After that futile gesture, he just sits in his bed, the walkie talkie lying untouched as Taako's voice crackles through it, and he very nearly succumbs to the urge to fall back into sleep.

But his wound has reopened, sticky and red and fluid, and he reaches across his fae-marked chest, digging his claws into it as though seeking some essential comfort from its bleed.

And the pain... revitalises him. Rejuvenates him? Repairs him, such that he no longer craves that oblivion, no longer malingers on the verge of unconsciousness His digits sinking into a cover of blood, he retrieves the walkie talkie with his other paw, manipulating it clumsily into place with the tips of his claws.

"You...." It starts with all the ferocity of an indictment. An accusation. "You tried to stop it."

The brief rupture in his control is closed, its premature, pathetic payload spent. But instead of that delusive anger, instead of some desperate need to experience and consume anguish, it reveals only how much empty space was really under the false heat of his botched detonation.

"You knew I meant to die." For all his affliction, he no longer remembers how his other self even felt in that moment. If he could ever summon emotions, could remember how they felt, could recall his experiences as they were experienced in the moment--but he can't. He can't even remember--

"You tried to stop her."