"Yeah, pretty much," Evan murmured with a half-felt laugh in response to Elliot's eye-roll and comment. "Shades of the old, contrary Evan of lore. Sorry..." he added with a smirk.
He chuckled bitterly and shrugged a shoulder at the mention of appointing new leadership. "I don't think it's that easy. The next worthiest is you, and you've expressed your outright disinterest in helping lead the place more than once." He paused, smoothing a hand through his hair and sighing softly. "I guess we could hold elections, I just..." feared that people would try and push him out of a leadership role. Especially after the government attack. "I don't know. I'll think about it." Just another thing to add to the list of things he needed to do, obviously.
With a shrug of a shoulder and a short, hollow laugh, he said, "Yeah, but you know how it is. You don't want to rely on anyone when you're feeling like that, right?" Elliot himself had an uncharacteristically stupid moment of non-reliance when Rae had been taken. "I know. I know it's not smart, but I just... I didn't want to admit there was something wrong. I thought I could work it out for myself. I wanted to."
Another shrug. "With good reason," he pointed out in return. "Your world was taken, after I promised that it wouldn't be. Anyone who expected you to be rational has probably never really been in love." He'd have blamed the person in his shoes, too. Nodding his head, he shrugged a shoulder. "I know. I'll be okay." At least he hoped he would. He'd probably need to be reminded once or twice that he needed to take it easy, but he figured people would do it.
"See? Things like that make me think you should be in leadership. At least given the official position of adviser." He already kept Evan from making countless idiotic decisions. "Will you think about it, at least? So I know that I've got someone reliable working with me?"
To be honest, Evan wasn't sure he wanted to see Leah. O'Brien's warnings still played in his head and made his shoulders tighten just at the thought of them. "I'm going to lose her over this," he murmured, sighing heavily.