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"Dozens. Easily," he hears Corbeau say. Flat, clipped with surgical precision, distress excised and contained by five or six degrees of distance and abstraction. "If not more."
"How do you know," comes Paxton's voice from beside the boss's. His own flatness from something not remote but very much present—taking him over entirely. Pushed beyond fear or despair or even shock.
"Just look at him." A pained exhale; a softened tone: "Our Philippe."
And now silence, heavy as the darkness of his eyelids in which he has confined himself.
On the couch sits Philippe, rigid and unmoving like a statue. The perfect picture of agony: hunched over with elbows digging into knees, face gripped in both hands. Every muscle in his body locked up like a vault—but what is it he's protecting...?
No—it's his own structural integrity that he is struggling to maintain. As though he could physically hold himself together with this tension. As though barring the door could do anything to keep the whole damn thing from caving in, under the weight of a calamity relived one time too many.
Time loop. The only words he could grit out to Corbeau long minutes ago. Yet they were all that the man needed to hear; dimly Philippe can register it as some small comfort. Past iterations had him approaching his superior with an eloquently detailed, inevitably rehearsed explanation of his predicament. Corbeau would listen in silent shock but always come around, and then call upon Paxton to join them in formulating a plan of attack. This time Philippe has earned his belief with much less.
...As if he can speak of earning the slightest thing from either of them. He needs to be their rock, their mountain, whose strength and stability they can lean on any time. And all he has done is fail them, over and over. Dozens and dozens of times.
The sound of footsteps approaching. That Philippe notices them at all, especially in this state, must mean they're Paxton's; Corbeau has always moved far too silently.
And indeed, it is Paxton who addresses him now in a murmur, "Hey, Sledge, can I touch ya?"
Voice still flat and stilted, barely inflecting enough to register as a question—but he is trying, he is reaching out as best as he can. The asking of permission, the wish for contact, the fond nicknames that never fail to pierce armor... Sealed up though Philippe is, must be, he can bring himself to slide open a deadbolt enough for the slightest nod. This much, for his Love.
"Go on," Corbeau says, to confirm the message that Philippe could barely send.
Thus Paxton comes to sit next to him, close enough for their thighs to meet, and rubs slow circles on the broad expanse of his back. A lockpicker's touch to rival that of both Rust scoundrels, the way Philippe gradually releases himself under the steady connection. His shoulders are first to be undone, lowering little by little until he can bring himself to unhand his own head as well. Then his hands come down to brace his knees, though he cannot yet bring himself to open his eyes.
The vault door cracks open, and he lets out a long and weary sigh. Someone's hand is brought to his face to wipe the sweat from his brow; it must be Corbeau's, for Paxton would've had to shift his weight on the couch to reach with his free hand like that. And sure enough, afterwards Corbeau guides Philippe's face to press into his chest, offer his support. Philippe breathes deep of the scent of his clean shirt, and the faint aura of his cologne, as Paxton leans his own head against his partner's shoulder.
"Paxton," begins Corbeau, cool and businesslike even as his hand warms the back of Philippe's head, "your absol, Sibylla: no further reaction?"
That's right: this time Corbeau needed not contact Paxton and request his presence. For—from the scraps of context Philippe was able to gather—Sibylla had burst from her poké ball and barreled through the city streets to deliver her trainer in hot pursuit to Syndicate headquarters. It would seem that Philippe's mental strain, of precipitous onset from an outsider's view, counts as an ill omen. I suppose it breaks up the monotony if nothing else, a wry, detached part of himself remarks inwardly.
"No, nothing," is Paxton's unhappy confirmation. "She's still on edge, obviously, but... there's nothing else for her to warn us about."
In response, a seething sigh through gritted teeth. Something light comes to rest atop Philippe's head; it must be Corbeau's glasses, removed for him to pinch the bridge of his nose in deep chagrin. "How can it be..."
"What is it, Arsène," says Paxton, even his voice braced for the worst.
"One of us is gonna die. Maybe both. Maybe more than us."
As usual he does not hold back in his keen perception. They're both sharp, devastatingly so, befitting the Rust boss and the MZ fixer. It is always a marvel to behold, not to mention how much breath it has saved Philippe each loop.
But to hear Corbeau predict their own fate so quickly, so soon, merely from reading Philippe's reactions... it is difficult.
It is all so terribly difficult. This emotion that fills Philippe to the point of overflowing, too vast to fit within even his large frame... what is it, even...? A kind of sorrow, anguish, even grief, perhaps—but a kind that surely no one else on earth has ever experienced before.
For a person has but one life to live and die, and losing a particular loved one ought to be an ordeal endured once if at all. Yes, it may be revisited in memories and dreams, but the horror of the real, physical, lived event will transpire and then be locked away safely in the past. After which most people are permitted the entire rest of their lives to figure out how to bear the burden.
Philippe has about six hours.
"No."
At the sound of his voice Paxton sits up and Corbeau releases him, glasses slid back on.
"I die first," says Philippe, "protecting you."
Paxton asks simply, "What happens when you don't?"
"...It matters not."
Again Corbeau reads between the lines to see the writing on the wall. "'Cause we die anyway."
"And there is not a single timeline where I simply allow it to happen."
And he looks from one to the other, silently daring either to challenge him. To command him to do anything but spend his last moments trying, futile though it is, to save that which is most precious to him. His integrity, his resolve, his love demands nothing less.
Neither flinches from that steely gaze, but it's Paxton who is first to meet that challenge head on. He stands up and straightens his jacket, determination alight in his charcoal eyes when he declares, "Well, you better believe there ain't a single timeline where we back down either. Right, Corbeau?"
Never one to capitulate in the face of adversity, Corbeau agrees, "All this time, you've been our strength. Now let us return the favor."
Once more Philippe regards them, his gaze now softening. Of course Paxton is right. Of course this was going to happen all along; they have never hesitated to lend him their aid in the past. Why should this loop, through all his tribulations, be any different?
If he is their mountain, then they are the forest cover that has made him their home, breathes life into the austere majesty of his form. Their roots entangling together into him, anchored safely while their trunks and branches reach towards the sky... And now, when he is on the verge of crumbling from erosion, he knows he can rely on their evergreen spirits to shield him from it.
Philippe takes their extended hands—one a vivid brown, the other almost deathly pale—in each of his and allows them to pull him up to his feet.
"Let's get to work."