The world blurs in front of his gaze.
They are all dead, and so is he, in all the ways that matter.
A slow, quivering exhale. The burn of acrid tears at the corner of his eyes. The familiar, comforting weight of his gun in his gloved palm, cold metal against his fingertips.
He's alone. He's scared.
So scared.
His hand tightening around the handle of his gun, he presses the barrel against his temple.
"Hey," a voice says quietly, from right next to him, startling him badly enough he almost pulls the trigger in his shock.
He throws himself back, scrambling away from the threat. Between one heartbeat and the next, his gun is aimed at the Nevron—
No, he realizes all at once, blinking blood and mud and tears away from his eyes. Not a Nevron, a man. A man crouching a few steps away, looking at him intently, his palms held up in a clear sign of peace, a mix of curiosity and pity on his startlingly handsome face.
But it isn't the striking beauty of his features, nor the arresting shade of quicksilver of his eyes, that robs him of breath, like a punch to the stomach; rather, it is the deep sympathy in his gaze, the keen understanding, the fathomless pain.
Here is a man who lives in the shadow of death, he thinks, with a flash of sudden, violent, entirely unwanted insight. Here is a man whose dreams have crumbled to ash.
His gun trembles in his hand, and he swallows hard.
"Easy," the stranger says, his pale eyes widening when he catches sight of the weapon pointed straight at him. After a second, he adds, in a calm, measured tone of voice, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. What's your name?"
Though his every instinct scream at him to keep silent, not to give a single inch, he somehow finds himself rasping out, "Gustave."
