Alfred had still been looking at her this whole time, but he hadn't really been seeing her; his eyes had unfocused as he'd taken in the news. Her hey brought him back, and he noticed the look on her face and the clouds in her eyes as she pressed her fingertips up against his palms. He wasn't sure if her words brought him any real comfort, to be honest. It was all well and good to say you weren't giving up, but that didn't mean things got any easier, or even that you were guaranteed success in the end. There were plenty of people on the Sycorax who hadn't given up, but they ended up just as dead as the ones who had lost hope. And this curse was... they'd been working on the Voyager for a month, and they hadn't managed to rid her of the curse yet. This curse was old, and challenging, and no one knew how to handle it — and you could fit a lot of fifteen-minute blocks into a month. Plenty of chances for him to die and spare them the trouble of trying to extricate the curse from him.

Whatever her efforts, he was most likely going to die. He was going to die, and for all he knew this could be the last time he saw Zelda face to face, or the last time he saw her alone — and he couldn't even say anything that was on his mind. He didn't have the words, and even if he did, this wasn't the time or place. They were meeting in a Ministry conference room, after all, because there was no way she would have wanted to see him elsewhere, and this was just a professional meeting. She was here in her capacity as a Ministry worker, and he as the captain of a cursed ship, not as Zelda and Alfred.

But there was at least a hint of that left, because she'd left her hands on top of his. Alfred wanted to say something, and started to try, but his throat swelled and he couldn't manage anything at all. Instead, he closed his hands around hers and held them tightly, as though he could communicate everything he couldn't say if he just held her hands tight enough.