About the gloves. Derek. Let me say it. Derek said. Rebecca looked at her.
Derek looked back. I made you into something small because it was easier than looking at what you actually were. Derek said, "A man with a kid and a clipboard who didn't fight back. That was a story I could fit into my understanding of the world. " He paused. The real story didn't fit, so I made up a smaller one.
People do that, Rebecca said. I do that, Derek said. I specifically do that to people I feel threatened by. I cut them down to a size I can manage. She looked at her hands.
I've been doing it my whole career. Anyone who makes me feel uncertain, I find their weakness and I press it. A pause. I pressed yours in front of 200 people. And then you carried 21 people back from a flooded crossing.
Rebecca said in deteriorating conditions on a timeline that cost you something. She paused. Those things exist together. They're both true. One of them cost you more than the other one cost me.
Yes, Rebecca said simply. Derek was quiet. The watch, he said. Rebecca looked at her left wrist. Marcus Webb, he said.
He was my point man 7 years ago. He turned the watch over looking at the stripped case. The mission that ended my career. He went last on the extraction sequence because I ordered him last. The window closed before he cleared.
He paused. He was 26. Derek said nothing. I chose the sequence that brought seven people home. Rebecca said, "The alternative sequence brought six home and didn't guarantee seven. " She paused.
I know the math. I've run the math every day for 7 years. She looked at the watch. But Marcus Webb was 26 years old, and I was the last voice he heard giving him instructions. "The watch is from him," Derek said quietly.
"I took it off her wrist before we extracted," Rebecca said. "I've worn it since, so I don't forget what command costs. " He put his hand over it, "And so I don't forget what it's worth. " Derek was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "The exhibition, you could have ended it at any point. " Yes, you chose not to. Yes. Why?
Derek said specifically. You had every reason to shut me down. You had the standing. You had the capability. Why did you stand there and take it?
Rebecca looked at the dark lot. Because defeating you would have taken 10 seconds, he said. And 10 seconds of you losing on a mat would have taught you nothing. She paused. You needed to defeat yourself. and that takes longer than 10 seconds.
Derek looked at him. Did I? She said, "Defeat myself. " Rebecca considered the question. "You're asking the wrong person. " He said, "You know what you did today. You know what you did on that mountain and at that crossing and in that tent.
You know who you were when the situation stopped being controlled. " He looked at Derek directly. The answer to your question lives in the gap between who you were at that exhibition and who you were at 6:40 tonight. That's your answer. Derek sat with that. He reached into his jacket pocket.
He took out the black belt. He held it in both hands looking at it. Then she held it out to Rebecca. Rebecca looked at it. He looked at Derek.
She did not take it. Keep it, he said. After everything, keep it, Rebecca said again. Just make sure the man wearing it deserves it. Derek looked at the belt in his hands.
He folded it carefully. He put it back in his pocket. He sat with it there for a moment and something in his posture changed. Not visibly dramatic, but real. The belt had been a trophy before, a proof of superiority, an instrument of the story he told about himself.
Now it was something else, something that had weight without needing to be displayed. something he was going to have to earn every day going forward, not just in competition, but in the harder discipline of being a person worth following. He understood the difference now. I understood it because he had watched it embodied for 6 hours in a man who wore a dead operator's watch and fixed impact barriers and left at 3:15. 8:07 in the afternoon. Rebecca's phone buzzed.