César even manages a laugh for a moment. His emotions are everywhere. But that's okay, being between these two.

"I suppose not," César acquiesces. "But I promise you we were subtle compared to my parents—ah."

His expression falls away to melancholy again, and he looks down at his hands. With Watson finished, César can compare the two of them, flexing them slowly with only a small twinge of pain in the right. Bandaged and bloody versus not. He hadn't gotten rid of all the blood under his fingernails. Too distracted.

César leans back into Johnny a bit, eyes growing unfocused; his rising crescendo of emotion had been interrupted, reset to quieter note, almost like he had forgotten. "Rex—" Who has amnesia, they both know. "—and his new family... They're good people. Yet I had to bury my grief. They didn't see me as a person who could grieve. Because to them, I'm a little off, kooky, crazy, and strange... a mad genius whose only contributions were his equations, algorithms, and contraptions."

He reaches over to take the up his watch again, pushing down the crown to click it open. A picture of his family. He's between his parents, just like his much younger brother. César watches the second hand turn.

"Or memories of our parents, for Rex. So I-I don't understand, how do you already care? They couldn't."