"I mean, I don't confuse her with other people," Steven says. "Maybe I see a little of her in people—" Carly. Connie. Even Armin. "—but that's— different. But the thing is... well. You've got to know by now that I'm no more a... normal, reasonable human being than you. I mean, Jack claims guys like us are normal in his future, but back home? Not at all. So my entire life I've had to learn how to fake it. And I'm pretty good at it."

He shakes his head. "Charley was a lot closer to normal than me, but she was still... more like me than most people. So she was the only person I didn't fake normal with. Like, I even did it with our parents.

"But, you know, with all the shit that's happened since I've got here, I've been... trying to be less fake with everyone in the Rockets. But I barely know how to stop faking it. All my experience with that is with her. So... it's just. Fuck. Easy to slip into the same patterns I had with her. Even though the kind of things people will take from you when you're their older brother are a lot different from what they'll take when you've only known them a month."