A smirk broke through August's worry at Farren's words. Leave it to his sister to manage to squeeze out a bit of sarcasm when she could. He wasn't complaining of course. A Farren with a bit of bite in her words he could handle, much better than one that was lost in hysterics. "Smart ass," he said to lighten the mood as he inspected the parts of her body she was pointing to. It didn't look to be anything serious, nothing that a few days of rest couldn't manage to heal, though there was no telling what damage the head injury had caused. Sprained ankles and pulled muscles were the specialties he had as a coach; head trauma was decidedly outside his means. He extended his arms out for Farren to taken them and help herself attempt to stand. August waited a beat, allowing his sister to find her balance, before changing his mind and deciding that she shouldn't try to walk with an injured leg on the uneven ground. Without warning, or asking for permission, August bent his knees and when he stood back upright, Farren was cradled in his arms. "Before you start to put up a fight, I'm not carrying you home. You can walk the rest of the way yourself." Of course he wasn't about to leave her alone to hobble down the round back to their house, but sometimes it was necessary to let her think that she wasn't being babied in order to win her compliance. Each of his siblings had a specific way to be handled, a fact that August had grown to learn over the years as their leader.
August tightened his hold on Farren as he began to walk them back off the bridge. The feeling of her in his arms made him feel more secure, more useful, as opposed to the helpless feeling that he would no doubt have been drowning in if he wasn't helping at least one of his siblings. "We better find them." His voice was authoritative, almost cold, much like it always sounded when August became serious about something. If he could have heard himself speak, he would have no doubt been amused at how drastically different he sounded when he allowed his voice to become forceful and unyielding. Of course, no one else seemed to find the shift very funny. "It's my fault that they're here Ren. I didn't make them come, but they didn't want to disappoint me." There was a war of voices within his mind: one telling him that he shouldn't have been so encouraging for everyone to come to the march, the other insisting that there was no way he could have known that something like this would happen. But I should have considered the possibility. How can I keep everyone safe unless I consider every possibility. A part of him knew that he was putting too much blame on his shoulders, blame that would be better placed on those that had set the bombs in the first place. Right now he was feeling guilt, but later there would be plenty of time for anger.