She marches boldly towards the end, however much the both of them would like to believe that she isn't.
Even now she is burning with a gentler, softer light that cannot be found just anywhere – as if a painter had combined his favourite palettes and achieved the perfect balance, only to find the vibrancy impossible to recreate. The thought of her departure is that of a limb missing – first there is shock, then denial, and then the bitter realisation that she is gone gone gone gone.
He wonders if he could have done more, and the answer rattles in his skull like gunfire, each word beating mercilessly, destructive: no, no, no, and he hates himself this weakness.
And so he will stay with her to the end as he had pledged, no matter how he is reminded of his powerlessness with every gasping breath she takes, and a part of him falls away, splintering into an entity all its own, another him that will fight and break and destroy without mercy.
He wonders if he will remember the sound of her voice and the scent of her hair, the feel of her skin under calloused fingers and the haziness of her eyes in the mornings-after. (The answer is yes, even a decade later as he sits polishing his anguish into something shiny and sharp, blades that wound as much as he has been and has done.)
(He finds it oddly fitting how in her final moments, the absence of her heartbeat rings the loudest in his ears.)