Well, if they expected an immediate reaction to anything of what was said, they had another thing coming. For were he not frozen in place before, he certainly was the moment that Lydia rushed into the room and latched onto him. It was as if, for an instant, the anxiety he felt towards what the other him had said about her melted away at her whispered words.

"Not alone, huh." he muttered under his breath, closing his eyes in an attempt to shut one sense down and focus on shuffling through the wide array of emotions fighting to come to the surface all at once. Emotions that were complicated further by the fact that half of them he was completely unfamiliar with, internalizing things further and further until-