When you can't run, you crawl

Be a good soldier.

No matter how many men they lost, no matter how many battles they saw, that was the only way to push through.

Do the job.

Don't let the living down.

Mourn if you have time, not when you have time.

Zoë remembers every name of every man she put in the ground during the war and after. Hundreds. Men and women she fought beside, fought with. Men and women on the other side. Soldiers she shared rations with, blankets, foxholes, dirty jokes

hope.

They don't leave you, no matter if they were your zhì yǒu — close friends — or just the person you bled beside for an hour. They bind. They leave an epithet in your memory. You think of their names when you burn incense. You never forget. And, most importantly, you make sure you're a damn good soldier to honor their memory.


Time has passed since she put Wash in the ground; enough that the crew's back to something akin to rights, but not so much that the sight of Milliways doesn't make the hair on her arms stand on end. You could never see it if you were on the outside. She's as steady as ever. But, on the inside, she's poised.

Fight or flight.


(Fight.)


"Wēishìjì, qǐng," she says as she approaches the bar. The liquor appears in her hand as she sits, back to a corner and every exit visible. She'll take fifteen minutes to mourn.

And then she'll go back to doing the job.

"Xièxiè."