He flinches, trembling under her grip - she could not have known what motion that emulated, the harsh digging of fingers beneath his collarbone but his muscles have locked and he cannot tear out of that grasp he cannot shatter the remembered sensation that initiated this that initiated all of this and she could not have known she could not have -

The mounting pressure behind his eyelids detonates. His back arches under buckling tension, head flung sharply back, teeth bared, before he adapts his trajectory and stumbles back instead, his shoulders hunched and his breathing heavy. His uninjured hand leaps to his face, to the hot trickle gathering on the ridge of his upper lip. It comes away slick and red.

Destiny echoes with an unnatural, shrieking tone.

"Epistaxis," he mutters shortly. "They’re waking me up."

He will need to alter his approach. This is absolute. This is unequivocal. This is a necessity. The prevention of future decoherence, of further failure on his part. He fixes Asadi with a stare haunted and torn, expression briefly, desperately contorting as he says quietly, "get out of the city."

It will not be sufficient. One side of his mouth twists into a pained half-smile, quietly meaningful, subtly mocking. "Please."

The ship rends itself apart in the snap into consciousness, the persistence of a single tone, the dark and disorientation of freezing concrete.