The liaison’s expression remains admirably neutral. “Noted.”
“Keep the chamber available anyway.”
“It will remain available.”
We go through the rest—crowd separation points, emergency med station placement, civilian casualty family seating, liaison credentials, anti-harassment reporting channels. All the small practical architecture that lets grief occur in public without becoming prey.
When the call ends, the residence is fully dark except for the work lamp by the window and the city glow along the ceiling.
I stand in the half-finished room with the silence around me and understand, not for the first time, that I am no longer organizing movement toward war or away from scandal.
I am organizing a way through.
For families. For strangers. For her. For the child. For myself, if there is any self still left worth building around.
By the time I return to the apartment, my clothes carry the day with them—rain, machine oil, sawdust, and the metallic trace of structural fasteners handled too long. The lock cycles open. Warm light spills into the hall.
Selene is at the table again, because of course she is, one hand braced against the lower curve of her abdomen almost absently while she frowns at a casualty-disclosure amendment like it personally betrayed her.
She looks up when I come in.
“You’re late.”
“I was building cabinet latches.”
She blinks. “That is an insane sentence.”
“It is also true.”
I hang my jacket, cross the room, and set the memorial route slate beside her papers.
“Civilian liaison confirmed arrangements,” I say. “No military escort presence. Family corridor separate. Press barriers adjusted. There is an optional private waiting chamber you will hate on sight.”
She stares at the slate. Then at me.
“You handled all that already?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then, softly: “You did it through civilian channels.”
“Yes.”
Something in her face loosens.
Not because the memorial will be easy. It won’t. Not because the world has become kind. It hasn’t.
Because this, too, matters.
Not command voice. Not borrowed authority. Not rank clearing a path.
Choice. Process. Civilian hands building civilian safety.
She reaches for the slate. I reach for the kettle.
And the night closes around us, not peaceful exactly, but lived-in.
