We're here discussing our shared plight, individually alone upon a world at the outermost edge of imagining, the lives we once led vanished like mist upon morning. All we have left is the men we made ourselves to be in those lives, and the uncertainty that haunts every trickling second as we wade through them towards an even more-unknowable future.

For my part, at least, I've tried my best to make you understand that I do not want to be rid of you. If anything, I think I need you. It is... heartening, to see a strange echo of myself reflected back at me. With the weight of so much memory, I will never not be lonely...

But... it is less lonely. And I'm not so proud that I won't grip onto that, tightly.

[ His hand, caressing Shima, continued to do so. As smooth and regular as a calm heartbeat, dark fingertips vanishing here and there into soft feathers. But his eyes were on Saralegui, glinting in the low light, and he leaned forward as he spoke, dropping his voice to something little better than a whisper. ]