Felix's admiring smile fell away at her words, and his brow knit together in concern at the implication of what she was saying. Back to factory settings? They couldn't do that. Surely there had to be some way to stop this virus that didn't involve wiping their memories.
They'd gotten rid of viruses in games before - sure, they had been isolated, and not as severe - but they had done it! This was just on a larger scale. They could do it.
They had to.
"What?" He asked numbly, the full realization of what this could mean began to dawn on him. "No, we can't do that." He shook his head, moving his hands from her face to clasp together in front of himself. "Think about everyone in the arcade! What about Q*Bert and his friends? They'll have nowhere to go." He told her fretfully, and his heart began racing again. Though he tried to remain calm. "Or Ralph. He'll be alone again. I don't want that. And Vanellope! Oh no -" He trailed off, bringing a terrified hand up to the side of his face.
All of those things were terrible, but that wasn't what was on the forefront of his mind. He didn't even want to say it…
"There's got to be something else we can do." He leaned forward and reached for one of her hands, holding onto it with both of his. As he leaned forward, the dog tags she had given him clinked together on their chain, and a cold chill ran through him. Could she have really been giving him something to remember her by? His grip tightened on her hand, and he brought his forehead down to rest on it. "I can't forget about you, Tammy."
When her hand was taken and pressed between two slightly smaller ones, she felt the decision become that much harder. She couldn't, for the life of her, stand to see Felix this way - not when it was because of something she'd said. She knew that he would have had to find out at some point, but that didn't eliminate her guilt.
Her position changed as she finally sat up. She didn't remove her hand from its placement between his, but she did lean in close to him, so that she was speaking against his hat. "It's not about what we can or can't do, Fix-It," she began. "It's about what needs to be done. We can't stand back and let an entire arcade go out of business because we let our emotions get in the way." And there was where her "tough soldier" mentality kicked in, yet she quickly subdued it so she wouldn't end up shouting. "I'd rather be taken out by a hundred Cy-Bugs than forget about you, but if it means taking care of this virus once and for all…"
She didn't have to finish. The end of her sentence was perfectly clear: They would have to go through with it.
As much as it killed her to know that she would go back to hurting each and every day, to being mercilessly haunted by nightmares of Brad - of the putrid stench of his flesh being churned in the sharp gears of a Cy-Bug's mouth, she was willing to endure it, all for the sake of restoring order in their catastrophic world.
As she shifted her position, his grip tightened on her hands, and he leaned in closer to rest against her.
He needed her; and not just to reach the fancy plates that they stored in the higher-up cupboards. He needed her to ground him. To keep him calm, and to motivate him. He was sure if it wasn't for her being there at that moment, he would have been dealing with this much worse. He would have dealt with the whole Stevens situation far worse, and even back when they'd first met, if she hadn't been there to calm him down, then they both probably would have been buried under six feet of chocolate milk mix. He'd needed her before he'd even known it.
"It's not so bad." He said, pulling back to look at her; and his vision was becoming blurry with unwelcome tears once again. "We don't have to get rid of it." He told her, but he knew that was not true. The Nicelanders couldn't keep going like that. Ralph couldn't keep going like that. The soldiers in her game certainly couldn't keep going like that; and Sugar Rush looked like it had hit its best-before date ages ago. He knew what the right thing to do was, but for once he found himself seriously hesitating to do it; and that did not make the situation any easier.
Releasing his hold on her hand, he instead moved to wrap his arms around her middle in a tight hug and press his head under her chin. "There has to be another way to fix this." He seriously hoped there was, but he was afraid that he was only trying to convince himself at that point. Still, he refused to believe that their whole lives could just go away like that. This virus had been unpleasant from the get-go, but it was nowhere near as bad as the consequences arising from it were proving to be.
Felix's reoccurring wish for an alternative solution was maddening. It took everything she possessed to refrain from grabbing onto his shoulders and telling him, quite angrily, that no, there WASN'T another way. She wanted him to understand this because the sooner he accepted that there was no 'fixing' anything, the sooner he would be able to start preparing himself for their end. But…
Why did he have to be so sensitive? Why did he have to be so persistent? Why did he have to be so good?
She was grateful that he had decided to disconnect their gazes and hug her, because if she had to look into his teary eyes any more that night…she'd lose it just like Stevens had. Possibly worse. Her arms held onto him while her knees slipped beneath his body, so she was cradling him on her lap, as she often did, to try and console him through his unhappiness; she sighed as she closed her eyes, holding him.
