With the hunger subdued as it was, my waits were hardly the chore they had been in the past few days. In fact, I almost found them peaceful, and I took advantage of the fact that the gaps were growing between my waking and her reappearance. I rested my head against the bars of my enclosure, with my hands folded in my lap and my eyes closed.

My thoughts were not nearly as dark, either. I remembered when I had been alive, there were days that hunger had drawn me to irrationality, but after a warm meal all had seemed new again. This was like that. Similar but not quite the same. Stronger. All my experiences were stronger now, as if being able to endure and not die made the experiences their own threat instead of a warning. I could experience pain beyond measure and not die. I could be hungrier than I’d even been in life and not starve. I could need things without the promise that I’d ever receive them but without the promise that I would die without them.

Well. So perhaps my thoughts were dark even now.

I was distracted from my mind’s wanderings by the familiar scent of her blood, though it was less unwelcome and less tempting than it had been. I felt no less overcome by emotion at the sight of her, though. My loneliness was another need that had not waned. If anything, with my physical needs met, my desire for connection had only gotten stronger. I heard a soft swishing with her approach and opened one eye slowly to see her standing just beyond the bars, wearing a sage-green dress. My other eye snapped open in a bit of surprise.

It was modern in style. I wasn’t up to date with the fashions of the time, but even when I had been in a higher sort of society, I had been on the fringes of rapidly evolving trends. Whether it was fashionable or not, the dress was lovely, clearly of a fine material. It looked out of place on her, I will admit. Her face was streaked with tar and sweat, and while the dress fit her better than the oversized shirt she had been wearing before, it still hung loosely off her. She was not as full in frame as she had been when we boarded. I tried not to think about that and focused on what she was waiting for me to comment on.

“Where did you get that?” I wondered, and she shrugged.

“It’s Mrs. Statler’s. I hadn’t a thing that was near this nice. I suppose she’d have wanted me to wear it—nobody else is going to, you know?”

“I suppose that’s true.” I thought for a moment about what I would say next, but couldn’t keep my first thoughts from escaping my tongue. “You look lovely.”

She laughed at that, and while the sound was a mite harsh, a smile lingered even when the laughter had died. “I look a mess. My hair’s gone. I haven’t bathed, I’ve barely slept.”

“Alternatively, you could be wearing the scraps of the clothes that you died in, and you could be soaked ten times over in your own blood,” I pointed out. “Out of the two of us, you’re certainly the more lovely.”

“Well, when you put it like that …” She sniffed, and I cast aside a glance to see that the musket was not in her hands at all this time. It sat alone on the crate, not abandoned or unnoticed but also not in her anxious grip. She followed my gaze and sighed when she saw where it rested. However, she did not address it. “I think I would look a bit less unseemly,” she said, “if the dress were fastened properly.”

“Is it not?” I asked.

“”Not hardly. It has ever so many buttons all up the back, and I can’t quite reach. I was wondering,” she hesitated, pinching some of the skirts and rolling them between her fingers before she started again. “I was wondering, perhaps you could help me?”

I blinked. “Oh?”

“Well, just quickly. If you think you’re able.”

So I had not misheard. This was quite the deviation from our previous interactions, I thought. Unless she truly didn’t see me as just a threat anymore. I would not be foolish enough to assume that she no longer saw me as a threat at all but I also hadn’t let myself assume the least. I hadn’t dared. But here was a chance, then, to truly prove to her that any trust she had worked up was well-placed. I nodded slowly. “I could.”

“Good, then.”

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She picked the musket back up before she turned her back to me, which was to be expected. I almost would have thought her stupid if she hadn’t. Then, she took a step back, just slightly closer than she’d ever let herself be before without the gun separating us. Just within my reach. I put my arms through the bars and found that my fingertips could brush the fabric of the dress. When they did, she inhaled a little—not a sharp gasp, but a moment of registration.

