They'd found each other in the rush after the mirror's shattering, but there had been too many bishops and knights milling about and reports to make. It's in the quiet, after Python has shrugged off his duties and put his weapons aside, that he finally gets to address what matters.
"No injuries this time?" His hands find the clasps for Forsyth's breastplate, fingers sliding beneath. "Targets didn't go down easy on my side."
There had only been one enemy mandated by the church, but another stood as her protector. It might have been possible to disarm her, but…
'If I can't save her, then I guess there's not much of a point to me, is there?'
Python's jaw tightens. His palm presses gently into Forsyth's side, as if to staunch the flow of invisible blood beneath his clothes.
“Minimal on my end.” Aside from some blowback from Yucie’s grand exit, Forsyth somehow escaped unharmed. Python himself is a bit more worse for wear, but not laid up in the infirmary like some. The exhaustion on his face, though, tells another story. “Our target…there was some complication to it all, but we made it out alive.”
Python clings tightly to Forsyth’s side, the slow removal of his armor bringing them ever closer. He releases a shuddering breath that he wasn’t quite aware he held, allowing his hands to navigate to a clasp on Python’s own (less protective, more vulnerable) armor.
“To be entirely honest, I do not think that it was necessary, after learning the details of her imprisonment.” It’s just them, but it still feels dangerous to admit, as if someone looking over their shoulder could take everything they’ve built away. “It is not as if she and those protecting her were entirely peaceful, but there was an option we could have taken, I saw it. It was right there. But…”
An arrow pierced the girl’s heart as her loved ones watched in horror, mere inches from a fairy-tale rescue. There was no eleventh-hour savior, no revival magic to give them a second chance. Jayde’s valor, Katarina’s compassion, the students’ self-sacrifice—none of it meant anything, in the end.
“I don’t know how to feel about it. I still don’t know who and what was real.” Python is real, and and Forsyth’s roaming hands seek continual confirmation of that. He rests his head in the nook of his shoulder and neck, flashes of death replaying themselves over and over. He is a soldier, used to such sights, but these visions meld too easily with the worst days of his life. “It--she was--he thought we could save her. The person he loved most, taken from him before he could act.”
It’s unclear who Forsyth is talking about, at this point. He grips Python tightly, as if he’ll slip through his hands if he allows it. It's all he can do not to slump entirely into Python's embrace, the tension in his body all that holds him up.
"I know not what decisions you had to make, but..." He knows he would have sacrificed Eriella in an instant to save Python, if it were necessary. He cannot judge the decisions Python has made, himself, and they wear quite visibly on him already. "I'm just glad you are safe."
