He drained his coffee and set it down, leaning over his knees, listening, quiet. He waited until he was done before he could find anything to say.
Dallon hadn't been able to save his family, but he'd escaped the war whole. Gerard felt like some bizarre mirror opposite of the man sitting across from him. Not that he wanted to trade places with him--neither position was a happy one. "Me neither." Which was weird, and didn't sound right at all. He shook himself.
"Look, you can't punish yourself for that for the rest of your life. We all...left things behind in the war. We had to, we weren't given another option. You did everything you could to save your family." He clasped his hands together, staring at them. "Fuck, I know that's not comforting and it doesn't help because you know that, I'm sure you do. But trust me, you don't need to save someone to prove that you're worth something because you weren't able to do it in the past. That's not you, that's...that's circumstance. And revenge isn't going to ease your pain."
He stared at Dallon for a second, biting his lip, then shook his head. "I'm sorry. It sucks, and I'm just poking around in stuff I'm sure you don't really want to talk about and saying shit that it's not my place to."