( yeah. unsurprising that that's where ephemera's mind goes first.

if chorus hadn't happened, maybe that's how this would have gone. cleaning house. burn it all to the fucking ground, just like old times, when shit started getting all irreparably twisted. ephemera lost most of that fragile wistfulness somewhere along the way, and gates just became – more. or less. right now they don't have the manpower or the resources to pull off a job like that. it's just the two of them, spiraling through the vast black of space, alone. )

No, ( felix says, almost carefully. he studies ephemera shrewdly. ) These people hold grudges. Real mafia shit. Nasty motherfuckers that make me look like a fucking saint. Their fattest rat made a run for it, back to territory our pleasant little corporate family can't touch. We just gotta run him down and bring him back.

( a pause, then: )

It's just a bounty, T. That's it. Nothing crazy.

( it's not like that, is what he doesn't say. it could be like that so easily, but it's not. )