Home has been an abstraction for so many years; it used to be Beta Colony, their flat in Silica that served as the Ambassador's Residence -- expansive and luxurious by Betan standards, but still a flat. War was never a place she thought she'd find home in. But over the years, this camp, these people, as often as they move and lose and gain again, have become her home. She just hadn't realized it until she'd been taken away from it.

She rests her cheek against Miles's hand and nods, sniffling and trying to blink back her tears. Being away from Tarn is a comfort in its own right. The man was a sadist; Sonia knows one when she sees one. "I think so," she says, because she's still smiling and a little tearful, but she is most definitely tired, from the incipient adrenaline crash if nothing else. "Will you accompany me back to my tent, Miles?"