They don’t speak as they walk. Carver shoulders the pack and breathes cool, clear air, and he thinks about how he carries Dulcinea in his pocket and how he used to carry Matthew on his back. When the weight felt like something he could always bear no matter how long they marched or how hard things got.

It changed somewhere in the middle, Carver thinks. He’s so tired, now. But he can’t ever say that so he doesn’t, he just follows alongside Rosita and marks the traps she shows him, the toll of survival and all the work it took to build this place into something worth having, worth fighting for. He was offered a room here once, but—

Yeah. He got tired that time too, didn’t he?

Carver just exhales. “I’ll take the one I picked.”

There are implications to that, things they aren’t saying and haven’t played out, but there’s no time. This is just happening, isn’t it?