Then he knows what his gut already knew. Wilhelm nods slowly.

"I think I...absorbed your feelings. They became mine." His own shade of the same ache. "And I got rid of them."

Like some kind of conductor, catching lightning to diffuse it. A laugh cuts from his lips, not because any of this is especially funny, but because it's so strange that someone like him should hold this power. It's like putting tinder in the path of a wildfire, only somehow all that kindling manages to choke the flames.

"I didn't know I could do that."

Now an apology perches in his expression. He squeezes Iris' hand.

"Sorry." What he's apologizing for, he isn't sure how to put into words. To pull what Iris was feeling out through his ribs and let it fill his own chest borders on an invasion of privacy. It's an intimacy that stretches beyond the naked state of their bodies and the shrinking space between them. "Sorry if...it was weird. You were hurting, and it was killing me that I couldn't do anything about it. I just didn't want you to hurt like that anymore."