Re-l's fear vanished as anger boiled up in the pit of her stomach. Her hands, which had been gripping the rock tightly enough to be painful, loosened in preparation for a fight. Only the fact that she was on a very high, very narrow ledge prevented her from trying to punch Gabriel then and there.

"I like space," she said, her teeth clenched. "Something the people I knew before were perfectly capable of respecting." She shuffled a little further, but his final words brought her up short. She looked away, at the canyon, at the sky, anything to hide her face.

A guy? It was obvious what he meant, but Re-l didn't know how to answer. She'd been taken to soon. She had no clarity around Vincent. She knew how she felt about him, and she had a fair instinct for how he felt about her (not that he'd ever been very subtle on that score), but she couldn't make those pieces fit into a description like her "guy".

Still, memories of him flooded her mind. Vincent smiling, Vincent blushing, Vincent, the fights they had had and the moments that they had shared. In the background of all of it was the kiss she had given him, however duplicitous, and behind that the indescribable moment when Ergo had slid his thumb across her mouth.

"The people I'm going back to are no business of yours," she said at last, and her voice was unbearably thick for a moment.