She smiled and brushed her thumb across my cheek.

"The food was too fresh, darling. Nobody in Velham has bread that soft. I knew something was off about you from the first bag you opened. I just didn’t know what, and I decided I didn’t need to know yet. You’d tell me when you were ready, or you wouldn’t."

"That’s a lot of patience for someone who ripped a vault door off."

"I contain multitudes."

I laughed, really laughed, and she laughed with me.

Then her expression shifted, it turned softer. Something almost uncertain in it, which on her face looked wrong, like a language her features didn’t usually speak.

"I owe you something back," she said. "For this. For what you just did."

"You don’t—"

"I do. But here’s the problem." She took my hand, slow, and threaded her fingers through mine. "I can’t. Not yet. Not because I don’t want to. Because I can’t remember."

I went still. I couldn’t understand what she meant by that.

"My memories are messy, darling. There are holes in them, big ones. Whole years I can’t account for. I know I’m strong. I know how to fight, how to move, how to break a man’s ribs with a shove. But I don’t know where I learned any of it. I don’t know why I was alone when I found you."

Her grip on my hand tightened, just a little.

"I’ve known something was wrong for a long time. That’s part of why I spotted you so fast. I recognised the look. Takes one to know one."

"Zero..."

"But here’s the thing. Since you showed up, since I’ve been around you, pieces are coming back to me. Slow. Little flashes. A name I didn’t know I knew. A face. A room. I don’t have it all yet, and I’m not going to lie to you and fill in the gaps with guesses."

She lifted my hand and pressed it against her chest, over her heart, and I could feel it beating steady and strong under my palm.

"So I’m asking you to be patient with me. The same way I was patient with you. When I remember, I’ll tell you. All of it. Every piece. I promise."

"Zero, you didn’t even have to—"

"I wanted to." She smiled, and it cracked into something watery at the edges. "You trusted me, sugar boy. That’s not a small thing. I don’t take it lightly."

I pulled her in and hugged her, my arms around her and her face against my shoulder and the faint shake in her breath that she was pretending wasn’t there.

"We’ll figure it out," I murmured into her hair. "You and me. Whatever’s in those gaps, we’ll find it."

"Mm." Her voice was small. "That sounds nice, darling."

"You’re allowed to be the one being taken care of sometimes, you know."

"Don’t get used to it."

"Wouldn’t dream of it."

She pulled back after a long moment, sniffed once in a very undignified way, and immediately glared at me like I was the one who’d made her do it.

"If you tell anyone I got emotional in a bank vault, I’ll break your ribs."

"Who would I tell? You’re my only friend here."

"...That’s very sad, Lukas."

"I’m aware."

She laughed again, and the tension in the room broke like a clean snap.

"Alright. Enough feelings. We are rich and surrounded by rotting paper and I refuse to die of radiation poisoning in the middle of a romantic moment. That inventory of yours, pack everything in it."

We got to work.

I pulled open the inventory screen in my mind and started stacking gold bars. Each one vanished with that same weird magic-trick feeling, the air closing around empty space where a very heavy brick of precious metal had been a second ago. I got through the full row of forty-three and started on the smaller half-kilo bars.

Zero loaded the silver into a canvas sack she’d liberated from one of the Black Snake corpses. Then the jewellery case. Then a few of the sealed deposit boxes we cracked open with the sword. Most were empty or had useless paper. Two had more gemstones, loose and unset, which went straight into the inventory.

The alloy bar and the wrapped key stayed in my inner pocket.

By the time we were done, the vault was picked clean of anything worth the weight, and my shoulders ached just from the mental load of cataloguing it all.

...

We started back toward the stairwell.

The corpses of the Black Snake crew were where Zero had left them, and she stepped over them without breaking stride. I followed. Somehow it felt easier on the way out than on the way in.

Maybe because my pockets were heavier and my ribs were lighter.

We were two blocks out from the bank, back in the slightly-less-murderous air of District 11, when Zero broke the silence.

"So."

"So."

"Harem novels."

"Oh no." I have a bad feeling about this.

"Oh yes, darling." Her grin was audible without even looking at her. "You said it yourself. Wish-fulfilment brainrot for insomniac men. And what is the number one feature of wish-fulfilment brainrot for insomniac men?"

"I don’t want to answer this question."

"Many women."

"Zero."

"A harem of women, some would say."

"Please."

She stopped walking. So did I, because I wasn’t an idiot. She turned to face me with that slow, unrepentant smile that meant I was about to be thoroughly cooked.

"Tell me, sugar boy. When you write your little wish-fulfilment stories, how many ladies does the protagonist usually end up with?"

"...Varies." I scratched my cheeks and answered.

"Range."

"Like. Three to, I don’t know, many."

"Many." She nodded in understanding

"Many is a word I said, yes."

"Mm-hmm."

She started walking again, arms swinging, very pleased with herself.

"Here’s the thing, darling. I’ve been thinking about it."

"That’s never a good opener from you."

"You’re going to be travelling. Back and forth. And you’re a cute boy with trust issues and fresh bread, which is a very devastating combination, and you’re going to meet women. On Earth especially. Pretty ones. Smart ones. The kind that carry business cards."

My stomach did a small, suspicious flip, "...Why do you say it like you know something."

"I don’t know anything. I’m just saying. Statistically."

"Statistically."

"Statistically, you are going to end up with at least one wife on Earth. Probably more. And you know what, darling? I’m fine with it."

I stopped walking again, too shocked by her words. "You’re fine with it?"

"Completely fine." She turned, walking backwards now so she could face me, her hands laced behind her back. "I’m not a possessive little thing, Lukas. If some clever Earth girl wants to share my sugar boy, she can earn her spot. I’ll even be nice. Probably."

"Probably."

"Ninety percent nice."

"That’s not a comforting number."

"I don’t offer comfort, darling. I offer terms."

She was grinning, enjoying herself far too much, and my chest was doing something complicated. Because under the teasing there was an actual offer, and under the actual offer there was something rarer, which was a woman telling me she wasn’t going to make me small to keep me.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

So I did the only thing that felt right.

I caught her wrist, pulled her in, and kissed her.

I cupped the back of her neck and kissed her like I’d been meaning to for a while and had just finally gotten around to it, and I felt the exact second her smugness cracked and her hands came up to fist in the front of my jacket.

When I pulled back, she was the one breathing harder.

"Terms accepted," I murmured against her lips.

"...Oh."

"What, no comeback?"

"Give me a second, darling, you short-circuited me."

"Noted for future reference."

Her cheeks were actually flushed. I filed that away as one of the greatest victories of my life, top three, right under killed a D-rank and ate a full meal that wasn’t instant noodles this week.

"Come on." I started walking, tugging her gently by the hand. "Let’s get home before anything else decides to show up and ruin our moment."

"Mm." She fell in beside me, quieter than before, still a little flushed. "Home."

"Home."

The word sat nicely between us the rest of the way back.