Irina’s POV

She didn’t move at first.

Just stood there against the tree, arms still wrapped around herself, staring at me with those wide, wet eyes. Like she wasn’t sure I was real. Like she was waiting for me to disappear.

I cleared my throat. "Are you okay?"

Still nothing.

"Hey." I took a step toward her. "It’s over. They’re gone."

Something in her face cracked.

She lunged at me.

I didn’t process it fast enough — one second she was pressed against the tree, the next second there were arms around my shoulders and her face was buried in my neck and she was shaking hard, shaking the way you shake when you’ve been holding it together out of pure necessity and something finally gives way. She was shorter than me, which I hadn’t noticed before. The top of her head barely cleared my chin.

My whole body went rigid. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Every muscle locked. My arms stayed at my sides. Something in my chest lurched sideways.

*Push her off.*

The instinct was immediate. Old and deep and completely automatic, the same instinct that had kept me functional for a year inside that pack house — stay small, stay back, don’t let anyone get close enough to—

"Oh my god," she said into my shoulder. Her voice was muffled and unsteady. "Oh my *god*. You were — and then you just — and they *flew* — I thought I was going to—"

She pulled back.

Grabbed my arms with both hands and just *looked* at me. Her face was a mess — mascara tracked down both cheeks, lower lip wobbling, a red mark on her jaw from where someone’s hand had been. Young. Really young. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. She looked like someone who had never had a particularly bad day in her life, right up until tonight.

"You’re amazing," she said. Her voice broke on the last word. Her grip on my arms tightened. "Do you know that? You’re — I don’t even know what just happened, you just *appeared* and they just — you’re incredible. You’re my hero. Oh my god, you’re literally my *hero*."

I stared at her.

*Hero.*

Nobody had ever called me that before.

I wasn’t sure anyone had ever called me anything good before.

My mouth opened. Nothing came out. I closed it again.

She was still looking at me with this expression that I didn’t know what to do with — open and raw and completely unselfconscious about it, like gratitude was a simple thing that just lived on her face without any weight attached to it. Like she was used to feeling safe enough to show it.

"I —" I started.

I stopped.

*I didn’t do anything special,* was what I almost said. *I don’t know what happened to my hands. I don’t know what I am. I was just tired of standing still.*

Instead I said nothing.

She let go of my arms. Wiped her face with the back of her wrist, a quick, unsophisticated scrub that smeared the mascara more than it fixed it. Then she let out a breath that shook slightly on the way out, and when she looked back up she was almost smiling.

"Sorry," she said. "I just — that was — wow. Okay." She laughed, a small, slightly hysterical sound. "Okay. I’m okay. Are *you* okay?"

She frowned at me. A different kind of frown than the tear-streaked panic from thirty seconds ago — this one was sharper, more focused. She reached out and very gently took my right hand, turning it over in hers, and looked at the split knuckles with the expression of someone who had opinions about injuries.

"That needs to be cleaned," she said.

She looked up at me. Her eyes were dark — brown, I thought, though in the park light it was hard to be sure. She had a small nose and a pointed chin and the kind of face that probably looked younger than it was.

"I’m Mia," she said.

A pause.

"Irina," I said.

"Irina." She said it back like she was testing the weight of it. Then she smiled — a real one this time, uneven and genuine and still slightly damp at the corners. She grabbed my hand again, both of hers wrapped around mine. She grabbed like she’d known me for years. Like it was just what you did.

I didn’t pull away.

I don’t know why I didn’t pull away.

"Okay, Irina." She tilted her head. "Where do you live? Is it far? Let me walk you home, least I can do—"

"I don’t."

She blinked. "You don’t what?"

I looked at her. The question was simple. The answer was simple. I’d been saying it all day, in a dozen different ways, to a dozen different people who had all immediately stopped listening.

"I don’t have anywhere," I said. "I’m — I just got here. To the city. I’ve been looking for a place all day but nothing worked out, so." I glanced down at my bag, still hanging off one shoulder, the small worn thing with almost nothing inside it. "I was going to figure it out. Tomorrow."

Mia stared at me.

"Do you have anyone?" she asked. Her voice had changed slightly — softer, more careful. "Family? Friends? Anyone you can call?"

The laugh that came out of me wasn’t funny. It was short and flat and mostly just tired.

"No," I said.

Mia looked at me for one more second.

Then she grabbed my hand — my good one, not the split-knuckle one — and her grip was warm. Solid.

"Okay," she said. "You’re coming with me."