"It seems like you do lots of... crimes... so she's the person I know who does the most crimes who is definitely not connected to the cult in any way."

.............that's fair.

What an incredible qualification. He almost wants to laugh.

......Concerning! But okay!

Zoe is kind of relieved that there is someone here who is better at doing crimes than she is. She's a hobbyist at best and that has not been sufficient.

Winning smile.

Okay, hello new criminal friend. So what... kinds of crimes... do you get up to... that is so not the way to ask that question. "So what is it you, uh, do?"

"Nothing you need to be particularly concerned about. I would say that I handle... reconnaissance. Good to know what one's enemies are up to before you determine how best to handle them, isn't it."

"Well. We could definitely use better stealth."

"I see. Mrs. Winston-Rogers hasn't given me all of the specifics, but I understand that you're investigating a cult of some kind? They eat someone you care about?"

Zoe shifts uncomfortably.

This is absolutely not intended as a pun.
 
 

"Yes."

He's not planning to elaborate on that.

Araari is not really talking. She is mostly just standing there while her eyes dart around looking for anything dangerous. Her back is firmly pressed against a wall so nobody can sneak up on her. This was perhaps not the ideal moment in her life for her to go to a foreign country for the first time.

And they catch Anita up on what's happening.

The radio CANNOT bring Oswald back to himself. He cannot connect with the lyrics. There is something he's disconnected himself from and he can't look at it head on because he keeps flinching away from it and all of his feelings are very shallow and it's much harder to sink into music when you can't sink into anything.

Oswald goes to the library. The first time he went to this particular one was with Lev, just after they got back after -- everything. It felt like a place outside of time, then. A place outside of an increasingly broken reality, full of color and light in a way not particularly related to anything visually apparent. It still is, now, in a way, even here by himself. It makes him feel at ease.

Being with Lev does not, exactly make him feel at ease. It feels paradoxical, even though it makes perfect sense, that Lev is mourning and Oswald is twisted up inside and this isn't good for being able to find comfort in one another. And lately their time together seems eaten up by preparation and training, which is useful and good but it's not exactly stress-free.

Slowly, Oswald learns how to lie better. He works on his stammer and tries again to figure out his body language (with a much less scary source of advice than before) and plans out stories in advance since he can't make them up on the spot and lies, casually, pointlessly, almost habitually at some point, at the library and in stores and to people on the street, just to see how often he can pull it off. It's exhausting. He's getting better at it.

Magnificence spends more time working with his camera. He still wants to be good at it, because it was the last thing Anemone got for him, and he could tell that it was very important. This time, he thinks he's gotten a little bit better at it since he started, and he feels really good about that. He's going to be a little more prepared for things in the future.

Once Araari adjusts, New York is--nice. It's cold, too cold, and she spends a lot of her time inside and still shivering from it, but it's--free of memories.

She has her good memories: her netela, her mother's spindle, her crucifix necklace. They don't help like she's used to them helping, but they're--better than anything else would be. The rest of her memories are left in Ethiopia with everything else. She hides the first aid kid where she cannot see it and is grateful for once that she owns very little.

She finds an Ethiopian Orthodox church. It's less fancy than what she's used to, which is a surprise, because it seems as though everything else is much fancier in New York than it was back home, but it's--nice. People speak Amharic and Ge'ez. She takes communion. It feels almost normal. She had missed this, more than she realized.

She's not--happy, exactly, but she's not jumping at shadows anymore, and she can talk about what happened without going into a panic.

Agravaine is still having nightmares; Mordred doesn't get a lot of sleep. They're neither of them at their best and that -- makes sense, right, it's not like anyone would be at their best right now. Mordred wants desperately to be able to say I'm sorry I'm doing this to you and I'm sorry I'm putting you in danger and I'm sorry I'm worrying you but he's not, he has already decided this was worth it, it would be empty words and they would both know it and it wouldn't help.

He tries to not think about it, to work on invented grammar and vocabulary for a world that never was or is, and instead it just reminds him of that conversation with Louise Fauche and all he can think about is what's going to happen when they're in Malta and how on Earth he's going to keep everyone alive.

So instead - he reads. Not books stolen from the cult but Sinclair Lewis and Bertrand Russel and the books that he read over and over again as a teenager, the books that made him someone who will fight the whole world because it needs fighting.

It's still not perfect. But it helps a lot more than pretending nothing was happening helped.

Zoe spends a lot of time in New York at the shooting range, and makes trips out of the city to unpeopled areas to practice things they won't let you practice at a range. She's not going to be the one to put the clues together, but she can be the person who keeps those people alive. She practices shooting moving targets, shooting while running, shooting from moving vehicles. She envisions herself in different scenarios, rushing in to fend off whatever is threatening the others, saving the day. She tries not to think about how malaria is not the sort of thing you can shoot.

Anita spends time with her family and her boyfriend. She practices sneaking into places she shouldn't be; it looks like this team is going to need it. 

When Agravaine gets off work and finds Mordred in his apartment, they hug and then Agravaine says, ".....are you taller?"

"....I. had not actually noticed. I might be?"

Agravaine steps back and looks. "You are definitely taller. Do they put some really good vitamins in the food in Ethiopia?"

"Maybe??"