Caesar turns with him, looking down at the table. There are pages upon pages of notes around the printout, but they're clearly not the result of someone making progress. A few of them have suggestions for the problem's cause, with points of similarity that dwindle or break off partway through. Other pages have the data copied over again, with points circled or joined by arrows. On one page it looks like he simply wrote all the numbers in a single line, deriving a meaningless equation that would produce the sequence on its own. Useless, the lot of it: none of it brought him any closer to helping his brother than he was before.
"I see..." He doesnt' try to discourage him. However unlikely it is, even the slightest chance of progress is like a promise of food to a starving man.
Then Van Kleiss sighs, and he talks.
Grief and dread become something tangible, filling his stomach and veins with an icy, sluggish lead. Caesar shudders and closes his eyes, gripping the table's edge. Rex... Caesar had grown so used to seeing him come home soaked in mud when he was younger that for a moment then he hadn't understood what he was seeing. The growing puddle of warm red hadn't been blood: it had been brown earth, harmless and bewildering. How had all that dirt gotten inside?
Brown had brightened to a blazng red, and realization was like a card tower toppling. The image was still so vivid that simply remembering it seemed to replace everything else in his vision, even in the darkness of the backs of his eyelids.
Caesar swallows thickly. It takes a long moment before he tightens his mouth into a tight, forced smile, and even then it takes a heroic effort.
"It's hard... But Rex is going to be alright." His voice is rough, and the words sound like a mantra, or a prayer. Rex has to be alright. He will be alright. Caesar is holding onto those thoughts with all he has.
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Re: indeed it does :D
Date: 2013-01-25 05:45 am (UTC)"I see..." He doesnt' try to discourage him. However unlikely it is, even the slightest chance of progress is like a promise of food to a starving man.
Then Van Kleiss sighs, and he talks.
Grief and dread become something tangible, filling his stomach and veins with an icy, sluggish lead. Caesar shudders and closes his eyes, gripping the table's edge. Rex... Caesar had grown so used to seeing him come home soaked in mud when he was younger that for a moment then he hadn't understood what he was seeing. The growing puddle of warm red hadn't been blood: it had been brown earth, harmless and bewildering. How had all that dirt gotten inside?
Brown had brightened to a blazng red, and realization was like a card tower toppling. The image was still so vivid that simply remembering it seemed to replace everything else in his vision, even in the darkness of the backs of his eyelids.
Caesar swallows thickly. It takes a long moment before he tightens his mouth into a tight, forced smile, and even then it takes a heroic effort.
"It's hard... But Rex is going to be alright." His voice is rough, and the words sound like a mantra, or a prayer. Rex has to be alright. He will be alright. Caesar is holding onto those thoughts with all he has.