[The space that the Emperor leaves behind once he's parted with a touch of mock-comfort might as well be a gulf. If he'd set it up that way, intentionally, it would have been a masterstroke on the necromancer's part, standing aside as if to say see how badly you've chosen to hurt him?
There's something else there, too. A moon keeping tides on course, the gravity to rein in what the Emperor rightly marks as a tendency for L to smudge out the line he toes as he courts danger.]
Take him home,
[He says to the Emperor in a voice like string, then, with more volume and certainty,]
You need to take him home.
[Before Paul falls to pieces, before L has to look him in the eyes. Never has an order sounded so much like a plea coming from the detective.]
no subject
There's something else there, too. A moon keeping tides on course, the gravity to rein in what the Emperor rightly marks as a tendency for L to smudge out the line he toes as he courts danger.]
Take him home,
[He says to the Emperor in a voice like string, then, with more volume and certainty,]
You need to take him home.
[Before Paul falls to pieces, before L has to look him in the eyes. Never has an order sounded so much like a plea coming from the detective.]