Like a dying beast, set aflame by its fervent pursuers, the trainyard warehouse let out a final roar before falling to pieces, its insides too incinerated to support its own weight.  Margrave, not yet quite gone from the scene alongside his fellow Wards, turned back to gaze into the inferno.  Even from here, he could feel the heat on the hairs on his face.  What a day—even his imagination could not conjure a clever turn of phrase to describe it any further.

With any flight of fancy wasted, then, Elliot turned his attention to his allies.  To put it simply, both Lillian and Alessa were in awful condition, and Evelyn -who joined them a short while after the initial rendezvous- seemed...disturbed.  Elliot frowned, eyebrows furrowed.  If what she'd seen left her shocked, he didn't know what to say to her.  The only path that lay before her, a valley through the depths of this trauma and out onto the plains of inner peace, was to recollect the shattered pieces and forge them together into something stronger.  Fighting for what was right, Elliot knew, was not the glorious heroism of cartoons and comic books, but suffering; it was knowing that you would never make a difference in thwarting the evil of the world, and more than likely die nameless, but forging ahead anyway.  This was reality.  If the Wards didn't know it already, today's events would be a fitting introduction.

While examining Evelyn, Elliot realized how tired he, too, felt.  Holding himself together, he continued to help his teammates over to the PRT van, so that they might all be ferried homeward.  Only when sure that his aid would no longer be required did the young man allow the haze to overtake him, resting his eyes as he labored to steady his breath.