Max tucks the pipe back into his sleeve, more to have something to focus on that isn't Skulduggery. The sound he makes is terrible and Max doesn't know what it means, for all that he tries to pretend he knows how to manipulate and out negotiate humans, and does so all the time, he does not at all understand them emotionally. The amount of people he's seen cry could be counted on a single hand.

The reason he got along so well with Skulduggery, the reason he'd even spoken to him to begin with, was because he was so obviously not human. Even after all these months of interactions Max still sometimes forgot that Skulduggery actually had been human at some point, he hadn't simply manifested as a skeleton from the beginning.

Max has decided that he's no longer qualified to really assist in this emotional debacle anymore because anything he says or does is likely to be wrong and make things worse. Ava would know what to do, already does seem to be fixing it by what she's saying. He'll let her take the lead so he doesn't say the wrong thing.

"So then, you really are you. You're actually Skulduggery?" Better to focus on the basics, the facts. The things that don't require empathy or emotional maturity. "But with, more memories, more time that you've lived in your reality while remaining here."

A pause, "That sounds awful. My... my apologies."

So much for remaining emotionally neutral.