He doesn't retaliate. Somehow, this is a result he hadn't considered. Like so many things, a positive outcome to anything has felt unbearably out of reach for a while now, and deep down, he's felt like Peridot would be fully in her right to reject him, even if he didn't want to believe it.

But she's still here.

Something about all of this just makes him curl in on himself, like his heart is hurting him so badly that he's going to collapse in on himself. There was a time when he believed that things could get better, didn't he? A time before that empty place, before everything he wanted had been torn down in front of him. Before he had spent what felt like hours, or days, crying out for help, when no came.

He can feel Peridot's need to hold onto him, and Joker's sincerity. It's so hard, but just for a moment, it feels like there's something far away that he can reach out to. Something that will reach back for him.

Like he doesn't have to go.

"I don't know what to do," he says in a tiny voice, the rhythm of his wings faltering. He's been holding himself aloft with his floating powers mostly, but as they start to fail him, his wings aren't doing enough to keep up, and he gradually starts to fall.