He chuckles in response, an ease settling about him as the conversation tapers off into one thing or another; worries shared and unshared because there was no need to reiterate what they both already know. The train and its many mysteries, layered together inconvenient and obscured…
Once more does Roland feel obligated to thank Tidus for expressing what they both feel.
Then again, there are other things which Roland is unable to read from the other. Was it guilt or approval which drives Tidus to admit such a thing, in the cover of his hunched back over his knees? There’s an urge, strong and sure, to reassure the younger- that Roland’s no arbiter of decisions, that if he ever expressed such a thing to him in the past, it was more habit than disappointment.
So this time, he doesn’t allow himself any sense of knowing better because Roland knows for a fact that he doesn’t. He’s more honest, drawn out by the same act of forthcoming, smiling once before crossing his arms again to be more comfortable in his seat. Even if his reading of such a display was wrong, it felt better to go about it in this way than any other pretense he might have let on if Tidus was speaking to a Roland of yore. “I’m sure Halo was no secret to them. Or was it? Plus, we needed them to hear us out anyway, so that was as good a time as any to make us seem like we’re trying. And we have been.”
He nods, and then a thought is able to catch up just in time-
“What did they say about the radio? Did they find our old messages, from way back then, too?”
no subject
He chuckles in response, an ease settling about him as the conversation tapers off into one thing or another; worries shared and unshared because there was no need to reiterate what they both already know. The train and its many mysteries, layered together inconvenient and obscured…
Once more does Roland feel obligated to thank Tidus for expressing what they both feel.
Then again, there are other things which Roland is unable to read from the other. Was it guilt or approval which drives Tidus to admit such a thing, in the cover of his hunched back over his knees? There’s an urge, strong and sure, to reassure the younger- that Roland’s no arbiter of decisions, that if he ever expressed such a thing to him in the past, it was more habit than disappointment.
So this time, he doesn’t allow himself any sense of knowing better because Roland knows for a fact that he doesn’t. He’s more honest, drawn out by the same act of forthcoming, smiling once before crossing his arms again to be more comfortable in his seat. Even if his reading of such a display was wrong, it felt better to go about it in this way than any other pretense he might have let on if Tidus was speaking to a Roland of yore. “I’m sure Halo was no secret to them. Or was it? Plus, we needed them to hear us out anyway, so that was as good a time as any to make us seem like we’re trying. And we have been.”
He nods, and then a thought is able to catch up just in time-
“What did they say about the radio? Did they find our old messages, from way back then, too?”