Saku's demand is penetrating, understood, clearer and beyond the volume of battle around them. And yet something in Tidus struggles; not out of stubbornness, out of confusion, but a void in him that won't allow him to acknowledge the wound, acknowledge anything.

But he fights against this state completely foreign to him, trying again with his magic. Energy hazes about his hand, and that battle for his conscience wanes for a second. Taiki's voice quiet in his ears. As soft as when they spoke in the cinema.

He wants to apologise and explain everything -- I didn't want to die, I never wanted to -- but now isn't the time, and he knows what Taiki means to say. His wounded arm trembles, fingers hurting to even flinch, so he takes his other hand close to it and thinks, potion, potion. Out appears a bottle, a minty scent clinging to its glass. Tidus tries to undo the lid, but it slips away, over the other side of his wounded arm, where Taiki might be able to grab it.

"Get somewhere safe," he says instead of reaching for it, without looking behind him, without confirming that it's Taiki there. Pleading, desperate, his voice wet but his face without tears. His heart pounding, feeling like he might die. This might be it.