Ah how he's tried to hold on for just such a reason. Even when pain would have driven him to end his life for relief alone, he's refrained from retreating into the safe recesses of his mind to extend what time he has left with his wife. But his control is gone. He's not dead, but that release would be the greater mercy. Still some fragment of him holds on tightly to Bethany, unwilling to let her go, though he truly should.

It's the dream again, where she is in his arms and there was never any red lyrium. Just the promises of their country estate and their children playing in the shade of a flowering almond tree. He won't let go this time, won't let her fade away and vanish into nothing but memories of loving smiles.

He's clinging to Bethany in reality just as firmly as he is in the fantasy, unaware he is doing so, beyond a mumbled, "Forgive me, I tarried too long." Alas her pleas to stay with her now fall on deaf ears, seeing how his obedience only extends so far as to not pass on to the Maker's side.