[ It wasn't like this, Jaime thinks to himself. It was gone. Dead. Some would ask if being dead would be better than everything he's gleaned from this place so far, but Jaime's never adhered to that line of thinking, and he doesn't think Ruka does either, not after what she's been through. But now, trapped in this awful place like some sort of nightmare, that silver lining is of little comfort; he just lets her sink into him, hand idly rubbing her back, chin hooked around the slope of her shoulder to push his nose into the crook of her neck. ]

I'm here, [ he says first, because that's what he can say. ] No matter what happens, I'm -- I'm here.

[ He doesn't mean the Porter, of course - he means whatever happens here, whatever hell they get sent into, as long as it's within his power, he won't leave her side.

He knows that she won't leave his either. ]

I'm sorry. You could have never expected -- you couldn't prepare for this.

[ This, of all things. Of course she couldn't. He's always known her to prepare for everything, every move that she makes suited to gear up for one crisis or another that others would chalk up to paranoia, to something wrong with her. But he knows for her, that was just life. That's what life is. They even prepared for the apocalypse, the two of them.

They couldn't prepare for this. ]