He can't give a single reason.
Even though he wakes up every day to a world that doesn't need him, that would just keep going if he were gone.
Even though he is mediocre when he's often been told he could be something more, something special.
Even though he feels everyone against him, and him against everyone, friendless and hopeless.
When John Locke looks at him, he sees potential. When Roger Linus looks at him, he sees a great man robbed of his chance. When Alex Rousseau looks at him, she sees the father she never had. But they are only three, and three is not enough.
No one ever called him emperor. Not even once.
It burns in his chest like one of Leslie's acidic compounds. Every day the gaping cavity inside is wider. Deeper. Hungrier.
He's tired of living like this, but he won't surrender, won't lay down and shrivel and give up the last power he possesses, the power over his own breath, a power mocked every time he replaces his father's oxygen canister.
He refuses to die. But he can't give a single reason not to, until someone else is threatened with burning and what happens to him doesn't matter so much anymore.
You can't hold on to power. His father's decay has shown him that.
Maybe you can hold on to love.
Maybe it's the only thing worth holding on for.