"You don't tolerate me," for once this isn't a complaint, but a point being made, "You pretend that's all you're doing, because it means I'll keep making an effort and you don't have to act like you care. But you do, or you wouldn't even bother with the pretence. I've seen people you really don't have time for."

Few and far between, and always for some just and moral cause. Worse people than him, is the chance he's taking. They have to be worse people than him.

Though, if asked, he wouldn't rate himself either.

"I'm in a picture with you I don't remember having taken. Perhaps I was wearing it then. I don't remember a curse handing out souvenirs of people from our pasts, either. Allison," it's such a slip he doesn't even notice, "If you really think that any one of those three options wouldn't be... among the most significant things I can imagine, then you really... you have no idea about me. At home or not."

The fact she's even chosen those three to mention raises a stream of other questions he barely dares ask but which will sit and itch under his skin unless he does. Home is a foreign concept, what might happen there only matters to him in so far as it adds to the puzzle pieces of his own consciousness he feels he's putting together here. Clues to what's really important.