The girl's words were a bit of a shock, but not as much as they might have been. Alfred had seen his fair share of people die, after all, and several of them had died of causes a sight worse than dents in the head, so that part wasn't going to turn his stomach. He did feel bad about what she had been through, though — not because she was too young to have faced death, or anything naive like that, but because he recognized the way she was describing it. She was trying very hard, he suspected, to be mature about this entire situation — and if his suspicion was correct, she hadn't actually allowed herself to feel it yet. It was a pattern he'd seen repeated frequently on the ill-fated expedition that had seen so many of his comrades perish — and a pattern he had been through more than once himself, in fact.

He frowned at the girl, but he probably wouldn't have said anything in response if it weren't for Evander's last question. Well, if that wasn't a tragedy in and of itself — Alfred supposed she'd have to go live with Evander, and Merlin knew he wasn't going to handle this delicate emotional journey she was on very appropriately. The exceptionally awkward response he'd already given to her statement was proof enough of that. Evander probably had the a capacity for emotion and connection about as deep as a cat's milk dish. And he (or rather, they, the two of them) were all this poor little girl had, for the moment.

Alfred took a half-step to distance himself from Evander, then crouched slightly so that he was at eye level with the girl. His niece, apparently. "We don't always have to 'come to terms' with people dying right away, even if we expect it," he said gently. "It's okay to put it away for a bit and come back to it later, when it makes more sense. And it's okay to not deal with it all at once." Alfred straightened and ran one hand through a section of his unruly hair, trying to think of the best way to segue away from that topic, for the moment — since he was assuming she wouldn't want to keep talking about it here, with one uncle who was practically a stranger and one who was... Evander.

But what did one say to children? His most relevant experience with this age group was from when he'd been living with the tribe in South America. He had no idea what British children talked about. "My name is Alfred, and I'm happy to finally meet you," he began, almost surprising himself with the sincerity in his tone. True, this morning he hadn't even known he'd had a niece, but — well, family was family.