"I've been a real piece of shit in the past." That's not so hard to admit; the tang of rosemary doesn't fade. It's packed into his filtration systems, burning in his nose, watering his eyes. "But I didn't spend my entire military career chasing ghosts."

He worked beside the hollowed-out shell of his best friend for as long as he had to, until it stopped being efficient. He rigged the bodies of old friends to explode, per fucking recovery protocol. He put a bullet in the skull of another, per his own fucked up notion of accountability.

But he can give himself this much: the dead were always just dead to him.

The only Allisons he had belonged to another man entirely.