Gideon looked over the edge once, then immediately stepped back. "We are very high up."
"Yeah," Nova agreed, with a laugh that was approximately sixty percent genuine confidence and forty percent not looking down again. "Totally fine with this. Totally."
"Are you scared?" Celia asked, with the grin of someone who already knew the answer.
"I'm not scared," Nova said immediately. He looked down briefly. His jaw tightened. "I just have a healthy respect for gravity. It's a real force. I take it seriously."
Gideon laughed quietly.
A little apart from the group, Sylvia stood at the edge with her back straight and her eyes on the horizon. The wind moved through her red hair and she let it, her expression doing something Lucas hadn't seen it do yet softening. Just a little. Just enough to be different from everything before.
"It's beautiful," she said. Quietly. More to herself than anyone.
Lucas looked at her. Blinked. 'She says things like that?' He looked away before she could notice he'd been looking.
Celia noticed. She said nothing, which was somehow louder than if she had.
Then Nova, clearly bored of standing still, picked up a small loose pebble from the edge of the ledge and held it out over the drop. Just held it there.
"Nova," Gideon said slowly.
"I'm just looking at it."
"You have that face."
"I don't have a face."
"You absolutely have a face."
Nova dropped the pebble.
They all watched it fall. It took a genuinely long time before it disappeared from sight. Nova stared after it with wide eyes like even he hadn't expected that.
"We are so high up," he said, very quietly.
"That's what I said," Gideon replied.
Celia covered her mouth. Lucas looked away and pressed his lips together. Even Sylvia turned her head slightly toward the sky like she was very interested in a cloud formation directly above them.
Nobody laughed. They were all extremely close to laughing.
It broke something open in the group some last remaining stiffness that the office hadn't quite finished off. They drifted into a loose circle without planning it. The wind kept going. Nobody was rushing anywhere.
There was something in the quiet between them that hadn't been there an hour ago in the waiting room, something easier, something that had been negotiated without words.
"Alright," Nova said, after a while. He extended his hand toward the center of the group, palm down. "We're all here. Might as well make it official."
Gideon looked at the hand. Smiled. Put his on top.
Celia rolled her eyes affectionately and added hers. "I can't believe we're doing the hand thing."
A pause.
Sylvia glanced at the stack of hands. Something moved across her face- just a flicker of hesitation, brief enough to miss if you weren't watching. Then she stepped forward and placed her hand on top without saying anything.
Lucas looked at the four of them.
Slowly, he reached out and put his hand in with theirs.
He didn't know why it hit him the way it did.
Maybe because he hadn't expected it. Any of it, not the acceptance in the office, not Sylvia's words, not the fact that he was standing on top of a tower with four people who had chosen to be here, with him, after knowing exactly what he was and wasn't.
He looked at their faces. Nova grinning at nothing in particular. Gideon calm and steady. Celia laughing at something Nova had said under his breath. Sylvia watching the horizon with that unfamiliar softness.
And something in him broke open.
Not violently. Not dramatically. Just the way a door opens when you've been leaning against it for a long time without realizing, and then suddenly you're not leaning anymore.
He thought about his room. In his past life. The one that smelled like damp wood and had a ceiling he'd memorized from staring at it too many nights. The rejection letters that had stopped surprising him. The hunger he'd started treating like background noise. The way he'd gotten so used to being alone that he'd stopped noticing it was lonely.
There had been no one. Not like this. Not people who stayed.
His vision blurred.
He noticed it a second too late- warmth on his cheek, tracking down, gone by the time he raised his hand to find it. He stared at his fingers.
"Hey." Nova's voice. "Lucas?"
Lucas blinked. Looked up. Found all of them looking at him with varying degrees of concern.
"Are you..." Celia tilted her head. "Are you crying?"
"Crying?" He laughed, which came out slightly unsteady. He pressed the back of his hand to his eye quickly. "No. It's the wind." He dropped his hand and looked at them. "Wind's bad up here. Really gets in your eyes."
"The wind," Nova repeated.
"The wind," Lucas confirmed.
A pause.
"Are you sure?" Sylvia said. Just that. Direct and simple, no performance in it.
"Yeah." This time his voice was steadier. He looked at her, then at the rest of them. "I'm good." He smiled. And it was different from the smirks and the dry half-grins he'd been giving all day, this one came from somewhere further in, somewhere that hadn't seen light in a long time. "Better than good, actually."
They looked at him for a moment. Then Nova grinned. Gideon's expression settled into something warm. Celia smiled the way people smile when they understand something without needing it explained.
Nobody pushed further.
The wind kept going. The academy spread out below them, small and distant. Somewhere down there were cadets who had doubted his name on that screen. Somewhere out there was a family that had opened a door and pointed him toward it.
Up here there were four people who had put their hands in with his.
His fingers tightened over theirs, just slightly.
'I like them,' he thought, simple as that.
'I don't want to lose any of them.'
The wind carried it away before he could say it out loud. But he meant it the way you mean something you've decided on quietly, completely, without needing anyone to hear.
'I'll do anything… To protect them.'