Redhawk Caldera If the whole wide world stops spinning

Eljay wished as Maia gushed out words that he could tell her that it wasn't her that had made him sad. He wished he could tell her that it was Peter, but all his thoughts were a garble and he was crying too loud to even get any words in through the choked sobs. Between all the accumulated grief that he had tucked away in a dark corner of his brain and the guilt he felt for ever forgetting about Peter and dishonouring his life and death by pretending it wasn't true it was hard for him to make sense of anything.

N-No, I-- he tried, but he just couldn't manage. Maia then pressed her nose to his cheek which both brought him back to the real world and grounded him, but it also unleashed the second wave of grief.

Eljay more or less collapsed into Maia's arms; he leaned into her, her wagging tail a blur in front of his eyes, and pressed his face into her neck. Even despite how beside himself he was, Eljay managed to avoid at least the bigger wounds just in time, and he pressed his face into Maia's fur and cried, his body heaving against hers.

Right now, he wasn't even trying to process anything; he was just experiencing the rawest of emotions and he could do nothing but put it on display, throw it out there because it had hit him like a truck of bricks in the face.

Peter... he murmured into her fur, muffled words that weren't really meant for her anyway. I'm so sorry.