead. Thio took a couple more steps, turned, and smiled.

“You’re scary good, dad,” Ammer said.

“Thank you,” Thio replied. “I have worked hard to be so.”

Ammer shook his head. “So I challenged Xene to kill me so she wouldn’t kill me?”

“That’s part of it,” Thio said. “The other part is that you knew she might still do so. But you said it yourself…some things are worth standing for, no matter the cost. You’re a person. You’d rather die a person than live a thing. It’s a dangerous position to take, but one that makes me immensely proud to call you my son, and I suspect, one that makes Inna immensely proud to call you her boyfriend. I expect that if this incident has changed anything about her feelings toward you, it has strengthened them. She will want you back if you want her. And if I am wrong, well…I will personally pay for the flight back if she rejects you.”

Ammer smiled. “Well, let’s hope I don’t have to take you up on that. I guess I need to get my head fixed, don’t I?”

“We’ll work on it,” Thio said. “I have faith in you. And even though it’s bending ethics…there’s a PTSD survivors group session I coordinate, they’ll be meeting tomorrow. After your first session with Garel, I’d like you to stop by.”

“Oh, I don’t want to disturb your patients.”

“It’s a very old group, and they’re used to it. Besides, there are a couple people in it who I think you could benefit from talking to. If, that is, you’d like to.”

Ammer smiled. “All right. It’s that or listen to Daphne complain about how she was an age-extended kid, and so I grew up so much faster than her.”

“Poor kid has to go to med school with her old man, give her a break,” Thio said.

“See, that there is definitely reason to complain,” Ammer said.

They walked on a bit further, before Ammer said, quietly, “I love you, dad.”

“I love you too. And I mean it, Ammer…I am tremendously proud of you.”

* * *

For the first hour or so, Xene and Utu worked in relative quiet. Weeding real loglup was time-consuming, back-breaking labor; the weeds that survived the bots and biocides grew right next to the plants, and while they did little damage most of the time, if they got too close, their root systems would mingle, killing the plant. Of course, fresh-grown loglup was a very expensive crop, and while simulated, printed loglup was widely available, it just wasn’t the same. The time it took to weed was worth it and then some; this plot of land’s harvest would be worth close to what she earned as a lawyer, even after you dealt with shipping costs.

It hadn’t taken her very long to get back in the swing of it; she’d done this for 12 Archavian years before she went to school; every Nuvokorafian fall, she’d gone out with her parents and Utu and pulled weeds. She’d hated it as a kid, but she found she rather enjoyed it now; it was familiar and satisfying work. She wondered, idly, why she’d ever left this planet. She remembered desperately wanting to get out of here, wanting to be something more than a farm girl.

Well, she’d accomplished that, for what it was worth.

“So you didn’t come a hundred light years to pull loglup choker. What’s going on, Xee?”

Xene smiled at her brother’s directness. “Well…it’s kind of a long story. I did something I’m not very proud of, and Fodis walked out on me.”

“Cheated on him? Xene, you’ve gotta tell a guy before….”

“No, no. Not that. I…Inna fell in love with a human.”

Utu laughed heartily at that. “That all? Isn’t she a bit old to be fooling around with a human? I mean, gorram,” he chuckled, “ain’t like nobody’s done it, but still.”

“It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t fooling around. She…he’s her boyfriend.”

“What are you talking about, ‘boyfriend?’” Utu said. “Thought you said it was a human.”

“It is. He is. She met him – he works in Tuaut, in the legislature. He’s chief of staff to one of the minority whips, Loona Armac.”

“That fruitcake. Well, that makes sense, then. She’s got no understanding of what made this Empire great. So you kill him?”

“Almost,” Xene said, softly.

“You didn’t finish the job? Gorram, Xee, it ain’t hard. We had some a few years ago, stealing loglup. Gathered ‘em up, put ‘em in a bag, dropped ‘em in the creek. Done. You’ve gotten soft.”

