His laughter's quiet, as though loath to disturb the lay of the air. William's gaze slides from Ruth to the man in the wall and he tries, along with her, to coax a moment of life from him. He laughs again—less restrained, the sound surfacing from him. “Is that why you were in Scotland?”

At her question, he goes silent. Wrestles with the urge to start safe: my mom, my sister. “Dolores.” It's not that hard to say. It comes out lopsided, riding a swell of feeling—affection, sadness, desperation—at the end. William takes a shaky breath.

“We left our world together.” Hand in hand, that makes it sound like, when he'd found her in a tent filled with the screams of the dying a century before he'd been born. When she'd been leaving a world where her existence was contingent on some rich asshole's entertainment, and he'd been counting the promotions until he'd be invited to join the ranks of those rich assholes.

In another way it's true, though—they'd always felt entwined, and that had always somehow been enough. “She—” He falters. He remembers her under the tree, the glimmer of otherworldly light in her hair. Under the night sky in Westworld, telling him a story about stray cattle. Yearning without knowing the word for it.

“We were both lost—that's a way of looking at it. But we, she.” Maybe he just doesn't want to part with the words. “We knew there was a beyond.” William looks up—he's gone without, this whole time—and her eyes are bright. Her expression scrabbles at his heart.

He closes his eyes. He knows it's just him. “I'm sorry I'm...I should talk about her more.”