She watches as the small flame from her cheap plastic lighter casts flickering shadows over the noble lines of his face - how the smoke curls from his lips as he stares off into the distance. From the corner of her eye, she considers his profile, handsome and familiar. How is it that they always end up in this place? Unwilling to take anything back but unable to move past it either.

“...You want to know the truth?” she asks after a moment, “I wasn’t convinced you’d actually do it until your mouth touched mine.”

It has been her, the other times. When the Porter gave him back. When she’d confessed her secret name. That day they sat on the back porch, waiting for the world to end.