Thanks to Camilla, Elsie's kitchen table soon held a breakfast that her parents would never believe was made in her own kitchen. Just as they were about to eat, Camilla dug into her pocket and pulled out the small orange pill bottle that Elsie returned to her the day before. She found a marker lying in the clutter on the kitchen counter and scrawled something on the bottle, then blew on the writing a few times to help it dry.

"Here," she said, holding it out to Elsie. "I want you to hold onto it."

"Is that... are you sure?" Elsie asked. She wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed like a big deal. Or maybe she was just too tired and hungry to process anything coherently.

Camilla nodded confidently. "I don't usually like taking them; they actually make me feel a little nauseous sometimes. But... I admit, there are times when they make dealing with people easier. And if I'm going to do this, then I'm going to go all the way. No shortcuts."

Elsie returned Camilla's nod and took the bottle. It still had the happy face on the white lid, but Camilla had also written her name on the transparent orange plastic in small, neat letters.

"So no one thinks it's yours if they happen to see it," Camilla explained. "If you're willing to cover for me, then it's only right if I do the same."

"You didn't have to," Elsie said.

"I know," Camilla replied simply. "I wanted to."

Elsie didn't have any pockets, but she was wearing a fitted tank top, so she tucked the bottle safely in her cleavage. She looked up to find Camilla grimacing at her.

"What?" Elsie asked innocently. "I need to make sure you won't try to go for it, right?"

Camilla rolled her eyes and began spreading some jelly on her toast. "Like that would stop me if I was determined enough."

"It wouldn't? Then what was that look for?"

"That look was at you in general," Camilla pointed at Elsie with her toast, "for even thinking of doing that in the first place. You didn't have to literally hold onto it. Leaving it on the table would be good enough for now."

Elsie shrugged and dug into her bacon.

"How are you feeling today?" Elsie asked after a minute of silence. And because her question was a bit vague, she clarified, "After everything that happened yesterday."

Camilla finished chewing a bite of toast before answering. "Not the greatest," she replied, surprising Elsie with her honesty. "I got checked out by the Org doctors after I left here yesterday, just like you asked. Seems like that gorilla hit me harder than I thought. They were able to heal the worst of it, but they had to save most of their energy to help out at the lab."

Just before the attack on the film set, there was a minor fire and less-minor explosion at a medical research lab about half an hour outside of downtown LA. Most of the guardians in the vicinity had gone to combat the casualty, leaving Camilla and Elsie to fend for themselves.

"Those jerks," Elsie muttered through her bacon. She was still bitter about how little the Org seemed to care about Camilla's wellbeing, especially after what she learned the day before.

"They're just doing their jobs," Camilla replied. "There were a lot of civilians hurt at the lab. It's the obvious choice."

"I guess," Elsie conceded, stabbing the yolk of her egg a little petulantly. And, before her tired mind realized what she was saying, Elsie added, "besides, you could probably just heal yourself, right?"

Her words almost made Camilla choke on her coffee, and Camilla had to cough a few times before she could speak again.

"What..." she began, then cleared her throat and tried again. "What are you talking about?"

"I just thought..." Elsie started, a bit hesitant. Whatever, there was no point in backtracking on her words now. "That day at the Games... I thought I saw you use healing abilities. On me."

Elsie had no idea how to interpret Camilla's blank stare.

"I mean, I could've just been imagining things," Elsie hurriedly continued before stuffing her mouth with toast. Between bites, she added, "Pretty sure I was delirious from the blood loss."

Camilla nodded slowly and silently as she picked up her coffee again to take a sip. But just before the mug reached her lips, she sighed and set it back on the table.

"You weren't," she said softly. "Imagining things, I mean."

Camilla went silent, but it looked like she wanted to say more so Elsie held her tongue.

"I did heal you," Camilla finally continued, her eyes lowered to the plate in front of her. "At least, as much as I could. I was worried it wouldn't be enough."

"It was," Elsie assured. "I'm pretty sure you saved my life."

"I shouldn't have let you get hurt in the first place," Camilla countered.

"You were more concerned about the ceiling dropping boulders on us, and I don't blame you," Elsie replied.

"But I should've been able to do both," Camilla argued. "There's no point in protecting you from one thing, only to have you get hurt by another."

For a split second, Elsie remembered another moment from that day underground. They were in front of the closed elevator, and Camilla had tried to use her powers to see if the shaft was safe for them to travel through. Elsie couldn't recall exactly what Camilla had said, but she remembered the pained sound in her voice, the sound of frustration that she wasn't strong enough.

"What you did was enough," Elsie insisted, not sure if her words meant anything to Camilla. "We're both still here, aren't we? I'd call that a win."

Camilla pursed her lips, as if she was trying to keep herself from arguing further. Eventually, she silently took a sip of her coffee and continued eating.

"So... you do have healing abilities?" Elsie tried changing the topic.

Camilla shrugged. "Not exactly. It's... not very consistent. It's kind of temperamental, actually."

"Sounds familiar," Elsie muttered before taking a bite of some eggs. She immediately regretted her words with one sharp glare from Camilla. "Sorry, low blow. Anyway, does that normally happen? Temperamental powers?"

"Not really," Camilla said, shuffling her food around her plate. "Usually only for metas who are just figuring out their abilities. Definitely not for someone who's been a guardian for five years."

