If he'd been hoping for reassurances, this was lackluster at best. There was a knot in his stomach and Alfred thought a little desperately I can help, but could he? He wanted to, because he didn't want to feel that he had contributed to Jo's life crumbling around her, but he wasn't exactly well equipped to offer advice or support. She said it was complicated and messy, but he didn't know anything about it; he didn't even know who the us was when she'd talked about settling down during their last conversation, though he could suspect or assume. If he was actually going to be of any help, though, he needed to know a lot more about where she was and what was going on, and that wasn't information he had any rights to any more. Did she even want his help? And supposing she did, what was he actually going to do? Pay for her dinner and then march her down to his cabin on the Voyager and go alright, now tell me everything?

Zelda wouldn't like that. She trusted him, probably, and if he explained it then she would forgive him, but she wouldn't like it. If it was just a chance run-in with Jo in Capetown it might have been alright, but a heart-to-heart following a confessional letter he only vaguely remembered writing, which in turn followed a market conversation he'd neglected to mention for no very good reason... this was becoming a pattern of things that Zelda would not care much for at all.

"I wish you hadn't left. In the blizzard," he admitted, staring at his beer. "Not that I'm blaming you — I understand why you would. I just... wish things had happened differently."

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