"We don't," he says flatly. "I deal." And I learn how to go on. It never hit him, before, how much of his energy had gone into being prepared for his own death, the aching inevitability of it all. Now that door is closed and a million others have opened but he feels... cheated, in a way, of all the work that went into the acceptance, and worse by the fact that he's the only one.

He's the only one that gets to come back.

He didn't want to die, that much was true and real. But he didn't want-- he didn't want to be the only exception. Not for this. For everything else the world over, yeah. Of course. That's what he's been fighting for ever since he set foot in the Academy. Four years? I'll do it in three.

But this is the wrong kind of exception, the wrong way to break the rules, and it feels like the chance to change things, to make everything right has been ripped away from him entirely.

There's a vicious, bitter thought in the back of his mind, barely an echo, I wish I'd stayed dead.

But he squashes it, drowns it out amidst the anger and helpless rage.