"Your abilities are rare all on their own," Elsie said, not wanting Camilla to belittle herself again. "Rare" was an understatement; aside from Camilla, there wasn't a single meta who could manipulate all common forms of matter, and there definitely wasn't any who could heal as well.

"I know that," Camilla said, slightly annoyed. "I just... I've always struggled to use my healing abilities, so I've never bothered to try and strengthen them. Now I wish I'd tried harder."

"You could start now," Elsie suggested. She didn't know much more about meta-abilities than the average non-meta, but it couldn't be that complicated, could it? "I could help, if you want. How do your healing abilities work?"

Camilla raised an eyebrow at her, incredulous. "You really want to help me?"

"You're my friend, right?"

"Yeah, but... it might be pretty boring."

"It's not like I have anything better to do." Elsie gestured at her messy condo. "From the sound of it, it looks like I'll be in isolation for a bit longer."

Camilla still looked skeptical, but she eventually gave in.

"Fine. But fair warning: don't get your hopes up."

In retrospect, a non-meta like Elsie was probably not the best candidate to help a meta figure out how to use meta-abilities. But once again, Elsie did what she was good at and acted on spur of the moment decisions without any plan whatsoever. Now, she just had to roll with it.

First, Camilla needed something to heal. Elsie volunteered a small cut on her arm, but Camilla thought she was crazy.

"You know, most people start practicing on things like plants or produce," Camilla said.

"Why's that?"

"Controlling cells can be dangerous," she explained. "I could easily end up doing more harm than good."

That made sense. But Elsie didn't have plants or produce; she didn't do so well with caring for living things. Camilla waved off her concerns as irrelevant, since she had a few cuts of her own. She undid the bandage on her left hand, revealing it to be covered in red scratches, and Elsie winced at the sight of it. Of the two of them, Camilla had definitely taken on the brunt of the damage.

Next, they needed to figure out what made Camilla's abilities work in the first place. Elsie's best idea was to try and recreate the scenarios when Camilla had successfully used her healing abilities. And since Camilla's memory had been foggy about what she had been doing the first time she healed herself, they focused on what happened at the Games.

Neither of them were about to trap themselves underneath a collapsed structure anytime soon though, so they had to improvise. But when enclosing Camilla in a dark room while running in place to increase her heart rate and listening to recorded sounds of a rockslide only made Camilla feel ridiculous, Elsie moved on to other ideas.

She knew that metas could usually take energy from the things they had control over; in Camilla's case, she could take energy from things like gusts of wind, heat in the air, and flowing water. Elsie figured that maybe Camilla just needed more energy, and she had Camilla do things like stand outside in the sun with multiple fans pointing at her, only to see all of them fail miserably. She definitely thought having Camilla stand under the running shower would work, but all it ended up doing was make Camilla feel guilty for wasting water.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Camilla said. Her tone of voice sounded like she was trying to be sarcastic, but Elsie had a feeling that her words were actually genuine.

"It's not your fault," Elsie insisted. "We're probably approaching this the wrong way. And I'm not the best teacher."

Camilla shrugged. "You're better than Hitomi, at least. Her idea of teaching cell control abilities is to 'use your heart, not your brain' and to act 'with feeling.'"

It was Camilla's last example that made Elsie almost chuckle—she had heard that phrase hundreds of times during her acting career.

Suddenly, the comparison got her thinking how she would handle Camilla's problem if it was one of her own. If Elsie was having trouble getting into the mind of a certain character, she would force herself to do some soul-searching to try and find a connection with her character that she could empathize with. Except she always struggled to open herself up to her own feelings, and maybe Camilla was the same.

"Do you know what you were thinking?" Elsie asked. "When you healed yourself."

"Not really," Camilla admittedly dejectedly. "I was pretty out of it. I think my reaction was purely survival instincts."

"What about when you saved me?"

Camilla shook her head. "That's different."

"Why's that?"

"That's..." Camilla sighed. "You're someone I'm trying to protect."

"Then are you not trying to protect yourself?"

"I need to protect other people first."

Elsie huffed a bit. "You have to be in good condition to be able to protect others. Think about yourself too."

Camilla didn't seem entirely convinced, but she put her right hand back on top of her left anyway. A minute passed, and then another, but still nothing happened. Camilla was still trying though, with her face scrunched up in concentration, and Elsie didn't want to interrupt.

And then, about five minutes later, a faint golden glow appeared at Camilla's hand.

"What the—?" Camilla said dumbfoundedly at her hands.

"Did it work?" Elsie asked, her eyes wide.

Slowly, Camilla removed her right hand. The back of her left still had a significant amount of scratches, but a few of them had gone from red gashes to pink scabs.

"It worked!" Elsie exclaimed, almost spilling her coffee in excitement.

"I can't believe that worked..." Camilla muttered, staring at her left hand in awe.

"Holy shit, it really worked!" Elsie repeated. "How'd you do that anyway?"

"I... I just did what you said,' Camilla answered, still looking at her hand as if she couldn't believe her eyes. "I told myself that I have to be healed to keep protecting you."

For a second, Elsie felt honored again. But that feeling was quickly replaced by a sense of unease. It felt wrong that Camilla was only able to help herself for Elsie's sake but not for her own benefit.

"Are you okay?" Camilla asked, her face concerned. Of course she was still more worried about Elsie's problems than her own.

Elsie quickly put a smile on her face. "Yeah, I'm great. Did you wanna try again?"

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