[Paul couldn't keep his promise once. An impossibility, the letter calls it (it's too much, and you're not enough), absorbed, processed, and decoded in instants, his mind too well-trained to give him the grace of incomprehension. He can't keep it now, as Kaworu crumples to the ground, Paul following him to his knees a fraction of a second later, slower, more controlled.
He can't protect him from this. All he can do is reach for Kaworu across that awful gulf of grief and curl over him, pressing his forehead against a slender shoulderblade as one hand flattens over Kaworu's back, the other bracing against the floor.]
Take a deep breath through your nose. Let it out through your mouth slowly. Like this.
[Words that echo in more than one way; with shuddering ghosts, and the gentle wisdom of another lost friend. Paul demonstrates, close enough to Kaworu that his expanding lungs brush his ribs against the other boy's. He is a rock, he is an anchor, he is a steady, fixed point.
(Stark light arcs under his skin, flitting along the delicate networks of capillaries around his eyes, in the tips of his fingers.)]
no subject
He can't protect him from this. All he can do is reach for Kaworu across that awful gulf of grief and curl over him, pressing his forehead against a slender shoulderblade as one hand flattens over Kaworu's back, the other bracing against the floor.]
Take a deep breath through your nose. Let it out through your mouth slowly. Like this.
[Words that echo in more than one way; with shuddering ghosts, and the gentle wisdom of another lost friend. Paul demonstrates, close enough to Kaworu that his expanding lungs brush his ribs against the other boy's. He is a rock, he is an anchor, he is a steady, fixed point.
(Stark light arcs under his skin, flitting along the delicate networks of capillaries around his eyes, in the tips of his fingers.)]