Where Eris has visible injuries wrapped in gauze, the wounds carved into Gavin's psyche are held together by sheer willpower and concern not for himself, but for the fallen underboss and the twice-orphaned child he's left behind.

He visits as soon as he's able — after Matias is driven off, after Walsh is informed of Chu-e's apparent fate, after they'd gone back to retrieve the body to find nothing but bloodstained earth where it should have been.

He can feel the grief tightening in his chest, threatening to break him, but if Rocket has taught him anything it's how to swallow his grief, his pain, every negative emotion save for a burning rage that might be turned upon the League. He wants to utilize it now, to burn their buildings and smoke them out and kill every last one of them, but it would be hollow revenge. It wouldn't bring him back.

His hands are steady as he pushes open the door to the medical bay.

"Eris." There's surprise in his voice. He didn't expect to see her up so soon. "You should be resting."

His amber gaze cuts across the room to settle on Reiner, relieved to see the rise and fall of the Luxray's chest no matter how labored his breathing. Eris would have enough to grieve when she was told.

It would fall to him to tell her, wouldn't it?

Eris Halla

He sees it in her eyes, a brief flash of brilliant hope that's snuffed when her gaze lands upon him. He knows enough to guess who she'd been hoping to see, and that makes her questions cut deep.

"No," he affirms, when she states the obvious, but he hesitates to answer the rest.

How did you break this news to someone so young who's already faced enough tragedy in her life? He wishes he were anywhere else.

"You need to rest," he says, more insistent than he'd been before. "Sit down."

A command, perhaps, but it's in a gentler tone than he'd usually take. Maybe that would be her first clue.

Eris Halla

Gavin's gaze is uncharacteristically soft; he won't hide behind a mask of stoicism, not for this. He can see the struggle in Eris' own expression, truth warring with the instinct of denial.

He won't lie to her. She's been lied to enough.

"I'm sorry, Eris."

He's not usually one to speak those words, but there's little else he can say of this. I'm sorry for your loss. Only it wasn't hers alone. Their loss — Eris a second father, Gavin a man he'd have named brother.

He takes her hand, both in the hopes of offering comfort and to keep her steady should she grow faint. They're so small against his own.

Eris Halla

Gavin's heart twists, heavy with regret, yet he can't bring himself to regret this. She'd have found out eventually, and he thinks it best she hear it from someone who was there. So that there's no hope to lift her spirits only to have them crushed again by the anvil of the truth. It would be harder that way.

She's rapping her temples and Gavin takes her other hand, too, restrains her gently but firmly to stop her from causing any harm — intentional or otherwise. She wasn't recovered from her injuries.

Tugging her over to the bed, Gavin sits.

"I'm afraid I am, Eris. This isn't a dream, even if we want it to be."

We. For Gavin, too, wishes nothing more than to close his eyes and open them to a different place, a different reality beyond the cold fingers of loss that crawl up his spine. But he knows it can never be.

"He was dying," he says softly. "Did he tell you?"

Eris Halla

Gavin draws her into a gentle hug, if she'll let him; if she does, she might feel the shakiness of his breath as he inhales. On the surface, he appears to be holding it together... but biology doesn't lie.

"I wanted the same," he admits softly. "To save him."

He won't cry. Not here, in front of Eris. Not at all, he stubbornly tells himself, because Cillian Quinn doesn't cry. Yet he can feel the grief flooding up against the walls he's built and all dams have a breaking point, if given enough of a push—

He grinds his teeth as he thinks.

"I know, Eris. I know."

He'd have given almost anything to save Chu-e. Not his life, perhaps, nor those of the ones closest to him, but almost anything else. Eris, he suspects, would've given even more. I'm so sorry, but he doesn't repeat the hollow words.

He sifts through numerous platitudes he might offer in comfort but decides against each and every one. She doesn't need words, no more than he does. She needs time. Gavin makes a note to beg Leon Vercetti to keep an eye on her as best he could. The last time she'd been upset, she'd fled right into the arms of the very man who might've been responsible for Chu-e's demise. Unwittingly, perhaps, and unwillingly, but the facts remained.

Eris Halla

All dams can break.

It's the Kanto bricks that keep his own in place, the building blocks of a man who'd taught himself not to feel. He can feel it, now, the grief digging splinters below his ribs and in his lungs, but the dam holds. It holds.

And Gavin holds Eris, and listens to her plea.

"I'm here," he says solemnly. "I'm not going anywhere."

It can't be forever. Eventually, he'll need to return to work. He'll need to return home where he can grieve in peace and privacy. He'll need to call Tempest Quinn, he thinks, because how on Earth will he get to sleep tonight otherwise?

But for now, he does not let go.

Eris Halla

"Hey," Gavin says gently, then again a little firmer. "Hey, listen to me. None of this is on you."

Sometimes he forgets she's only twelve, and where had he been at twelve years old? Still in 7th year at school in Galar with a home to go back to and no hint of the war and horror that Eris has seen in her short life. He can't even begin to relate to her experiences... but he can relate to her in her grief, in the yawning chasm of loss that is Chu-e's absence, and so that's what he focuses on.

"This was not your fault."

He'll say it as many times as it takes.

"None of it, all right? You didn't ask for any of this. Silph is—" There's a litany of awful things Gavin can spew about Matias but now is not the time. He bites them off, swallows them down. "What he did is not your fault."

He can't even begin to describe what was going on with Necrozma, with the parasite that had slowly been eating Chu-e alive. Nor the wasting sickness that had consumed him before, a byproduct of Rocket's brutality. She doesn't need to hear all that.

"Chu-e was my best friend," and his voice breaks, just a little, at was. "It wasn't your fault."

Eris Halla