[ During their first encounter, when he'd convinced the Kenoma cultists against roughing up a new recruit and instead offered to lure Barnaby into partaking in the initiation ritual, it hadn't been in order to rescue the man now at his side from succumbing to the Regent's whims. All along, with every kindness and pleasantry exchanged at the Lodestone, J had encouraged him to submit to the only option available. Much like the young man who J had coddled and catered to for weeks before he was finally willing to relinquish his soul to the demon's care, J believed Barnaby's heart needed enough time to make his own choice. To come into J's confidence, and in turn the Kenoma's embrace, not kicking and screaming, but walking directly into the darkness at will. While it didn't change the broad strokes of what happened in the dark of that foreboding place, offering him all that J did had made the difference in keeping the man firmly at his side. Now, the complete resignation in Barnaby's eyes tells J all he needs to know. That time is drawing to a close. He's clearly pushed to the limits of what can be expected of someone with such a profoundly unbreakable sense of loyalty. Devoting himself not to a higher power, but to the lives around him; from the memory of a partner lost with his world, to the victims of the Innocence's plague and a demon that had been welcomed as J carved out a place for himself in his life. After all their time together, he knows it's not in Barnaby's nature to abide in marking for death the very people he'd risked his own life and sanity to save, just a short time ago.

In return for all he bestows, in vague assurances relinquishing J from any fear or guilt that may come with the other man's fate, J offers something lighthearted in return. A playful hum slips into the air while he cocks his head to one side, as if the gravity held within the succinct answer he's been given forces it to tilt off-center. Not that J looks perplexed; the action and his raised brows read as a nonverbal signal of doubt more than anything else. The kind of thing one would do with a child, when questioning a naive conclusion obviously made in error. ] Mmm, why would I be worried now?

This little provocation is simply setting in motion what was going to happen all along. [ The hand not presently resting along Barnaby's spine lifts with an open palm, as though presenting the "room" at large to his companion. The discord this summons has unleashed is clear as day; if there had been a lingering possibility for an amicable coexistence between fraction lines, it's now been lost for good. ] Destroying any illusion that we can ignore the truth and what lies ahead.

I do wonder, though. [ The arm resting along the slope of Barnaby's spine draws around to clasp his opposite shoulder. With the way he's leaning in, a little pull is all it takes to slide them close enough for their temples to touch; angled in such a way that his horns avoid his fellow Kenoma's skin. It's the only thing he can offer him now - some modicum of affection in the ruins of two lives intersected and then divided. The Regent has obliterated entire planets from the cosmos, and countless souls along with them. It's difficult to believe such an entity would think twice about destroying the shard of any who fail to live up to the expectations now set firmly in stone before them. ]

How it is that your very first instinct was to comfort me? [ When J stands to lose nothing here, and Barnaby everything. ]