[Fate! Well, that's a god-awful laugh - takes a couple wheezing breaths that fall short of being laughs accompanied by hard blinking - thoughts of "depending", Jesus, stop acting like you don't know...]

-- Can't be...

[Somewhere in that pause was an "it", too barely pronounced to entirely be what it is. Starts shaking his head, meandering.]

'Ss not... It's all... [Ever more trembling god damn it what a mess he is - ] -- not even real, it's not, it's not, it's not real, just --

[Hard swallow.]

-- just let me go -- ...!

[Honest pathetic and fff, pretty much guaranteed-to-be-ineffective plea there, but, ha. It... is what it is, really, especially when you've got no options either way.]