Lauren's not a touchy-feely type of person, generally, but as Bert shares his thoughts and the circumstances of his past she can't help but feel the urge to wrap him up in her arms and promise him that everything will work out in the end. Except it might not, and she doesn't think he'll believe it any more than she does.

Had he died? She can remember the feel of hands around her throat, the burning in her chest, the creeping black that edged her vision threatening to block out Nadia's face contorted with rage. If Bert says he died, well, she believes him, because she isn't completely convinced she hadn't too.

"Look, Bert," she says eventually, trying not to let the silence creep out too long so that he starts getting nervous or regrets telling her. "I like problems that have answers. Things you can put under a microscope and study and eventually crack... it makes it easy to solve them with a pill or an injection. But this sort of stuff... there's no pill for it, is there?" Maybe he's depressed, and maybe a pill will help him feel a bit better, but it won''t answer his questions or give him a purpose. "But this is what I think: Heaven or hell or limbo or whatever this is, we're in it together. Whatever you end up being willing and able to offer, people will take it, and they'll give back in turn. I can't claim to know everybody here well, or even like them all, but we need each other. We need you to do whatever you can do to make this work - be it shooting things or making chili or cracking jokes or something else you haven't discovered you want to do yet."

She stands as well, turning to look over the landscape for a moment before turning back to him. "And maybe I shouldn't be speaking for everyone else and I'm dead wrong about them. But I think that dead or not, you've got a lot to offer, Bert. Just look at what you're bringing with you."