Nor does Ozpin, in all honesty. But he has a great deal more experience with this sort of conversation, this particular variety of tense silence. He cannot usually sit across a table from someone to have it, and he tries to bear that blessing in mind, not the weight of expectation in the air.

"Let us begin where we did not have a chance to linger, now that things are... substantially calmer than we left them."

He sighs, and leans in over the table, fingers laced together in thought. He casts his eyes down.

"Oscar, I am sorry to have left as I did. To be confronted with my past in such a fashion... it evoked a fear in me that I did not respond to well. In that moment, it seemed best that I step away as fully as I was able."

That hangs a moment, as steam rises from their mugs of cocoa. He does not say the full truth of it: that he'd felt again that existential despair, too vast to grasp. With Jinn's answer, he'd found himself pinned before the yawning expanse of eternity, knowing there was no escape but his inexorable failure. He had understood for the first time that he was trapped in a losing game. That all was fundamentally broken, and he had no solution.

All those centuries ago, he had retreated from it. He had shut himself away within the little walls of his home and his mind, as faraway as he could make himself. It was the closest he could get to escape. It had taken four remarkable young women to draw him out of it, the first time. It had taken centuries.

It is cowardice. He's aware. He has seen the bravery of the little group, filtering through to him as though across a great distance. He knows that he owes them better. The person he becomes in fear is not one worthy of his task, even if his task is always, and shall always be, one of holding the line. Protection is still a noble cause, even if salvation seems out of reach.

He is just so tired, sometimes. Still.

"I realize now that leaving you to bear our burdens alone was not a kindness."