His breathing was slow and enormous and perfectly regular.

His heart, dropping now into that trained calm, was steady.

And her frantic, half-built, overloaded little nervous system, with nothing else to hold onto — no mother, no drug strong enough to reach the fire — had found the one thing it was actually designed to look for.

An anchor. Another body, keeping time, telling her without words the oldest message there is: you are not alone, and it is safe to stop.

Her thrashing slowed. It did not stop all at once; it wound down, the way a struggle winds down when the reason for it is gone.

The mottled gray-and-red of her skin began to even out, to warm, to flush toward a healthy pink.