Revner studied her from across the table. Twenty years ago. Already? She had been here once before. Did she remember? She had been so little then. Her father had come in apologizing, saying, "Sorry, the babysitter couldn’t make it this week."

"Katya," her father had said, kneeling down by the raven-haired little girl whose hand wrapped so tightly around his pinky, "Say hello to Mr. Revner for me."

She had looked up at him, her eyes bright, but penetrating, even then. He had seen that she was special immediately. For a girl as young as she was, six, was it? -- seven? -- she had been remarkably silent, still, and even ruminative as she'd stayed by her father's side that night, around this same oak table twenty years ago.

And even then, he could see that her placidity was not the usual kind. It was not a passive silence that contented itself with being ignored; instead, it demanded thoughtfulness, it asked for reflection, and ultimately, inspired others to possess the same careful introspection that Katya herself seemed always to be immersed in.

She was still silent, now, looking down at the documents and the tablet screen he had put before her; her hands cupped around the glass of red wine which she had quietly accepted and not yet touched.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, getting up and walking to the refrigerator. He pulled out a plate of canned ravioli and sniffed at it before he put it in the microwave. As it began to hum in the background, he walked back to the table and pointed at one of the papers, "Look," he said, "the results from the bite marks came back inconclusive. No animal DNA." He waited for her to say something and when she didn't, he said, "You don't seem too surprised."

She shrugged and looked past to another document. It was a list of names.

"What's that?" he asked.

The microwave was beeping. Revner walked back over and popped the door open. It was still cold. He shut it again and let it hum for a little longer.

She shook her head slowly, "These unmatched DNA samples..." she said, handing the list to him as he came back over.

He scanned the document but couldn't see anything immediately abnormal.

"There are too many. We have too many samples. There are more unmatched samples than there are unmatched names on the personnel count. Which means we have at least two or three individuals--"

"--who we weren't expecting to be there," he finished her thought.

She watched the recognition come to him. "You think it's the wolf handlers."

His eyes jumped at her. The wolf handlers? Had he just heard her say that? Was it just a coincidence? Had she meant something else? No. He saw it in her tranquility, that she had meant it exactly as he had heard it.

So she knew.

"Oak Hill and--"

"--Mansfield," he said, naming the incident that had earned him his Distinguished Service Award.

The honor had always felt slightly dubious. He hadn't served or saved anybody; he had barely saved himself. Or was it precisely because everyone else had died, that the Agency felt his being the lone survivor was, in and of itself, worthy of note and commendation?

"Those reports are all classified. Even above your access level."

"I learned from the best," she said, but there was a heaviness in her expression, and her eyes soon drifted down and her lips pursed together again. "You're afraid they're back. The dire wolves -- as you called them -- and the men who unleashed them, who controlled them."

He stood quietly as he heard her words give voice to the truth of his fears.

"You were there," she said. "At both of them. Why didn't you tell me?"

He sat down to consider this.

The obvious answer was that it truly was classified beyond her access level; classified beyond his own, even, except that he had been directly involved. The fact was those incidents didn't exist, and the very acknowledgement of their existence would have put at risk his job and his career, and hers as well.

"Oak Hill was probably their first operation. Sloppy. I was assigned to investigate, and there was one there, waiting, observing. I was lucky and escaped, but they had me marked and made already. I didn't know it at the time. But when I went to Mansfield -- Mansfield was supposed to be something else entirely. They tracked me down and came for me, and took the entire town out in the process.

"We never knew why they stopped. We were glad that they did, but we never found out where they came from, or why...." he trailed off, not quite sure how else to answer her question.

Because, the simple fact that it was classified couldn't have been the real reason, or at least, not the entire reason. Because he was human and he could make choices. He could choose to obey his orders, or he could choose not to. He had, somehow, made a choice, and it had been to put her -- his direct report, his protegee, his charge -- in danger without arming her with her greatest and most necessary weapon: Information.

As he thought of it now, he wondered how he thought that that was okay. How had he justified it in his own mind?