I drew back. Waited a moment. When she had relaxed again, I tried once more. Even though she stiffened a bit, she stood still as my fingers worked the buttons, pulling each side of the dress together and fastening them one by one. I made sure to keep my pace steady and slow out of fear that I would startle her.

Her back was bare underneath—as I fastened the final button, my skin touched hers. I was reminded, all at once, how warm a man ought to be. How warm I wasn’t. I drew away almost out of shame as much as surprise.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

“I am,” I answered, pulling my arms back through the bars. She turned around and I saw that my efforts had made a world of difference. She looked less haggard now that the dress fit her better. There was an expression of relief on her face, and she took a step further away from me. When the expression of relief morphed into a smile of genuine giddy joy as she swished the skirts, I found that even as my heart could not beat, it was more than capable of fluttering.

“Tell me I look lovely again, I think this time I just might believe you,” she teased.

“You do look lovely,” I replied, trying with all my might to convey my sincerity. When she laughed this time I could not detect any undertone of bitterness.

“I suppose I might! Thank you, Mr. Cort,” she said, and made a big show of trying to curtsy with a musket in her hands.

“You’re quite welcome, Ms. Carmen.” I stepped back from the bars to return her curtsy with a bow. “You seem in bright spirits this evening.”

“I’m doing my best,” she said, and her expression fell a bit. She took a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “I must, mustn’t I?”

“I suppose so. I’ve been telling myself the same thing.”

“What a dreadful position we’re in, don’t you think?”

“Indeed.”

“I think, then,” she looked at the musket, again seeming to wander a moment before returning to me. “I think perhaps we needn’t make it any more dreadful, don’t you agree?”

My eyebrows knit together as I wondered whether I’d allow myself to imagine that she meant what I hoped that she meant. “Please, elaborate.”

“I mean, you’re rather secure in there, aren’t you? And I’ll still have this with me, won’t I? So perhaps … perhaps I’ve been a little cruel to you, don’t you think?”

I wondered if my behavior the night before had brought on this change. It hadn’t been my intention—I knew she had been hesitating, but I wondered if it was out of guilt more than a true sense of trust. And yet, if the dress had been a test—a test I had passed—then perhaps I could believe that this agreement was something we could both find agreeable.

“I don’t think you’ve been cruel,” I told her. “I might have thought so for a moment early on. But I couldn’t call you cruel now. I could call you scared, or shrewd, or even wise.”

“Then do you think I would be unwise to stop?” she asked.

I considered that. “It is in my own best interest to say that no, I do not think so.” I opted for an attempt at lightheartedness and was relieved when it was met with a smile.

“I’m afraid I don’t completely agree,” she said.

“Then you’ll shoot me again, after all?”

There was a pause that felt an eternity long. And then, “No, I won’t.”

When she said that, relief that I hadn’t allowed myself to even really hope for washed over me in droves, and I slumped a bit with the weight of it, pressing against the bars. “Oh,” was all I could find it within myself to say.

She was watching me quietly. When I looked up at her again, I saw sympathy in her eyes. That relieved me, too. She cared to have sympathy. She cared to let me live, even just for a night. I lowered myself to the ground and lay back in the straw. Her expression turned from sympathy to confusion.

“What are you doing?” she wondered.

“I think I shall have a nap,” I replied cheerfully as I closed my eyes. “I haven’t slept in at least a week, you know.”

She was silent for another long while. If it weren’t for the fact I could smell her, I might have thought she’d left. “You haven’t?” I heard her whisper eventually. It was said so softly I wondered if I was meant to hear it. I thought about answering, but what was there to say? I could hear the guilt in the whisper. I did not want to make it worse. I decided I would pretend I had not heard it at all.

Eventually I heard the footsteps softly fade as she left me alone. I wondered if she had believed what I had said about finding her wise and brave. I wondered if she knew that every time I tried to hate her for what she’d done to me, I remembered how that thing had killed me, how it killed the others. I remembered that I was very capable of those very same things now. And with that, I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t possibly.

I could only thank her for sacrificing whatever security my death gave her, and letting me sleep instead.