There was a tension in the air between them, and Dylan doubted it was any less obvious to Gaheris than to him. Those vaunted Nietzschean survival instincts always made Gaheris good at knowing when things weren't going right. There was a time when Dylan couldn't have imagined this distance between them, and particularly couldn't have imagined that he'd walk into a room with Gaheris in it and drop his hand to his holster. Everything he'd ever known has changed since Hephaistos.

Dylan was always an optimist, but this friendship, the closeness that had made Gaheris like the brother he didn't have, was broken. Even the understanding he'd gained on Tarazed, even the belated realization that Gaheris had, in some way, tried to warn him of the upheaval that was coming, even the unadmitted fact that he missed the friend he'd once trusted beyond all others, couldn't change that.

That didn't mean he had no empathy for Gaheris, so when the bone blades relaxed (the last time he'd seen Gaheris with bone blades extended they'd been aimed at him) Dylan's hand eased as well, to rest at his belt instead of his holster.

He knew the man well enough to know how telling the emotion on his face was. And how much those children meant to him. The children Dylan had left without their father, and Sara had saved by taking them to Tarazed.

"I know. But the being who brought us here hasn't shown any inclination to return us, and these people don't have the technology to do it."

Dylan wasn't a father and now probably never would be. He'd lost Sara with everything else, and when he wanted to return from this place it was to his ship, to his mission, to trying to save the Known Worlds from chaos and the oncoming threat of the Magog. There was nobody he'd loved left, save Andromeda.

Now, apparently, there was Gaheris, but too late.

"I'd help you if I could. I need to get back to Andromeda."

That Dylan hasn't replied that he needs to return to Sara will probably be a revelation in itself.