Oh is a good way to put it. He keeps a tight grip on Vash as the other man stumbles, sympathy -- empathy, really, because he knows exactly what that distress feels like -- guarding his expression and keeping his face turned away from Vash, to give the man some semblance of privacy to pull himself back together. Yes, Rem is living at the edge of July, her station house overlooking the ruins of the city he destroyed. The grave, of everyone he'd killed there.

"She doesn't know." His voice is quieter than it was a moment ago, but still level. He'll grieve over this old wound later -- for now, that pain is pushed as far down as it'll go, deep enough to turn July's corpse into a sinkhole. To be fair, he's not certain what Rem knows, but he can't imagine that she'd be living at the edge of July if she had any idea what that place meant to the Vashes. "I didn't... I wasn't there long. It didn't come up."

He doesn't want to say it aloud, but under that statement is a plea -- he didn't tell her then, and he doesn't want to tell her now. Every Vash that's arrived, as far as he can tell, has come to her with tears in their eyes and grief in their heart. She already knows about the Fall, about Knives's act of mass death. He doesn't want her to know about his butcher's bill, too. How could she deal with that? Knowing that both her children caused so much pain and suffering? Not for his own sake -- he knows what he is -- but for hers. He can't do that to her.

"How could I tell her something like that?"