For the second time that awful afternoon, dazed silence filled the room.
Murdock almost, almost repeated Face's last bit of the sentence as a question, but had the wherewithal to realize it would throw gunpowder on the flame.
"She can't have," B.A. intoned, in his deep-as-the-sea voice, his voice meant to soothe and be definitive at the same time. "She can't have given your baby away. Two parents need ta sign off on papers. Not just one."
Now Face focused on B.A., who took the brunt of the gaze with ease. Beneath his arm, Murdock felt the tensions warring in the man beside him: trembling and fragmenting all at once. Something was building; whether it was explosive rage or explosive grief he didn't know, he couldn't know which way that pendulum would swing until Faceman let it out—
"One can if she lied and said she didn't know who the father was, and didn't lie by saying she didn't know how to find him!"
—explosive rage, then.
But Face didn't stop at the final revelation.
"Oh god, oh god—she had my baby, she had my son—oh god—she-she gave h-him away! I never knew, I-I n-never had the cha-chance to-to meet him or say don't give him away or anything—"
—explosive grief smashed the rage with the force of a tsunami, and Face clutched at Murdock, clutched at anything that might hold him here, hold him solid. He sobbed and wailed, and B.A. came to over to help as well, enveloping both of them in huge arms, holding Face still from his impotent rocking.
Hannibal stood by them all, stroking Face's hair until, spent and weak as a kitten, Face could no longer voice anything else and went limp against all three of them.