Paul holds warm and tight to him, the way no one ever has, here: the fallout whispers down around them in awful counterpoint, the rest of the world faded pale around this central gravity. He can't bear it. He can't draw away any more than the ash might resist falling.

John leans fractionally closer, into the solid heat around his shoulders, to hear the proposal. There is a stopped-breath moment of incomprehension, something raw and bewildered in his face.

"That's a lost fight from the start." It takes a great effort to say this, heavy and low. "You saw what that got me."

Paul couldn't have failed at something that was never on his shoulders. When the storm came, it was John's storm, everyone else swept along as collateral damage: he can't have to explain that. Not here, sitting in the rotting ruin of his failures.