"I thought I was careful. We had chemistry when I was his temp, and I told Tim, my boyfriend at the time, that I didn't know whether I wanted the Admiral to pair us so I could take care of him or leave us unpaired so I could sleep with him. Waited multiple pairing days after our assignment ended before falling into bed with him, because he deserved a warden and he was one of those people I was immediately ready to fight for. I wanted to punch his last warden after a single conversation with Red."

Frankly she'd like to lodge a complaint that the version who showed up later had no memory of screwing over her inmate, so she just had to swallow her anger some more instead of finally getting to vent a little of it.

"We finally got paired a couple months after we started having sex, and we both still miss what we had before, almost two years later. I wonder semi-regularly if he wishes I weren't his warden. But I'm too stubborn and care too much to send him back to the temp rotation even if the Admiral were willing to unpair us. He spent two years in an endless rotation. He's not spending more there if I can help it."

She closes her eyes for a second, bracing against the memory. "Our first month paired was absolutely awful, but not through... either of our faults. The timing could not have been worse, trying to figure out how to support each other as we both fell apart, in the immediate aftermath of losing the way we used to."