[I've died twice and had my soul removed once was one of the sentences that started this whole thing between them; in a way, he almost doesn't want to circle back to it now, for all that it's immediately pertinent. Difficult to delve deep into how something can be a suicide mission in which they all died and yet they all walked away, and not wind up making the conversation all the worse for it.

It makes him think, briefly, of the Northern Crater — of the way Reno's voice had gone tight when recounting how two of his comrades had stayed behind while he escaped, lost to necessity and the outcome that had to happen. That's not so far off from what happened at Ultima Thule, really. Better, perhaps, not to make him relive it all again.]

It wasn't one of our most sound ideas, I'll admit. Not that we had many to choose from.

[He lies still, just breathing, listening to the sound of Reno's voice. It's not the first time this conversation that he's wished they were together. It is the first that he's wished it for his own sake, instead of for Reno's.]

I thought it might have come for your Gaia, back when we were first comparing notes. That your Jenova was my Jenova, somehow.