Xene looked at her brother in shock. She’d forgotten that side of farming. Forgotten it entirely. “They’re…you know, Utu, they’re thinking about making them full citizens. Like the Avartle or Dunnermac.”

“Felgercarbers. That’s when things went wrong, you know – when we gave in to the Dunnermacs. All downhill since then.”

“What’s wrong with the Dunnermacs? I work with two at my firm. They’re very skilled.”

“Oh, they’re smart, but they aren’t us. They should stay in the Great Ocean, where they belong. Tell you, Xee, you’d know this if you hadn’t gone off to Archavia. A Dunnermac couldn’t to this,” he said, gesturing to the silgas field in the distance. “Avartle couldn’t. Ler couldn’t. And a human sure as hells couldn’t. Only Titans.”

“All of them farm, Utu,” Xene said.

“Not like this.”

Xene started to reply that yes, Ler farms were exactly like this, and Avartle cultivated trees, and the Dunnermac had controlled plankton blooms, and they said the humans on Earth and Avalon had farms that were identical to Titan ones, but for scale…but she stopped. Because suddenly, it all came flooding back, all the thousands of conversations she’d had with her father and brother and mother, all of their certitude that only the rural colonial life was true, was real. Utu had gone further, but it was in the same vein. The sense that country life was important, and city life was decadent.

She had grown up believing that, until the day she asked herself why she believed it. And that was the day she realized that she only believed it because she hadn’t seen more.

And that was the day she resolved to do so. To not be stuck in her family’s mindset.

“So did Fodis leave you because you couldn’t do it?”

“No,” Xene said. “He left me because I could. Because I almost did. And he was right to.”

She had gone off to college, and though she was bright, she was a bumpkin. She’d never been off of Nuvokorafia; now she was in New Trantor. It was overwhelming, but she’d fought to make it. She’d worked her tail off in class, and though she was naïve, she endeavored not to be. She’d found friends who helped her learn the ropes, worked her way up the social ladder assiduously. She’d lost her gruff Nuvokorafian drawl – not quite Federationer, but almost. She’d thrown herself into the worldview of the social climbers, learned to emulate it. Learned what careers brought status and money, what careers brought respect. She’d endeavored to make it in the cultural center of the Empire, and to make it big. And she had.

“Huh. Weak. You’re better off without him.”

She held the weed in her hand, frozen in mid-pull. She could see it clearly now. She had wanted to leave this world behind, to see the larger world. But she hadn’t. She’d been so focused on making it that she had thrown possibilities aside, from the moment she set foot on New Trantor. She hadn’t transcended her narrow agrarian upbringing; she’d traded it for a narrow upper-middle-class life, one with different presumptions, but presumptions that were questioned no more than those she’d grown up with.

She hadn’t grown. She’d just been transplanted.

“I don’t think I am, Utu,” she said.

“Gah, you don’t know what you are. You think you’re such great stuff, like your shaka don’t stink. Look down on us farmers, eat food from a factory, but….”

“I don’t look down on you, Utu,” Xene said. And for the first time in her adult life, she meant it. “This isn’t the life for me, but it is for you. You’ve done well for you and Sala and the kids. And you’re happy, right?”

“Very happy. You still would be, too, if….”

“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be happy if I had stayed here. But that doesn’t mean that leaving here made me happy, either.”

“Well, you moved to the city. No wonder.”

“Moving to another colony wouldn’t have helped. I made my mistakes, but I think I understand why I made them,” Xene said. “You can pluck weeds, but more will grow.”

“Huh?”

“Weeds,” she said. “You can pluck them, but more will grow. Now, sometimes you have to pluck them. But over in the fallow field, you let them grow, don’t you?”

“’Course. Good fertilizer when I till it.”

“Right. I tried to pluck all the weeds from all the fields, even those that weren’t mine. Tried to make everything into my vision of what it should be. It can’t be done.”

“What the hells are you talking about?” Utu said, stopping his weeding and looking at her.

