The relief is draining out of you now that you've both landed, but your heart's only beating faster. You're crouched on the ground where the dirt turns to mud, holding him halfway against you as he struggles to push himself up. You can barely see either of you, the moon's just coming up, but you can feel blood matting the side of his head and flowing from what's left of his arm - bare dull white bone below a ragged tear of flesh. It's already soaked the ground beneath him and leaks through your fingers as you try to hold it back.

He groans and curses as you steady him next to you, but when he finally looks you in the face something softens and grows bright again. "Can't kill me that easily, sweetheart," he says with a grin, punctuating with a barking laugh and a wave of the stump. Droplets of blood sprinkle your hair, and that isn't how it's supposed to go, not when he's been the one who saved you and your breath hitches in your throat as you catch it. If you don't do something you'll be covered in it, there'll be no blood left for him in his body.

You pull your skirt to your knees and tear, cloth still half attached as you tighten it over the ruins of his arm. You don't catch his exact words, but he's telling you you've got the right idea and uses his free hand - this one maimed and fumbling, not sure as it always is - to help tie himself up. Blood blackens white cloth, and your eyes start to well up - he's made it this far, he has to make it now, even if you can't stop it. His hand presses both of yours into the wound as the memory cuts.

Those last moments - were they his last moments? - are almost a parody of what she's asked for so many times, and the next time she sees Mort she's even shyer of looking at him than usual. She beckons him into a common room corner, not giving any signs of what she needs to know.

She doesn't understand what the sounds mean, but feels what the child associates with them. She doesn't understand the words above the mother's head, either, but this is no normal child, and feels a sense of what they do mean to him. There aren't many people who would have a mother who looked like that, and the almost too-literal logic makes her think of a certain face. He seems like he might have been indulged as a kid.

She doesn't come to Beyond about what she's seen, but does keep it in her heart. He's been lucky.

She's entranced by the drama until she feels him struggle to breathe and her own memories break through. No one's coming for him like someone did for her, and neither of them are ready to go and she feels Tommy lash out in fear and rage until it stops. She hadn't expected him to be that kind of man, and it makes her more comfortable with who he is.

There's one question left for her, though, something she has to resolve, and she hunts him out a day or so later, when she's no longer shaken.