[ There's a lot hiding in those few sentences, he's sure of it. They all be confirm what he'd suspected whether Sylvain realizes the full gravity of that or not, though this time Claude prevents the frown from returning. It won't help. That much he's figured out, that it'll only serve to have Sylvain point back to this.

But that's just his tendency to want to grab onto a point and not let go of it until it feels finished, Claude knows, and what the other man's said isn't untrue: even with all of his ways to avoid something that'll cut bone deep, he wouldn't leave Sylvain to shoulder it himself. He wouldn't leave Hilda to do that either. Not the Deer, either, even if at one point that feels a lifetime ago it might've been different. It isn't now, though.

The temptation is there to roll his eyes skyward, mutter something about Faerghans, and let it end there. Maybe that's what Sylvain's expecting to have happen when it's something he's employed enough and that realization is enough to chafe. All his own doing if so, and he thinks about that for a moment while moving a thumb across the other man's cheek. ]

Then maybe you can let me do the same for you since that's only fair, because there should be someone watching your back too, right? Not just about the island either since I mean for more than that. And, [ with a humorless smile, ] I could be better about that, too. Maybe we could work on that together.