“I’m saying that I’ve been trying to direct Fodis’s and Inna’s and Dae’s happiness, and it isn’t mine to direct. They have to live their lives, they have to find what makes them happy.”

“Even if they’re rutting with a shaar?”

Xene’s lips twitched. “I’m not saying I like the idea,” she said, yanking free the weed from the ground. “But mom and dad still don’t think I should have left for Selana, and neither do you. But they let me go. They didn’t track down Fodis and hurt him. I think it’s a mistake. But it’s her mistake to make. And if the laws change, and humans become people, then it will be no different than her marrying a Ler.”

“You’d let her marry a Ler? Emperor’s testicles, you’re a gorram idiot.”

Xene looked up at her brother, and sighed. “Utu, I love you. You’re my brother. I want to talk to you and mom and dad more than I have been. But as your sister, let me tell you, your racism is unbecoming.”

Utu shook his head. “Not racist. Just the way it is. Ler and Titans can’t have kids. That’s why it’s wrong.”

“Well, if that’s the metric,” Xene said, “then you will support Inna. There’s at least one confirmed human-titan hybrid, and there are rumors of several more. She can have kids with Ammer.”

“’Ammer.’ Won’t be any nephew of mine.”

“That’s too bad,” Xene said. “But that’s your loss. If I am lucky…if I can find a way to make it up to him, and to her…maybe he’ll still be my grandson, or she’ll still be my granddaughter.”

Utu shook his head. “Gonna go groveling to a human.”

“No, I’m not. He already forgave me. I’m going to go groveling to my daughters and my husband, and maybe they will find a way to forgive me, too.”

“You should bring them out here,” Utu said.

“At some point, I will,” Xene said. “But if you don’t want a knife in your throat, don’t tell the story about drowning humans again. And if you don’t want me to call the imperators, don’t drown humans again. It’s already illegal, Utu, and that’s for a reason. They aren’t things. They aren’t shaars. I’m not saying they’re Titans, but you shouldn’t just toss them out like garbage.”

“Hmf,” Utu said. “I’m just protecting my property. If a Titan was stealing food, I’d do the same thing.”

“No you wouldn’t. Even here, that would be murder.”

Utu sighed. “Yeah, it would. All right, if I find them again, I’ll take them in to Nuvodebga and turn ‘em into the imperators’ office, they can do what they want with them.”

Xene nodded. “Thanks.”

“Still think you should have killed this little bastard, though. Dating your oldest girl.”

“Maybe,” Xene said. “But Inna would never forgive me, and like I said…she has to figure this out on her own.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

“No,” Xene said, pulling another weed. “It doesn’t.”

* * *

“What did I say?” Inna asked, not moving.

“You wanted to grab him. But he said it was a good idea, to talk to mom. So you didn’t. You let him stay.”

“Right, and let him get hurt.”

“Don’t you get it?” Danae said, “You let him stay. You didn’t stop him, or grab him. Pull him out of there without a discussion. You say Ammer’s a person, and I believe you. If he’s a person, wasn’t it his choice?”

Inna shook her head. “I’m supposed to protect him.”

“No, you’re supposed to love him. I mean, protect him when you can, but tell me, if you pick him up, and go, what does mom think of him? What does he think of you? And if you can do that…what do you think of him?”

“He would have been safe.”

“At the cost of his dignity. I haven’t met Ammer more than a couple times…but he cares about his dignity, doesn’t he?”

“Only because it’s so fragile here. Because so many don’t see it at all.”

“Yeah?” Danae said. “That’s true. But you do, Inna.” She followed her sister’s gaze out the window. “You may be right, a lot of us are stupid. I have been. But Ammer…he’s smart as anyone I’ve met. Rolled with mom and dad just fine. Stood up for himself to two people as big as that building over there. Dear God, that has to be terrifying, but he did. That’s tougher than any Titan I’ve met. I get why you love him, really. And I get why he wants to come back to you.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you don’t see him the way most people do, not even people like me, who are trying. You don’t see Ammer as a human. You see him as a person.”

