What is she to you anyway?""Here's my answer captain. She's the thing that made this all okay-the threadbare coats and the old boots and the guns that jams when you most need them to fire, the loneliness of knowing that you don't matter, that you will never matter, the fact that you're just another body, another uniform to be sent into the fold or the frost, another good boy who knows his place, who does his job, who doesn't ask questions, who will lie down and die and be forgotten. What is she? She's everything, you dumb son of a bitch.

Hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.

Kaz reached into his coat pocket. "Here," he said and handed Jesper a slender book with an elaborate cover."Are we going to read to each other?""Just flip it open to the back."Jesper opened the book and peered at the last page, puzzled. "So?""Hold it up so we don't have to look at your ugly face.""My face has character. Besides - oh!""An excellent read, isn't it?""Who knew I had a taste for literature?

He looked down at his boots. "That berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when―if you want to come back."Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. "I don't know what to say.

I will tell you a story, one I used to tell to a little boy with dark hair. A silent boy who rarely laughs, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title

Some of us wear our hearts. Some of us carry them.