“So this is love.” He sounded– depressed? No, she decided, bemused. She rolled her eyes and pushed him off the couch.

He yelped, grabbing the cushions as he fell, landing in a pile of blankets, pillows, and one rather annoyed housecat. There was a small flurry of bedding and fur as he fought his way back out of the chaos. “Unkind, unkind gesture that.”

“All’s fair in love and war, yes?” She grinned down, reaching out to tap his nose with a foreclaw.

“Romantic love, that, familial love is not the context.” He brushed back a ruff gone stiff in startlement, running his fingers through the thick fur in nervous habit. “We are not so different, you and I.”

“But you and them?”

“Less, more,” he stepped carefully over the cat and sunk back into the sofa. “Some days, like any Holst, others–” he shrugged, frustrated. “This alliance is too thin for weight.”

“We have Khriss, and Holst, and Quan, what can they be but like us?” She guestured to the hotel room they’d been given for their stay. “They build, they dream; this is all we need.”