Her cab was waiting for her. Vanya wasn't sure why she'd ever thought she could come back to the Academy, maybe start over now that their father wasn't here to dictate their lives. Those were uncharitable thoughts, though. She didn't hate her dad, exactly. Mostly she was disappointed. In him, in her brothers and Allison, in herself.

They'd had the funeral and hey, even Five was back, but now things would go back to normal. Now all the members of her family would go their separate ways and she'd probably never hear from them until something disastrous happened. Pogo dying or maybe the memory issues that Mom seemed to have getting worse. It made her sad, but maybe that was as much going back to the life that she just seemed to live by rote as anything else. It had been too many years since she'd been close to anyone in the house behind her.

She was expecting the cab, but what she wasn't expecting was a man to be standing almost right in front of her. He was stepping back as she opened the door as if he knew she was going to be there. Well, in her life, maybe he did.

"Can I help you?"