"There was a reason I didn't shoot you when we first met," she mused, recalling their first encounter nearly a year before. "And no, it wasn't because of your darn googoo eyes." She pulled her head back and then kissed the top of his hat lovingly. "It's because I thought to myself: 'What kind of brainless idiot would invite himself into a game, a first-person shooter, no less, without ever once considering the consequences?'"
And that's when she knew. Felix didn't think. He acted. If someone was in trouble, if someone needed his help, he wouldn't hesitate to put his life on the line. That, to Tamora, was true bravery. It was also stupidity, but she respected him for it.
"You're stronger than you think, Fix-It. It doesn't matter if you're high definition or not," she continued, directing her fingers beneath his chin. She hadn't wanted to before, but now she felt that eye-contact was imperative. Thus, she gently pushed his head back, so as to capture his gaze with her own. "If it comes down to it and there's no one else around, I need to know that you'll be able to pull that plug with me."
This moment felt almost surreal. Like he was caught in a nightmarish loop that refused to stop, and just kept getting worse. All of the events that had happened before had been far from pleasant - seeing everyone's health begin to deteriorate, seeing the games themselves begin to fall away, and even seeing a character snap entirely - but this? This brought all of the bad things that had happened together in a terrible crescendo.
Why wasn't she even trying to find another solution? The buzzing sound in his head spiked up in volume at that moment, but he could care less about it at that point. If anything, it just made him bury his face into the curve of her shoulder and attempt to keep himself calm. Much easier said than done, and he could feel his breath getting panicky and uneven.
If he was this much of a mess at just the idea of losing someone he cared about, he didn't even want to imagine what it would be like to actually go through with it - and not only that, but live with it every single day. Like Tamora would be forced to if they went through with this.
But if they didn't, then everyone - not just his friends - could be in danger.
This was without a doubt the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. But after a moment, he took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded slowly, pulling himself back in to hug her again.
He wasn't making this easy. Not by a long-shot. But when the fixer began nodding to reflect that he would go through the mass reset if it came down to it, Tamora felt prouder than she'd ever been of him. She squeezed him in the embrace he established, conveying both her approval and love.
The dog tags around his neck clinked softly against themselves, and a thought occurred to him. He shifted his position slightly, and released his hold on her for a moment to tug one of his gloves off, then reached up to hold it in her hand. "I know it may not be your size, and it's nothing special," he began, and leaned against her again, "but you should keep it." He told her, still holding onto her hand. Maybe there would be time to get her something better before she had to go back to her game; but right now, he just wanted to sit there.
She looked at the small offering in her palm and felt her icy demeanor begin to melt at an alarming rate. She hadn't expected him to give her something in return, and the fact that he had truly surprised her.
Her fingers slowly closed around the glove as she exhaled a shuddering breath. Wordlessly, she hunched over and held onto him, burying her face into his shoulder. Something so plain as a glove shouldn't have affected her so deeply. Nothing should have. But here she was, trembling slightly, and trying to keep herself from showing the ultimate form of weakness.
Needless to say, that didn't stop her eyes from fogging over with liquified emotion - an act that was so foreign to her character that it legitimately terrified her. She hadn't cried since Brad, and she wasn't…she couldn't…not in front of Felix.
Not in front of anyone.
Pulling away from their hug, she quickly reached up and swiped at her eyes with the side of her hand; wetness and eyeliner splotched her skin, but they were gone with another fierce wipe. Her voice was a bit thicker when she attempted to change the subject, or at least shove the attention off of her. "We should get some sleep. While we can, anyway."
Sleep seemed like a foreign concept at the moment. He didn't know how much of a chance he'd have at falling asleep that night. He just wanted to spend some more time with her. But they could both, undeniably, use a little rest. Especially with how busy the next day was shaping up to be. As much as he didn't want to, he found himself nodding again, and pulling himself up to kiss her on the cheek before laying down at her side. Maybe he could just pretend to sleep.
Tamora knew as well that neither of them were likely to get any sleep that night, or not any valuable sleep. Still, it was best to at least go through the motions, just to say that they'd tried. Following the kiss she received to her cheek, she reached toward the bedside table, set down the glove he'd given her, and then returned to the smaller form that was already laying down.
She pulled him into her arms and tucked him against her body; her knees scooped beneath the back of his calves while she leaned in close. She found his mouth and kissed him one, two, three times - each stronger and needier than the last. When that was done, she pulled back and sighed, shutting her eyes.
Come sunrise, she would leave Fix-It Felix Jr. and more than likely never return.