The manipulation is shameless. Paul has reserved his shame for everything else. This is the least terrible thing he knows how to do in this moment, the alternative to so much more and worse.

That justifies nothing. He is not particularly concerned with justification. At least not his own.

"I'm asking now," he says, softly, as her Omen breaks apart to the shivering dismay of his own. Her armored plates rasp over each other as she probes the space Big Boy left behind, bereft of the intangible vibrations that marked her presence. A person might call it play acting, knowing as they do that Omens are not confined to the mere five senses, that it causes them no harm to be dismissed - but Paul thinks that it is more that a being may take on the behaviours of the shape they are set in, whatever it may be.

The whiteness of her coat is awful against Kiriona's corpse-cooled skin. The vivid hue of her hair stands out like a rusted bloodstain.

"But if we're talking about not bothering to ask, why do you think I want to take anything away from you?" Slow and measured, as calm as his Omen is not as she snuffles at the dirt. "What made you decide I don't want you? Like this. Like anything. You think you're the one I'm disappointed in?"

He doesn't let the questions settle. He doesn't expect them to be answered - not truly, not like this. Not after the next one he'll ask.

"You think I don't understand wanting your father?"