[Paul listens to this with the gravity it demands of him, with the absolute attentiveness that he learned from so many older faces in his own life. It's a look that says I see you, a way of holding someone in your eyes so that they know that they are the center of a universe of care.
He doesn't let himself be a mirror or to crumple under the weight of recognition. That's not how it works. (He remembers his mother's eyes, and their emptiness, and the bleak understanding that it was up to him, now, all of it, the world falling across his unready shoulders.) What he does do is let Falco see it, just a little: his quiet shared understanding when Falco says Galliard and Paul hears another name in his heart.]
It's all right to be afraid. [Because there is so much fear there: the fear of failing, of loss, of being alone, and Paul's voice aches.] I am too.
[With that, Paul reaches up, and gently gathers Falco down into his arms. He wraps them around the younger boy and runs a hand over his hair, guiding his face to the crook of Paul's shoulder where Paul had dug his fingers in, once, to save Falco from another bad dream.]
You are helping people. You help me all the time.
No one who dies for someone else does it for nothing. Never. [Paul presses the smaller boy closer to his chest, says this close to the curved shell of his ear.] Galliard knew that. You're not nothing, and I am not going to leave you, not if there is anything I can do about it, and even if -
[Even if, even if, Falco knows too much of even if and its aftermath to lie to about that. Paul breathes out, faintly tremulous, and says:] I'd come back for you.
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He doesn't let himself be a mirror or to crumple under the weight of recognition. That's not how it works. (He remembers his mother's eyes, and their emptiness, and the bleak understanding that it was up to him, now, all of it, the world falling across his unready shoulders.) What he does do is let Falco see it, just a little: his quiet shared understanding when Falco says Galliard and Paul hears another name in his heart.]
It's all right to be afraid. [Because there is so much fear there: the fear of failing, of loss, of being alone, and Paul's voice aches.] I am too.
[With that, Paul reaches up, and gently gathers Falco down into his arms. He wraps them around the younger boy and runs a hand over his hair, guiding his face to the crook of Paul's shoulder where Paul had dug his fingers in, once, to save Falco from another bad dream.]
You are helping people. You help me all the time.
No one who dies for someone else does it for nothing. Never. [Paul presses the smaller boy closer to his chest, says this close to the curved shell of his ear.] Galliard knew that. You're not nothing, and I am not going to leave you, not if there is anything I can do about it, and even if -
[Even if, even if, Falco knows too much of even if and its aftermath to lie to about that. Paul breathes out, faintly tremulous, and says:] I'd come back for you.