[It's another long moment where he's waiting for an answer. Any kind of answer, who knows. But one never comes. Nothing. Nothing.

And something in the universe cracks off, like brackets being removed, and that feeling from the night they first met. Like it never even went away.]

Coward.

[One word, and from him it sounds like it may as well be written in red, in the blood of reality itself so it becomes an unending and undeniable truth.]

I offered. If you're too scared to take it, then sit there. The loved people will flee from your real self and the hated will feel from your fake self. Rot in the hell you threw yourself in.

[He can kill him. He can break him further. He can ruin you and everything you care about and that nightmare will replay itself.

--But it doesn't. He's turned and walking off and only the scathing words remain. Dismissed like the coward he is.]