“I let him get hurt.”

“Fine. You screwed up! But erred on the side of protecting Ammer’s dignity. You showed him respect. You let him make the decision. He screwed up too, and neither of you really screwed up, because nobody expected mom to try to kill him – she’s the one who actually screwed up, this is her fault.”

“Maybe,” Inna said. “But that wouldn’t matter much if he’d died.”

“He didn’t. And Inna, you know Ammer better than me, but my guess is if you laid out these two scenarios, side by side, before dinner – well, he’d probably suggest it was time to go, but if he had to pick one…he’d rather go down fighting, wouldn’t he?”

Inna sighed. “Always.”

“That’s dangerous, but it’s his decision, and you let him make it. I know why you feel bad, Inna…but you shouldn’t.”

“It’s not just that, Day. I’m so much like mom. You know it. I mean, what if I….”

Danae just laughed. “Inna, you act like mom sometimes, but you are nothing like her on the bad stuff. When I told you I was thinking of acting, what did you say?”

“I think I said you should.”

“You said, ‘outstanding, and just ignore mom.’ And I have. And I may not want to be an actress…but if your kid someday wanted to be? Inna, you’re dating a human. You knew that could cause whispers. Could have affected your career. But you did it anyway. Because Ammer was more important. Mom always worries about the stuff that doesn’t matter. You’re better than that. I hope I am too.”

“You are, Danae. And yeah…if I lost my job tomorrow…I’d be okay if I had him. I just…I don’t want to have him if it hurts him.”

“Inna,” Danae said, putting an arm around her big sister’s shoulder, “that isn’t your decision. It’s his. And for both of you, I hope he’s able to get healthy and come back home, very soon.”

* * *

One human day later….

Ammer’s head was swimming a bit after the appointment with Dr. Garel, and he was mentally exhausted. She hadn’t wasted time; she’d begun guided visualization immediately, which meant he’d spent much of the last two hours reliving the moment Xene had snatched him up, with the rest spent working through EMDR.

He was tired, but oddly, he felt better. Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt like he’d been making progress. Oh, he wasn’t cured, but he was hopeful he would be. He needed to get there; the campaign started in a month, and he needed to be back for it, and Inna…he wanted to be able to prove to her that he wasn’t broken by this. That Xene hadn’t won.

He walked through the campus of the University of Atlantis, moving through it without conscious effort; years later, it was still familiar as anywhere on Avalon or Archavia. He had been meeting just off the campus at Dhantnee Memorial Hospital; now he was headed for the medical school, where his father had taught as long as he was alive.

He was tempted to break off and head for Rixie’s; he was much more in the mood for beer than more talking about the worst moment of his life. But his dad hadn’t suggested this by accident; if he wanted Ammer there, Ammer would be there.

He took the elevator up to the fifth floor, and walked down to the classroom his dad had mentioned; he thought, for a moment, about turning and heading to his dad’s office, which was up on the ninth floor, but he forced himself to enter the room.

“There he is,” said a somewhat familiar voice, as the door opened.

Ammer froze, and blinked, and blinked again.

Four people were in the room; his father was not among them. That said…these were not any four people. The three men and one woman who were sitting there were…well, calling them a “Who’s Who” of Avalon would be selling them short.

Ammer dealt with the Floor Leader of the Empire on a regular basis. He’d met the Emperor more than once. But this…this still gave him pause.

“I know, we’re intimidating as hell,” Alex said. “Sit down, please.”

“I may be in the wrong place,” Ammer said.

“No,” Nick Archer said, “unfortunately, this is the right one.”

“We put this group together…well, a very long time ago,” Zhan said, handing Ammer a glass of bubbling liquid. “All of us…we’ve found it helps to have support, when things get tough.”

Ammer looked down at the drink in front of him. “When things…still? After all this time?”

