Luke loosened his grip on her arm and let her pull away. He caught just a glimpse of her first tears before she turned aside, and leaned back on the couch once more. He sincerely had no idea what she needed to hear, or wanted him to say, and the effort of forcing himself to care was a quite unhelpful distraction. His atrophied personal skills told him only that his usual cold logic and reckless whimsy would prove ineffective in this situation, and without Nirvana's input he had no clue how to react; for the first time in years, Luke was flying blind.<br/><br/>He shrugged and swallowed quietly, watching her cry. There really was nothing he could say, nothing that would make any difference to her. Isaac would still be dead, and she would still be hurting. Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear her, and her words carried with them a bleakness he remembered far too well.<br/><br/>"Oh, I feel plenty of things. Just not anything that matters, that's all." She turned toward him a little, and he was certain that her tear-stained face would have broken his heart if he'd still been capable of feeling it. "As far as who killed him...I'm sorry. But honestly, I have no idea. I was a little...distracted, at the time, and I wasn't paying the fullest attention." Another shrug. "My bad." Her tears flowed again, and he cursed himself for failing to give a damn.<br/><br/>"You're right, you know. Love is absolutely horrible. It's the single most terrifying, destructive force in existence. And for every 'happily ever after' it creates, it leaves a million shattered lives in its wake. Humanity would probably be better off without it. And yet...I can't help thinking that I'd still give up everything I've ever had, known, or wanted, if I could only feel one more minute of it. I'd even trade it all for a taste of the pain you're feeling right now. So in the end, angel, the only thing I can tell you is that you have two choices right now. You can crawl into a corner and let it kill you. Or, you can keep living. I can't say I know what Isaac would have wanted for you, but if he loved you at all, then he wouldn't want to see you crying."<br/><br/>Luke stared at the floor between his feet and smiled a little. "Of course, as everyone around here seems to have noticed by now, I'm a first-class bastard. So, you can take all that for whatever you want."