he who hesitates is toast

It takes him longer, his mind buzzing too much to allow for easy sleep yet. He lies quietly in the dimness of the room, listening to Sharon breathe beside him, and thinks about everything that's happened in the last several hours and weeks, everything that he's been told or experienced.

It helps to walk through it, he finds, treating it like parameters and intel, and knows even as he does it that this may be a different sort of problem.

He'll deal with that later, now that he can. Starting tomorrow.

Eventually, he's able to slip into a light, mostly-restful doze, until the sounds of birds outside wake him somewhere in the hour before dawn.