“We are old,” Alex said.

“No, it’s not that…it’s just…I mean, I know enough history, I can guess at root causes…it’s been years, for all of you.”

“Yes, well, it would be nice if that made a difference,” Dia Velos said, shaking her head. “Unfortunately….”

“Unfortunately, it’s always gonna be with you,” Alex said. “I’m sorry, it’s depressing, but there it is.”

“The good news,” Nick said, “is that with support, it doesn’t have to master you. The four of us are proof of that, as are the rest of the people in the group.”

“The rest….”

“A few dozen, total, on three worlds,” Alex said. “Not everyone could make it; Darren wanted to, for example, but he’s in the middle of a project for the military, couldn’t shake free. Sends his best, though. A lot of us are busy, which is why having a wide membership is good; rare we can even get four of us together.”

“I’m honored, I think,” Ammer said, pausing before he sipped the soda. “This isn’t….”

“No, it’s a soda from Earth. Coca-Cola. Ted Martínez sent it with my son last time he was there. Forgot how much I missed it. It’s terrible for you, by the way, but it won’t give you the insanity like Titan sodas will.”

Ammer sipped the drink. It wasn’t bad. A little acidic, very sweet. “Pretty good.”

“It is. Don’t get too attached to it, though,” Nick said. “For one thing, it’s extremely bad for you, and for another, it’s probably about a thousand credits a can.”

“I’ll try not to. So…what now?”

“What now,” Zhan said, “is that we ask if you want to talk about it.”

“Not really. I just got out of a therapy session.”

“Fair enough,” Dia said. “Do you mind if I talk a bit, then?”

“Not at all, Madam President,” Ammer said.

Dia sighed, and looked down for just a moment. “As you know, I’ve got the boring story. All the people who assaulted me were human.”

“Doesn’t make it better,” Zhan said. “And it doesn’t make it boring. And Dia, it doesn’t make you weak.”

The former President of the Council of Avalon smiled. “You know, it’s funny, because I almost always know that. But last week…well, I had that flicker, you know.”

“Too well,” Nick said. “What triggered it?”

“Not exactly sure, to be honest,” Dia said with a shrug. “One minute I’m getting on the train to Napata, the next I’m forcing myself to breathe. Leedya thought it might have been the tunnel out of Carey Station – reminded me of the basement of my parents’ house. Doesn’t matter. What’s stupid is that I feel stupid about it. I mean…I’m not the little girl who got shot with an arrow. I feel like I should be able to get over it at some point.”

“Well, yeah, but you went through a lot,” Ammer said. “A lot more than I did. I mean, given what all of you have been through….”

He stopped. “I almost started listing it off. Gorram, I’m the one who feels stupid. For one, you don’t need to be triggered, and…well…I got attacked by my girlfriend’s mom. You guys got attacked saving Avalon. It’s a bit different.”

“Not really,” Alex said. “I mean, I just got beaten up by an obnoxious heiress. If you’re measuring what we went through, Zhan had it worst, and he’s the most stable of all of us.”

“Maybe,” Zhan said. “I think Dia had it worse, to be honest, but it’s not a competition. And getting beaten up by your girlfriend’s mom is nothing to be ashamed of, especially when she’s the size of a skyscraper.”

“Keep telling myself that, and I kind of believe it, but….”

“But you still feel out of control. Like the second you go back, any progress you make will be gone.”

“Yeah,” Ammer said. “Xene…she looks so much like Inna. And I just…it was hard around Inna. It was hard to settle myself. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It’s why I came back here. I want…I don’t want her to trigger me. I don’t….”

Ammer suddenly found himself sobbing. After a few minutes, he felt a hand on his back, gently and securely supporting him. “It’s okay,” Nick said. “And it’s scary. You don’t want it to rebound on those you love. I know.”

“It’s…it’s silly. I know Inna wouldn’t hurt me, ever, but…I can’t make my mind get there. I want to.”

