Kira makes fun of him and it gets a sharp glare shot his way for the effort. It softens almost immediately, though, because again this kid is annoyingly right about him. Like, all the time. If Karen didn't also see him he would swear he was hallucinating him. His head hits the cement wall behind them hard, but it doesn't seem to impact him. His skull makes a dull thud he might've shied away from a week ago, but he's getting bolder all the time. Building up callouses to the loud, loud world he finds himself transplanted into.

"She's better off without me anyway. I'm always gonna be around if she needs me, but I can't..." Or he won't - he's not denying the merits of what Kira says - but this is still his truth. It's still something he feels incapable of doing, of being for her. "She knows the score. All the ways in which I'm lacking." She keeps trying anyway, keeps trying to force him into being a real person when he'll only ever be an approximation of the shadow of the man he'd once been. To say nothing of what Reims had stripped from him, afresh.

His own anger deflates, and so does his skeleton, melding with the wall as he tries to calm his racing heart. Maybe he would be better off in New York. Or dying, finally, once he gets tired enough. Tired enough not to wake up again.

"This is what trying looks like, if you're me."