Work Text:
He was so giddy with relief and astonishment and all the blood pooling in his head that he accidentally let slip one truth he'd meant to hide.
"You're beautiful!" He'd meant to say wonderful, or brilliant, or anything, anything else.
At least she didn't notice.
He let her keep the Z. It was her mother's, and he could see the echo of the kid's living face in the woman's dead one. There was no selling that. It would have been too much like selling the kid.
He had to keep reminding himself that she was still just a kid—the only pure, innocent thing he'd ever seen in this whole damn city. Maybe that was why he couldn't stay away. She glowed in the darkness like a vial of premium Z in a dark room, the only light in a lonely world. A beacon, showing the way to something new—a new world, a new way of living… a new home.
He watched her pause in the open door of the tomb, eyes finding him unerringly where he crouched in the jumbled gloom of the graveyard.
"Well? Are you coming?"
He rose, and crossed the street, and followed her inside.