Does it matter? 'Make friends' didn't do my future self any good either, and making them only to lose them or have them fail to render the aid everyone swears I'll gain from it would be .. worse than being alone from the start.

[There's a twitch, a flicker of some unpleasant dark feeling at Vincent's touch, but he doesn't shrug it off. He's managed to eat a couple things but mostly it's just getting moved around. Eating while under enough stress simply didn't happen.]

'Shouldn't' doesn't matter, and you can't get to my time anyway. I have to. I want to, if there's anything I can do ... I can't not do it. Wasting time with frivolous distraction is not okay.

[His life didn't value as high as that of so many others, and though it hurt to think about, that part didn't bother him - that it meant the cessation of all else did. If he dwelt on it too long, the selfishness led to ribbons of resentment ... but what did anyone do to deserve that?

The things Nero had only hinted at..

But the truth is never so sweet and pure and selfless, and with the compulsion is the rest. The selfish, pathetic child underneath it that he could barely tolerate if he thought about it much.]

But I wish I didn't have to. I just ... wanted to live a normal life. Do all the things normal people get to do, plan for a future, look forward to growing up.. I don't want to die.

[The resignation tinges with something like despair. He raises one hand to his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if it would somehow help.]

I don't know if life isn't fair, or if it is and this is the price for the things I normally would have done. To feel even a fragment of what I made others endure.