"I do think Sophia could use a friend right now," I was told after we were conclusively separated.
Could use a friend, I noted, not needed a friend. There was no doubt about the latter, or at least there being a need for somebody's help, but there was a difference between having a need for something and being able to accept it and put it to use. Especially in matters psychological. It simply doesn't matter how much somebody is lacking something, like friends or socialisation or therapy, if they won't take it when people try to give it to them, or even if they try and simply don't have the right skills or mindset to use it properly.
You can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped. Or even somebody who does, but finds it too painful to take or thinks they don't deserve it. And considering accepting help would have meant dealing with people, it would have been understandable if Sophia couldn't face up to the prospect.
She probably still couldn't with a stranger, and I wouldn't bring anything about it up unless she asked me to, but it was good to hear that she was still up to seeing me.
It was a pretty fine distinction, Armsmaster's wording, but it was an important one.
"If you're feeling up to it, that is."
Or he could have just been giving me an out in case I couldn't face her.
I'll admit, I hadn't thought of that.
The concern was a valid one. I didn't have anything against Sophia, but she would undoubtedly bring unpleasant memories to the forefront even if she didn't actually do anything to trigger them.
Could I handle that?
Well, yes. My track record was fairly clear on that point. I was, at a minimum, capable of enduring that sort of thing if I had to, except under particularly extreme circumstances that this didn't rise to the level of. It sucked, but at least for now it wasn't unmanageable.
And on the off-chance I was wrong, Headquarters was about as safe a place to find that out as I was going to get.
It still wasn't the happiest idea I'd ever had by any means, but Sophia was worth the risk.
At the very least, I should let her know I was there for her. Let her say anything she needed to say, lend a shoulder to cry on. The basic "somebody you care about had a bad time" package. It would undoubtedly be insufficient for actually making things okay, but it was a decent place to start. Anything beyond that would depend on what she wanted, what I could manage, and just generally how things went.
It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something I could do.
If it was something Sophia could do, well, I'd find out.
After I finished talking with Armsmaster. People deserve basic politeness and care, after all, and he in particular had more than earned such consideration. And I didn't actually know where Sophia was. But mostly the showing basic consideration for his feelings thing.
I knew he was going to answer in the affirmative before I even started to ask if he was going to be okay, before I even nodded in acceptance of his gentle suggestion, but I wasn't asking because I was looking for an honest answer. Granted, I would have accepted one if given, even if it was unhappy, but mostly I was laying on another layer of "you know I care about you, right?".
And giving him another opportunity to be strong and reassuring and impressive. People generally like that, at least people who can pull it off, so long as they don't have to and it's not too much effort. Builds confidence, especially if the audience is appreciative.
I was. Quietly so, admittedly, but honestly and earnestly.
It seemed to work well enough on both our parts. He was big and tough and steadfast, I was glad for it, and he seemed pleased to have been of help.
I still don't know how much of his self-assurance was a lie. I'm honestly not sure it matters.
If he was lying, he was good at it. And clearly not thrown off enough to interfere with that. That didn't necessarily mean he was well, but he was probably doing better than I was. He was functional. Battered, perhaps, but by no means broken.
He would be okay, or at least a reasonable impression thereof.
Sometimes that's all you can ask for. Other times, you also get a box. This was one of the latter. Sometimes people can even be actually okay, but this was a little too soon for that.
The box itself wasn't anything special. It was one of the nicer sorts of cardboard, dyed a respectable black and laminated so it wouldn't immediately fall apart in the rain or anything, but it was still just cardboard. That wasn't the important thing.
Inside the box were a cell phone and a pair of boots. Both were very special, at least to me, though in different ways.
The phone was familiar: Ms. Phoneyface needed no introduction. She had, presumably, needed a certain amount of screening for whatever malware and spyware Coil had access to (probably a lot, whether or not he was directly involved in making or using it) but that wasn't my department.
It was just good to have her back.
The boots, on the other hand, were, in fact, my department, at least in the colloquial sense. I wasn't part of the PR department proper, and both as a parahuman and as a fourteen year old I couldn't be, but it was a professional interest of mine. And they were definitely very nice. They were approximately the same style as my old ones, but more than a little fancier, in a subtle graduation of darkish red and an almost corundumish shade that seemed precisely calibrated to match well with brass skin and their own not-quite-gold trimmings and clockwork decoration.
They fit perfectly. Better than any hard-sided footwear I'd ever worn, in fact. And they were tough: not merely steel-toed but subtly reinforced with metal throughout the entire boot, though the distinct "caps" were still the thickest part, and the covering material looked nice but felt like I could have taken a butcher's knife to them and not left any mark that wouldn't buff out. Easy to clean, too, if I was any judge, probably non-stick. I wasn't an expert in materials science, but it was impressive.
These were no ruby slippers, but I suspected they could nonetheless take me anywhere I wanted to go. Whether that meant a gala in the fanciest house in town or ministering to the wounded in the most wretched drug den in the heart of Merchant territory.
Or a charnelhouse. Literal or otherwise. Between the sheer amount of metal and the toughness and easy to clean nature of whatever was covering it they were about as close to ideal for kicking someone's skull in and wading through the remains as you could get without being obvious about it. But I was trying not to think about that.
All in all, they were very thoughtful. And extremely well designed.
I was about ninety-five percent sure that they were Armsmaster's handiwork, or at least something he had contributed to. Probably not Tinkertech, that was the sort of thing I'd expect at least a warning for and they didn't show any signs of it beyond the unrecognised-by-me material, but even beyond the fit they weren't the sort of thing you could just pick up at a store.
These were armour. Subtle armour, mind you, the sort that didn't advertise, but armour nonetheless. And in this town, nobody did armour better than Armsmaster.
I looked at him questioningly and received a nod.
"I didn't think you'd want to see your old boots again, so I bumped one of Jackson's concepts up the fabrication priority list."
I didn't. I hadn't realised just how repugnant the idea of it was until he mentioned it, but I very much didn't.
I hugged him again, once more. Words just didn't seem up to the job of communicating what I needed to communicate right then, but he seemed to get the message anyway.
When we parted, it was back to professionalism once more. I don't know if I could have left if it hadn't been, but it was. Thanks were given formally, polite but dreadfully standard farewells were exchanged, and a location was given.
And then I was off to meet the phase-Ward, the wonderful phase-Ward we'd (almost) lost.
I hoped she could use a friend.
