"...I'll bear it in mind. In case it's ever merited."

They return to Assembly™ before it ends so that Pete can meet up with his age(?)mates and they can go to class.

Tom waves semi-ironically as he walks past.

Pete waves at him completely genuinely.

...he looks pleased.

...oh right.

"I feel like I should be explaining myself."

"You don't have to. The boys did tell me you... like him."

"That's... not exactly true but not exactly false either."

Susan's mouth works a bit.

"If you do feel like explaining, go ahead," she says, instead of whatever she was trying to phrase.

"...can you tell me? About..."

"He killed my friend. What more do I have to explain? I'm not the one with mixed feelings about him."

He flinches like he's been punched, and his heart starts racing. "I don't actually know what happened. That's not the story he told me but I—know that he's not even just biased, about this. But I don't actually know. Sorry I can—ask someone else if it's—"

Pete kind of wishes he could use Backchannel here but the thing about Backchannel is that it requires him to want to know what he wants to communicate? And he doesn't. Or, he wants her to know that he—knows what he's doing—but he's not sure he does, actually? Except by narrative fiat, and there isn't really any way to talk about that without going into how he's a Transfer.

He definitely can't say that he thinks he'll be able to bring her back eventually. Even though he will.

The anger drains out of her face; it was never really at home there. She shakes her head to clear a few tears. "No - no, I'm being completely unfair... you don't know, you wouldn't know. I'm just–"

She inhales. "I'm sorry. I'll tell you. I... don't think you'd get the whole story from anyone else, and I won't pretend I'm not biased either, but."

"Okay. ...I'm not sure if offering you a hug is the right kind of thing to do but, well, I guess I'm offering."

He kind of could use a hug, now, though that'd be selfish, since the reason he wants a hug is because he accidentally stepped on an enormous emotional landmine and upset her.