Gustavain has moved only as far away as Phillip's earlier motion has thrown him, no longer curled up quite so intimately but still pressed skin to skin in places, still sharing body heat in the rest. He still looks... remarkably unconcerned about this. The reality is far from that. There is simply so much to be concerned with all the time that every shocking event now stands together with all of the rest of them and any one of them seems less to panic over in comparison. Of course his best friend from his childhood was an Ascian. Why would it ever have been otherwise?

"How long will that last, do you think, when the others find you," it's asked softly, fingers finding the skin at Phillip's hip in a soft, almost absent caress. "They've declared war on the entire star. It's a war I mean to fight until it kills me," his dedication is measured not in fervent swearing to the cause, but how simply he says it. "I feel that may put us at odds," that is said with a kind of gallows humor, a lilt to his voice in the sheer understatement there.

He doesn't particularly know how to address the comment about Lahabrea, spoken like a schoolboy or office disagreement, when he's been the source of pain for so many people he loves, when he likely will continue to be for some time.