Katya had been looking out the window for some time now. As Revner turned to see what she was looking at, he realized that it had turned dark outside, and that the windows showed only their reflections against the shadows of the night.

It still didn't make sense. He knew he would never willfully put her in danger unless there was a great need for it. Even now, when he framed the issue like that, he said no, no, no -- every time. So what was it then? Was it for their careers that he so wanted this case to be successful? Because he wanted her to succeed against these monsters when he had only run away? Was he just doing his job, for the G.C.N., its safety and security?

Now, it occurred to him to wonder: Were any of these things what Katya wanted? He was not a selfish man. But perhaps, he had been a self-centered one.

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The microwave had been beeping for some time now, but only now did they hear it. Or maybe she had heard it this whole time, and it was just his senses, dulling again, unfocused again, that had him ignore it.

He brought the plate over and sat back down.

He tried to remember what they had eaten that night. He remembered her sitting there with the fork too big in her hand, her fingers wrapped around the entire thing like it was a baton; red sauce all over her lips and chin.

"Spaghetti," she said, breaking the silence. "You made spaghetti for us once, here."

So she did remember. She looked up from the table. But she wasn't looking at him. Maybe she had for a second, but she wasn't now. She was looking off somewhere, to the seat to his right. And she smiled. She smiled for the first time that night, with a warmth that radiated across her entire face. Somehow, it saddened him, its very presence reminding him of how accustomed he had grown to its absence.

How did things ever get to be this way. How was this their lives now, that he had forgotten what happiness looked like upon her face?

He put his fork down and gently, after a spell, said to her, "Katya, how are you doing?"

It had been so long since he'd said those words. It was almost hard to ask.

Her eyes flashed and now they were dark again, looking off, still, but to a different place in her memory altogether.

Slowly, hesitantly, she began to speak, "I went to visit my father. It was raining. His headstone was so black; it looked as if the rain were droplets of ink." She shook her head and looked down at her glass. "All I could think about was the boy I had left in Warrentown.”

Revner began to speak, “It’s okay, Katya. I went through your medical debrief and psych eval. It was just procedure. Your return clearance has already been approved--”

Katya ignored him. "All I could think about was how he laid there. He was dead. I knew it. There was no way he could be alive, no way to survive what had happened to him. But he didn't know it yet. He looked at me like he wanted me to tell him something. He wanted to know, 'Is this real? Did this happen to me?' And now he knew. He knew, without my telling him, and in that moment of understanding I could see the despair in his eyes. All of his hopes were in that instant undone -- but he wasn't ready, he wasn't ready.

"It wasn't his time yet. How could it be? There were still things he needed to do, things he needed to say -- to tell his mother he loved her, to tell his father he would miss him, to tell his brothers to stay out of trouble, to tell his best friend, his boss, his ex -- how he would have done things differently next time. But he couldn't. There would be no next time. And none of them were there with him, anyway.

"Only I was.”

Revner’s eyes narrowed.

"He was alone, with me, and now he was embarrassed. He didn't want me to see him like this. He didn't want me there. Who was I? Had I seen him naked before? Had I witnessed him helpless and blind before? Would I love him, even now, ugly and distorted? Yet, he needed this. He wanted to be held, to hear a voice -- any voice -- say to him that it was ok, that it was alright. He wanted to feel warmth -- just, someone else's heat against his. Something to say that he was still there. Some last flicker of human connection before the meaningless Absurd consumed him. He just didn't want to be so alone.

"So, so, so alone. He was going to die and he knew it now. And it was ok. It's ok. It's ok. It's just cold. Just lonely and cold."

Her eyes, unflinching, she said, "And I didn't -- didn't anything. Didn't hold him, didn't touch him, didn't even speak to or look at him. I did nothing, except leave him. Dying alone."

A vice tightened somewhere deep in Revner's chest. The last time he had seen her like this was when they found her father's body. She was so like him, devoted entirely to her work; to the Agency. He had taken her hand then, but now, watching her like this -- fraught, frail, and for the first time in a long while, uncertain -- he felt powerless.

