Maybe I was just one of those people who couldn't rest easy unless things went catastrophically wrong.

Each time Stalker called you 'dove', I wanted to hit him. Because you're not a little gray bird... you're all the light in the world.

He'd said the sun could burn me. It certainly looked angry enough, all orange and glowing mad.

I admired Stalkers style. He was incredibly fast using two small blades strapped to the backs of his hands. Slash slash slash. Fighting him you wouldn’t die of one great wound but instead bleed out slowly surprised to find yourself weak and dying after a thousand cuts.

You could miss someone, but it did no good to fixate on loss. I wished I had the ready words of a Breeder or the ability to comfort with a soft touch. I didn't. Instead I had daggers and determination. That would have to do.

Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn't, you died- or stopped growing - which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best. -Deuce, (183)

If I ever win you," he said, anger bright in his pale eyes, "it will be because you want me more. Not because he's gone. I'm nobody's second best.