He gives Gaav a wan smile. "Well, she might have told me less than usual that year," he allows. "I was still a little bit... what do they say here? Out of it. But," he looks at Gaav earnestly, eyes still showing him troubled that Gaav should seem bitter about Zelas, "I know she wasn't feeling triumphant, Gaav-dono." He makes a heart-squeezing motion in front of his bandages. "Even if you're right and it were a choice rather than a necessity, I could feel she was sad." Not devastated, of course. But as far as the soulless can be, she had been sad. "And," he adds more practically, "emotions aside, we saw the trouble your loss caused coming in advanced. A lot of it." He turns his palms up: he has his opinion, Gaav has Gaav's, they both have good reasons, they can't ask her now.
He hesitates for a moment, as though he's about to argue, catches Gaav's eye, reads his expression, presses his lips together for a troubled moment, drops his eyes, looks grim with knit brows, looks off to the side with his expression going thoughtful, and finally looks up again. It only takes a couple of seconds, and through them, all that comes off of him astrally is concerned and intense calculation. When he does look up, his eyes are clear and determined. "Agreed. Thank you for not dismissing my concerns and requests, Gaav-dono. It confirms me in feeling glad to work with you; you know that members of both the Guild and Wolf Pack become ashamed to put their own well-being above others', so I would have had a very hard time otherwise. Myself, then, and Iago-san, and Dora-chan--I think you've met her--and Cesare Borgia-kun. He's an interesting situation."
His eyes widen slightly, distasteful. "You mean Eris 'Aptly Named' Vrumugun-san?"
Me too! And thank you for thinking of me earlier. It's been an interesting day and it was really lovely to step back from it and think someone was wishing me well. <3