"I don't plan to."

I leaned forward and put my face in my hands, breathing deeply.

"Christopher – "

"I'm all right, Lucas," I said. "My head just hurts a little. I don't know what to ask next."

"You don't...really have to ask anything, if you don't want," he said hesitantly. "We don't even need to talk about it again. I just wanted you to know, so that you'd....know. Like I did before. It's just important to me."

"I'm not important, though. I'm just a shopkeeper."

"You're my friend. Everyone likes you, but you picked me. You didn't push me out, anyway."

"Nobody in town pushed you out, Lucas. Charles made you Fire Man. That's an honor."

"But they don't talk to me."

"You don't talk to them."

"I know that!" he said, frustrated. "I don't know how."

"All right." I shook my head. I didn't have the energy to have a fight. The mask was heavier in my hands than I thought it would be. Beautiful, weighty – a real thing, that Lucas had made, that held some part of him.

"You knew what it would be," I said, looking down again at the sharp, pointed ears, the haphazard pattern of blacks and grays and whites. "You always knew it would be a dog."

When I looked up, his eyes were fixed on mine. He nodded slowly.

"Everyone loves a dog," he said.

I wasn't sure I understood, then, but there was only so much I could absorb in one night. That he had succeeded in what I thought was madness, that he had somehow stopped my own heart's attempts to kill me, that he sat in front of me afraid I was angry with him – these things I was managing, but not much more. His bare toes tapped anxiously on the floor.

"You're barefoot," I said.

"Yes," he answered. "It doesn't work with shoes on."

I tried not to laugh hysterically. "It doesn't work with shoes on? What kind of ridiculous logic is that?"

"I don't ask. I don't question. I'm not like you, Christopher. I want to think there's wonder in the world. It's just hard for me to find."

"I'm fully capable of appreciating beauty," I said.

"It's not quite the same thing," he replied, and there was an almost bitter twist to his lips. "It doesn't matter."

"The ice," I said. "You walked on the snow."

"It's all tied up together. The winter and the weather and this. I don't pretend to understand it, really."

"You did it twice," I said, hardly listening. "Once after the blizzard – and then again when you were – "

"Nameless," he supplied. "Nice name, by the way."

"You've been working on this for months."

"I said I was. You wouldn't believe me. I'd already done...some things," he said, suddenly looking guilty. "When I blew out the circuit-breakers, I told you that. And when the thaw came through so you could go to Chicago. And um. I mean, I didn't mean to do it. But the storm, sort of."

I stared. "You can't seriously be taking credit for a blizzard, Lucas."

"You saw the news reports after. Nobody knew it was coming. Nobody expected it. I was so angry with you." He twisted his fingers together. "Can I have my mask back?"

I held it up and he rose, taking it quickly and sinking back into the chair, hands spread possessively across it. I watched for a while as his fingers smoothed and re-smoothed the grain of a soft, fuzzy piece of gray flannel set over one eye.

"So what now?" I asked.

"What now what?"

"What now? What do you do now? What do we do?"

He chewed on his lower lip. "I don't know. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I don't even know what I thought it would be. I thought it would fix me, somehow. But it didn't."

He looked close to tears, and still so afraid. With his shield against the world clenched in his hands and his body pulled in as much as he could.

"Maybe you should stay tonight," I heard myself say.

"In town?"

"No, here. Stay here, with me, Lucas."

He glanced up, and suddenly his eyes were luminous -- not animal or afraid, almost triumphant, certainly relieved. As a man his eyes were dark, but just for a second I suddenly saw Nameless's bright ice-blue superimposed over them.

Good dog.

"Just, if you're going to – " I gestured at the mask. "Wait until I'm upstairs?"

"Of course," he agreed. I stood, rubbing the back of my head. "Goodnight, Christopher."

"Goodnight," I answered automatically. I was halfway up the stairs, in a daze, before his voice stopped me.