"I do," he says, not quite looking at Lucy as he says it. It's still so damn weird sometimes, thinking about the world he's found himself in again, the things he never imagined he would be doing, not since Sara died. He hadn't wanted it. There hadn't been any real relationships since Diana left him because he didn't want them, because they just fell apart and people got hurt or they died and it was his fault. Somehow it came back to that.

But he hadn't had a choice with Eleven. He couldn't just leave her out there to fend for herself, not with the lab trying to find her, not with the things he knew they would do to her. He'd needed to keep her safe and now he misses her.

"Do you have a family?" he asks. "Kids?" Easier to deflect in that way a little, maybe find some way to commiserate instead of making it all about him.