"...yeah," he murmurs. "I understand."

He meets her eyes. She has lovely eyes, a pale ambivalent green that looks blue in some lights; they were one of the first things he noticed about her.

"I mean it," he says. "And I'm not taking it back."

She stares at him a moment longer, then puts her head down again, hugging herself tightly and shivering.

He hesitantly resumes petting her hair.

After a minute, she starts crying, very quietly.

...yeah, holding her and petting her is the best he's got, though he's very aware that it probably isn't ideal.

"I meant it about you being amazing, too," he says softly. "I didn't see it at first because you fall apart so easily, but the way you pull yourself back together... there are very few people who can do that like you can."

She sniffles and nods, her face pressed to his chest.

Pet pet.

Being cried on is still very attractive but that's - not his focus right now, to say the least.

It's unsettling to suddenly feel this way about one of his swans. What if he gets like this about all of them? If it came down to it, he'd hurt someone he cared about to stop the mountain from melting into the sea, but he'd really rather not have to.

Luar gradually relaxes. Her sniffles trail off into silence.

Eventually, she unwraps her arms from around herself and slides out of his lap to curl up very small in an unoccupied corner of the bed.

She hasn't technically said that she wants him to go, but the implication is fairly clear.

He hesitates for a moment, trying to think of anything he could do, anything he could say, any gesture he could make that seems like it would be positive for her under the circumstances. He can't come up with anything. He leaves.

Elodea is sitting up in bed with one of her decryptable spellbooks.

He circles the room as a breeze, and then materializes sitting on the unoccupied side of the bed, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands.

"...Hey, love, you okay?"

"I—"

He spends a moment struggling with words.

"—maybe?"

"What happened?"

"I like Luar. I - admire her. I care about her. I don't - I've been raping and torturing her for years, and I liked her then but not like this - I don't know what to do..."

She hugs him tightly.

"I don't have any easy answers. Sometimes there aren't easy answers."

He hugs back, clinging a little.

"When Maran was done with her she - let me hold her - and it was amazing - and then I took her home and she was scared again, and I - told her that from now on if she doesn't want me around she can say so and I'll go - and then she cried on me for a while, and then... she didn't exactly tell me to go but she pretty clearly didn't want me around anymore so I went."

Snuggle. Sigh.

"It...honestly doesn't surprise me that you didn't get lucky like you did with me and Tarro every time you would have wanted to."

"I've known her for years, I would've expected to notice before now... but she's - the thing she does is pull herself together really beautifully and I guess she didn't have anything to pull herself together for."

Snuggle. "I love you."

"I love you too."

"I didn't actually intend to stay up waiting for you, but...it was hard to fall asleep with cold empty sheets beside me."

Hug. "I'm sorry."

"For what? It's not like staying up is a big deal."

"I didn't - mean to stay away as long as I did."