[ It's bad enough to hear those things, to feel her heart twist so awfully for his sake, to know - with unfortunate clarity - how it feels to have something like that dangled in front of you and then taken away-- but that last sound is what makes her draw in a sharp breath as if it's physically struck her, her body automatically leaning in and hands coming up as though she might somehow be able to protect him from his own pain. ]

[ But it's not that easy and probably never will be, and though her hands hover, there's nothing much that she can do with them. If she were given to it, she might hug him; the sentiment is certainly there, but she has no propensity to act on it. Her hands fall after a moment, face strained with sympathetic anguish. ]

That--

[ She stops herself. 'I know how it feels,' she wants to say, because she does. After all, she's the 'certain other people' in her worlds - oh, but when hasn't she had to see something better than her own reality and know she'll never attain it? But she can hardly tell him that, and in her faltering pause, she curls and uncurls her fingers once, as if searching for the answer. Shoulders lowering slowly, she exhales, and the words she comes up with wind up being sincere. ]

... That doesn't mean you can't still be happy. [ Since when is she the one who won't give up? There's a lump in her throat to think of it. ] Or that something else wonderful can't happen. None of us know how things will turn out, but... we might still get a happy ending.

[ Some of them, anyway. And she's not about to say she isn't counting herself. ]