There was almost no need, even, to look.
If there was one thing he knew about the boy, it was that he would have a bead on every face that moved through the space, regardless of its relevance to the situation. It was a constant of any place that Chad trod, and it was a constant of any place that Raven trod, as well.
It was harder to find the boy in a crowd, due to his size, but there were tells. The peripheries of the clustered groups, those who had begin to come together, those empty spaces along the walls where it may have been less claustrophobic; other faces he might have seen nearby, those for the lad to fuss over; or, most tellingly, the gaps in that crush of bodies, the pockets where a body might have fit.
Raven's eyes zeroed in, saw the shift in the tide and pushed his way forward. "Chad?" Rose his voice over the crowd – if the boy were here, he would hear him.
"Chad?" Again, louder, trailing the now deliberate movement of the crowd, bodies being pushed to one side, and Raven stepped into those spaces, meeting the boy halfway, dropping to one knee before he had realized and crushing an arm about the boy's shoulders to draw him into a hug.
Drawing back, hands on Chad's shoulders, he began the tedious work – hen's work – of assessing the boy's face, his scrawny limbs, pressing gently against his torso. "Are you all right? No damage?"
Chad would never write off the call of a familiar voice as a spectre, no matter how impossible it would seem, no matter what time has passed— This voice is one he knows well even in slumber, one he seeks like shelter in a storm. Words stick in their throat on the first attempt to respond, a mumble of lips all they can muster in stunned fatigue, at first—
Their second attempt bursts from their lungs all the louder for it.
"Raven!" They are not tall or strong enough for elbows and shoulders to have effect. They are too tired to slip through the cracks like water, and tumble more like a rock through a grate.
And so, the pebble of their form tumbles directly into Raven's waiting arms with a vengeance, crashing into, holding onto him like a lifeline. Chad looks like shit. He is alive. They are both alive.
In this fleeting moment, his face seeks shelter in the comfort of Raven's shoulder, pressing into it to inhale leftover traces of smoke, blood, sweat, dirt— He doesn't care, doesn't care as his fingers scrabble to crush in turn, fiercely. A hiccup, the first syllable of Uncle, before he pulls back, teeth grit on the word, grinding over the next:
"I'm fine," they are visibly shaking, and look like shit, "I hid," uttered with deep shame, "I'm—" A hiss as something tender is bothered, tears springing to their eyes again.
"—Fffck." A shaky breath. "I can handle it." Not untrue. "I..."
And the entire time their hands are still scrambling in turn to do the same, the motions of a boy used to picking up after others, shaking with the near miss of losing another anew. Cherishing hen's limbs get underfoot of eachother. That doesn't matter.
What does: Their voice is small. Tears are starting to form tracks down the dirt on their face. "Uncle Raven..."