"Katya," he whispered, finally, "It's not your fault. You had nothing more to do. You acted perfectly. You were the perfect Agent."

The perfect Agent who never left a case unresolved. The perfect Agent with the perfect record. That was why he had charged her with insubordination; not because of some trivial lack of obedience, but because there was no other way to force her to rest, even when she was on the verge of collapse, as she had been, driving deliriously into the deep Appalachian ranges.

All throughout, she had been staring down at her glass, as if the reflections in the somber, red wine in front of her bore some secret that her soul had long hidden away. But now, she turned to him -- to her mentor and guardian -- she looked at him, her eyes questioning with dark intensity, for she sincerely did not know: "What is the point of chasing monsters if, in the process, we become one ourselves?"

In that instant he realized why he had made his choice -- his choice to follow protocol, to withhold information from her when asked to; his choice to pursue the G.C.N.'s interests over everybody else's, including hers, including his own. Because his choice would have been to tell Katya to quit, right now! His choice, if he had had the courage to make it, would have been to tell her to stop, leave, and disappear. Go, start again, do something new, but get out -- just as he wished he himself would do.

But he didn't, because he never stopped to ask the right questions, and in so doing, he chose not to choose at all.

Katya had always had good instincts. She always knew when to reassess her position and when to question her assumptions. He had seen this at a tactical level everyday in the field, and now he saw it at a higher level, perhaps the highest.

She had possessed the wisdom to ask what it was worth.

And he couldn't help but smile a little now. All of this because of one boy. How many boys had Revner left dying. And how many times had he asked why?

---

As he waved and watched her walk out to the waiting cab; as he shut the door, slowly, only after seeing her duck in and the taxi pull away; and then as he sat back down at the table, with all the papers and pictures still there in front of him, and with the white porcelain plate smeared with pasta sauce and his fork, lying face down in the middle of it -- it was in that moment that he recalled something she had said that night.

It was after she had noticed the unmatched samples on the list. After she had brought up the handlers. After she had seen that he had withheld the truth from her, even as he had convinced her to continue her investigation without full knowledge of the danger ahead of her. And even after seeing him faltering tonight, seeing him hesitate to give her more information again; although this time, because he didn't want to goad her further into the case. But she didn't see that. She didn't see him try, one last time, to pull her back from the path he had pushed her so far along on -- a path which he had never questioned until tonight, when she showed him how. A path that he then knew she wouldn't have the experience or clarity to deviate from by herself. All she saw was his helplessness, his inability to alter the course he had already set in motion.

Still, she had said something to him.

In a whisper, as if she were lost in the memory of that night twenty years ago, she had said: "It was truly remarkable what you did. Everything you've accomplished, and everything you've done for me -- I appreciate it. You are the reason why I'm here today."

Maddeningly, he had had to smile. She had said it so sincerely, with genuine admiration, as the child, the six year-old with her father's bright eyes and her mother's dark, black hair, her hands clasped around the spaghetti fork. She had no idea how bitterly it tore at him to hear those words, splashed like acid across his face.

He was not proud of who he was or the things he had done, the masters he had served or the causes he had unwittingly advanced. He didn't blame them. It was their job to use him, and it was he who had let them. But his greatest crime had been Katya, for in his ignorance, he had dragged her, innocent and naive, down into the pit with him.

He was ashamed. But regret and guilt weren't enough to absolve a lifetime's lack of questioning. It was too late for penance, but not yet too late to start anew.

So he lit a match, and flicked it. And as he looked back one last time at his cabin -- his home, his life, and now his past--engulfed in flames, the orange tongues flicking upward at the stars above, his thoughts turned once more to Katya. There was nothing more he could do for her now. He had tried to persuade her, but she didn't understand. Not yet. She would have to take this last step herself. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too late.

He smiled, genuinely this time, as he turned and walked into the dark silence of the night, where he would wait for her, patiently, on the other side.