Victor swallowed thickly. It was strange that all the physical feelings of emotion persisted even though his physical body didn't: the lump in his throat, the sting at the bottom of his eye. Was there anything to that or was it just habit that had brought them on? Psychosomatic emotional tells based on his memories of what it was like to be sad? (Would they fade, over time, if not maintained? The way memories faded?)

"It was so sudden," he said, and then because this was hopeless and unproductive and they could probably wallow in it forever without coming to any sort of catharsis, he tried to push past all the emotion with a weak joke: "If I'd known it was coming I'd have picked up an armful of books before I died, and at least had something to read."

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