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She was quiet for a moment, studying my face. My clenched fists, the tension in my jaw, the way I couldn't quite meet her eyes when I said I couldn't do anything about it.

Then, carefully, "But you couldn't just walk away, could you? Not when you had the skills to help them."

I tensed. "What do you mean?"

"You're too torn up about this for someone who just followed orders and moved on." Her voice was gentle, not accusing. "Someone who really did nothing wouldn't still be carrying this much guilt. Which means you did something. You found a way."

Smart. Most people wouldn't have caught that distinction.

"I can't talk about classified operations."

"I'm not asking you to." She shifted closer. "I'm just saying I recognize someone who kept fighting even when they were told to stop. Because it was the right thing to do."

The validation hit harder than it should have. Nobody else had understood. My commanding officer thought I was being insubordinate. My colleagues thought I couldn't let go. Even Jase thought I'd just burned out from twenty years of operations.

But Katherine saw it. The impossible position of having the skills and knowledge to help, being forbidden from using them, and finding ways to do it anyway.

"It cost me," I said quietly. Not saying anything else. I couldn’t. Too many others were involved.

"Is that why you really retired?"

"I retired from the Army when I could no longer be of service, in any capacity.” I gave her a long look, hoping against hope that she would know to drop it.

She gave me a weary smile. “I get it. So you came here.”

"So I came here." I met her eyes.

Her smile turned mischievous and her hand found mine. “And now here you are, right back in the thick of things. You just can’t walk away from a person in need, can you?”

The touch grounded me. Her fingers were warm, soft, but her grip was firm. Certain.

"Not when they’re a yellow superhero. How can I resist?"

Katherine laughed, and it was a beautiful sound.

Something in my chest loosened. The weight I'd been carrying since retirement, the sense of purposelessness, eased slightly.

"We're quite a pair," I said. "You running from who everyone thinks you are. Me trying to figure out who I am without the job that defined me."

"At least we're lost together."

"Is that what we are? Lost?"

She considered it. "Maybe. Or maybe we're just in transition. Between who we were and who we're going to be."

"That's very philosophical."

"I took a semester of philosophy at Stanford before I realized I was never going to finish my degree." She smiled slightly. "Some things stick."

We sat there, hands linked, both processing what we'd shared. The vulnerability felt dangerous. I'd spent twenty years behind operational security and need-to-know restrictions. Opening up went against my every instinct.

But Katherine had trusted me with her fear about the deepfake, her loneliness, her sense of losing herself. And somehow she could see my own demons, and she knew when not to push.

Was she really as incredible as she seemed?

"One more round?" I asked, reaching for my controller with my free hand.

She understood. The shift was deliberate, necessary. "Yeah. But I'm not going easy on you."