“It wasn’t easy with Brinn,” Nick said. “And there are still times she’ll do or say something – she’s nothing like Trell, but they were still sisters. There are times an expression or a turn of phrase pings that part of my brain that…that part of my emotions that Trell got to. It’s always gonna be there. I’ve learned not to let it master me. I’ve learned to trust my husband and wives to help when I need it. And sometimes I need it. Sometimes it’s a bad day, and I just need to go into the city and deal with humans, or just go hang out with Sophia for a bit. Not often, not every day, or every week, or even every month. But sometimes.”

“Does Inna love you?” Alex asked, bluntly.

“Yeah,” Ammer said. “Absolutely.”

“Then she’ll help you, and she’ll understand. There are times Rixie triggers me. And she feels worse about it than I do, but she also loves me, and so she and I have worked out over the years how to handle it.”

“You’ll both learn, and make no mistake, it will take time for both of you to learn,” Zhan said. “She’ll have to be patient with you, and even though it sounds weird…you’ll have to be patient with her. If she loves you, she’s trying. You’ll have to help her understand that her triggering you isn’t something she did wrong. It’s just something that will happen.”

“You guys make it sound awesome,” Ammer said with a sigh.

“Yeah, well, 98 percent of the time, it is,” Alex said. “Like I said, look around at the four of us, all of us have done okay for ourselves. And that’s true of the extended PTSD family. But it took work to get here, and that two percent…well, you learn to work through it. And if you have trouble, you have people you can talk to. People who have been through it.”

Ammer nodded. “I…that helps. I’d like to think it could be cured, I was letting myself think that, but…my dad always said, you don’t cure mental health issues, you manage them.”

“Exactly,” Dia said. “You can manage this. And all of us will support you.”

Alex handed Ammer a small slip of paper, with contact information for two dozen people, from Ted Martínez on Titan Station to….

“Nonah Armac?”

“She was raped by a Titan, who tried to beat her to death,” Nick said.

“Damn.”

“Exactly.”

“So…this is amazing, and I’m grateful. But I have to do something to repay you all,” Ammer said.

“When you’re better – and when you’re ready – you add your name to this list,” Alex said. “And if someone suffering from PTSD comes to your attention, you let everyone on the list know. You meet with them if they’re willing to, you tell them what we told you, and if someone reaches out to the group and says they’re in a bad place – we all have commitments, but you make sure that if someone hasn’t picked up their pad to reply yet, and you can, you do. And if someone needs to call you up and laugh or cry or talk…you do.”

Ammer nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be happy to…I probably will be doing more reaching out for help in the short term, but….”

“You will, and that’s fine,” said Alex. “And every one of us has reached out to the group for help, more than once. You will too.”

“We’re in this together,” Dia said. “It helps.”

Ammer sighed. He’d been thinking about being cured. Stupid. No…no. Not stupid. Naïve, maybe. But not stupid. Xene had hurt him badly. Of course it would leave a scar.

But a scar is mostly healed, and if it occasionally bothers you…well, you get help when it does.

“Thanks,” he said, quietly. “I really…I appreciate it.”

“And look on the bright side,” Alex said. “Dia ended up president of a whole world. Nick’s a respected doctor with a gorgeous family of 794 kids and 67 spouses. Zhan’s literally married to God, and me…well, I’m marrying the perfect woman, and I have the best kids in existence. If you manage to do half as well, you’re going to have a very good life indeed.”

“Damn right,” Zhan said. “Now, anyone have anything else? Anyone need to talk about anything?”

He was greeted with silence; he smiled. “All right. Well, if that changes, call. And don’t forget, things said here are said in confidence.”

“Right,” Ammer said. “I know how these things work. It’s a safe space. We don’t share anything, even who’s in the group, right?”

“Right,” Dia said. “But you’re in politics, Ammer, you know how to keep a secret.”

“Yes, Madam President, that I do,” he said with a chuckle. “What’s one more?”