"Don't worry, I'll remember-"
Or so he says, but he is already stumbling, his knees giving in not for any fault of their own, but due to erratic, insufficient signaling from upstairs:
Can't access a file or program while it's being changed, 'please wait and don't press the power key' and all that. Consciousness dims to erratic flickers.
Think, think, and do it quickly.
No point wasting time in a futile effort to remain upright when the real showdown is going on inside his skull – but right in here, the lights are going out, and the threads of thought slip from his grasp even as he tries to reach for them: Update in Progress.
Except it's not quite an 'upgrade', not an improvement except in the most cynical of ways – He made a rash, emotional decision in the heat of the moment, a desperate to escape the pain bursting his chest open, and now he's paying the price for it, and all the others that lead him into this moment like beasts strung onto a Rosary of penitence.
And perhaps that's the very thing that them both to push this accursed trigger, some twisted-up need to punish themselves for the sins of their past this a farcical reenactment of a Shakespearean Suicide Pact, to escape from pain and regret and drink from that underworld river without even leaving their lives at the tollgates, insofar as either of them could even be said to have such a thing as a life anymore -
Just moments ago, the memory of her felt like a burning, excruciating agony that should surely shatter his chest if he did not throw it overboard, but that was operating under the assumption that he could never be free of it even if he wanted to – Now that it was actively fading from his grasp, it felt like one of the most precious jewels to relinquish, not just the memory of a very special person and a dear friend who had shared his journey, an example of all that which he valued the most, but the long-sought answers pertaining to mysteries of his own life-
Perhaps that was exactly why he deserved this, why he ought to be broken for his Pride in this exact way, but looking at her face as she struggled to form the smile that had been his last request, he could not stave off the conclusion that whatever it was he deserved, she was owed better than this – and once he'd formed this thought, he resigned himself to the solemn obligation to fight this in any way he could.