Silicia pauses outside the door to take a deep breath and wipe the misery of it all from her face before entering the flat. She can't let him see, it's too important that he not worry, and the kid is a dangerous combination of perceptive and curious.

He hears her key in the lock and comes into the small entrance area, fiddling with his smartphone in his hand. She steps out of her shoes and looks up to see that Tump is smiling.

"Aunt Si", he starts, "I think I've made a friend." and she drops the multiple bags she was holding to hug him.

She's a busy woman and he's a growing boy, so she puts great effort into the meals that she does have time to make for him. Silicia starts dragging the shopping bags into the kitchen to unpack, fresh vegetables, canned pasta sauces, potatos, tea and chocolate. She sets Tump to work on chopping up the peppers and they work in comfortable silence.

When she starts on the onion he makes a displeased little huff and she watches the way his nose scrunches and it pushes up his glasses slightly and she's glad. She'd do it all again just to pull one more of them from the rubble but it's enough to have gotten him out.

She needs all of the self control sometimes that she's gained from years of climbing the ladder at Tump Inc. to stop herself just looking at the kid. She'd never wanted children, had always thought the responsibility would prove too stressful for her. He's not her son, not really, but he's as close as she'll get and it doesn't feel like a responsibility to take care of him at all; it feels like an honour. Giving this one 15 year old a normal life feels like she's finally doing something right in the world.
She's working on niggling her way into legal guardianship so he can enroll in a normal highschool, come to her about normal problems, ask for help with normal homework. For however long this will last - and the voice in the back of her head that always knows better tells her her time is running out - it needs to be perfect, and she will make it perfect.

It's reassuring in a way, that they could have been normal, the two of them, all of them, maybe even Mira. They all never had the opportunity, but she does, right now, and it makes her chest burst with happiness sometimes that she ever got the chance to no matter the cost.

Over dinner he tells her about his online friends, and she's amazed at the surprising reminder that even to him, technology can be a force for good, as well. She's gotten so used to thinking about it in terms of FAI and human experimentation that apps selling their userdata to ad agencies sounds like a joke. He doesn't remember that right now, of course, and so she doesn't say anything about it. She just tells him his new friends seem sweet, because they do.

Eventually, she knows; eventually she will have to give it all up, go back - worse, take him back - restore his memories so he will have a chance in the fight if it comes down to it. Or, when. She knows the kid - has for a while, and now she knows him again, as the teenager he could have been but won't be for much longer, and she knows that he can do it. She has to believe that.
Silicia ruffles his hair and tells him good night. She will give him up eventually. But not yet.