[ With everything going on, Claude hadn't registered the loss of sensation at first. He's too busy trying to hold on to Petra, like it'll make a difference. Instead it ends up being a slow torment - and not the enjoyable kind. That he can feel her slipping away in turn after her anguished exclamation when he opens his eyes from where they'd fallen shut in anticipation of a kiss that never comes, one that should have because of their proximity, only rubs salt into that particular wound. ]

Petra--

[ Like it'll make a difference he lets go of her waist to hold her face in his hands again, but it's deceptive. She's there but isn't as she fades at the edges. Claude knows it must be the same in how he looks or how he appears to her. Time is running out even faster than he thought it would, and the tears in her eyes are a twist of the knife neither of them can prevent. ]

I'd stay with you always if I could. [ Those words choke him a little for how much he means them - and not just here with the Horizon intent on removing him from its boundaries, or for back in Cadens where they'd both separately denied something to themselves before putting it off no longer. It's for more than Abraxas, for the inevitability that someday they might return home and all of this will no longer be. He has to take a second to swallow the lump in his throat back because he can't let it prevent him from saying the rest of what he needs to. ] The letter I wrote you - the last part of it. I meant every word. Reread it for me, won't you?

[ Promise me, Claude wants to say, even if he already knows she will, even if this is the only comfort he can offer with all other options eroding away before their eyes. But something still holds him back from that, something he can't find a name for, but maybe it's also something that doesn't matter when they'll have time to say all of this in person. He'll make sure of it, however he has to. ]