[There's a moment when Cain moves away from him where his vision swims again, and the world turns to underwater shapes and close-pressing darkness. Almost he wants to sink with it, it would be such an easy thing--

--but the other man returns with needle and thread, there's the bright biting pressure around torn flesh and he looks up into the taller man's face. Registers what he'd been saying a few moments later than he should have, but when he does, he laughs.]

It isn't a job, what I do. One can't retire from being what they are. Can a gun stop being a gun? You may as well be asking that of me.

[He lifts the shoulder Cain isn't working on in a shrug, skin sliding against the table with an ugly sound.]

Besides, I wasn't going to last that long. Broken, you see. Faulty, one experiment too far and everything was coming undone, unraveling and getting away from me. I was running out of time.

Better to die by his hand then become...something else.

[He's going to have so many regrets later.]