Monday.
The legal challenge was filed.
Marcus confirmed it at 8am in the specific tone he used when something had been completed correctly and he was reporting completion rather than progress.
Done.
The committee had ten days to respond.
Ten days of the order being formally challenged.
Ten days of the process working the way legal processes worked — slowly, deliberately, with the specific patience of institutions that had been built to outlast urgency.
Kendrick acknowledged the confirmation.
Went back to work.
The week moved differently.
-----
Something had shifted in the library on Saturday.
Both of them were pretending it hadn't.
This meant that every interaction was slightly too careful.
The specific carefulness of two people who had agreed, without saying so, to maintain a distance they had already stopped needing.
In the kitchen on Monday morning, the coffee argument was shorter than usual.
Damian made wrong coffee.
Kendrick made real coffee.
