"My extended family kicked me out. They said I was too much trouble, that I wasn't even human enough to waste money and a room on." And she's carried those words around her like a shroud all these years, the chum caught in her net, the debris in her orbit. She believed them, and that's why it took her until she was twenty-something to allow people into her heart.

What she denied herself all these years! It's like being able to hear when before only existed deafness, and it's hard to process and easy to cherish everything from the squealing of metal on metal to the sweetest symphonies.

"Two cyborgs and a black hole in a dystopia. Never thought we'd find normal." She rubs her thumb over Jet's knuckle, for a bit, letting his and Albert's words sink and letting them draw a morning she can wake up to, until she stiffens.

"No, I really don't feel well. I think I had too much." She pats Albert's chest. "Put me down."