His coat was in rags at the edges where the temporal field had aged the fabric. A communication stone sat beside his open hand, dark and inert.
Satou knelt.
For a moment he didn't move further — just knelt there, looking, some part of him still refusing the information his eyes were providing.
Then he looked at Cassius's face.
There was a smile on it.
Not a grimace. Not the rictus that pain sometimes left behind. An actual smile — small, peaceful, the kind of expression that belonged to someone who had, in their final moments, found something worth smiling about.
Satou didn't understand it.
He reached out and gently closed his hand around Cassius's — the hand that had been resting against the wound — and held it.
"I'm sorry," Satou said. His voice came out unsteady. "I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry you were alone."
He felt something on his face before he understood what it was.
