[ it's his turn to have the ... over his head, though he does nothing to put distance between them when aerith gets closer. ]

I know that. [ said a little quietly. even though he knows it wasn't real and meant to hurt doesn't mean it didn't. uh. work. it worked. so moving on: ] I killed him. But... they'd warned us there'd be consequences if we attacked him. They had... hostages. Pickles, Laudna and some people Aventurine and Kanda knew from home. Since I killed that guy, they made us choose between them and someone else who would get to live. Yuffie. Karlach. Nehan. Lavi. We made our choices, and then they made us fight whoever we didn't pick.

[ do you know he's not going to tell this to anyone else but aerith ]