[Tess steps away from him, trying to find something else to fixate her attention on. She has this horrible mental image of being too far gone before Joel is willing to do it, and there's nothing relieving about only being shot when she's clawing and thrashing about. How many hours are enough before she can check out on his terms?

"Suicide" seems like the wrong word for any of this, not when she's going to die regardless.]

You wanna make this uglier than it has to be? At least I'd be responsible for it, not you.

[She pauses to wipe at her eyes again and then takes a deep breath. Compose yourself, compose yourself, you didn't spend twenty years rising to power only to cry about it all at the end. Tess forces herself to sound a little more resolved, a little more firm.]

And what are we gonna do with that time, anyway? Sit here and talk and write my eulogy together? Go for a stroll and talk about old times? Try to find a cure for cordyceps? The infection doesn't exactly have far to travel. I might not have that much time to begin with.