[Paul finds a fascinating point in the air several degrees to the side of Anna's shoulder as she is run through by that ripple of emotion. Studious unseeing of vulnerability comes more readily to him these days. He bears witnesss to so much of it.

Like getting a hole punched through your chest. He could touch his own unshattered sternum, brush fingertips over a scar that seems so small for what it is.]

It sounds like she'd fit in well here.

[He keeps much of the bleakness out of his voice, but not all of it, observing her under the veil of his eyelashes, faint troubled lines along the sharpened hollows of his face.]

But you'd be missed. [Dropped like a smooth stone into a still pond.] I know that's not my place to say.

[And yet, he still has the temerity (he always does) to ask:] Is that what happened to you? She pulled you out of your cave?