He can't catch the order, but he can catch the ripples of worry which spill out from it: her little hive of survivors flusters into action. They scurry, and she stands perfectly still among it. He can recognize the quiet of a storm about to break.

God walks through the plain and dreary rain to meet her. It isn't Mercy he falters for, as she steps up to face him— it's that little call, the sweet and open eagerness, the voice he'd forgotten. He pauses for a half-step, off-kilter. He sucks in a breath.

She has Cristabel at her shoulder: that tells him something. He's too thrown open with looking at the butterfly to guess what.

But if they're going to talk— and they are going to talk— they'll do it properly. He stops across the ward line, politely as he'd pause before a doorway. He raises a hand to draw back his hood. It would be properly dramatic if it weren't for the raindrops in his eyelashes, the way he has to blink and squint and crook her an awkward half-smile, reflexive.

"Nice place," he says, which is the first thing he's said to her since the wet thump of meat. "Am I interrupting?"