God, he hated this. After everything he gave up, sometimes he wondered when it would stop. He pushed people away because this was exactly what he couldn't have, an emotional attachment to someone, because it fucking hurt when he had to tell them no. Even ten years later, he still thought of James Bond as his bodyguard, probably more than others, but he couldn't think about that right now. No, he didn't have the emotional energy anymore to muster more than a detached, momentary thought to his life back home. Was it still frozen? When he finally died, would he go back, only 42 years old, and all of this a nightmare he wouldn't remember over the interference of his own brain trying to convince him to be someone else? Or was his world razed and burned already? Time finally moving, and him not there to save it?

"It might not be winning, but at least it keeps me safe until I can win! I might have not done much yet, but you'd be surprised how much polling numbers have changed, how much I've done hinges on how nasty the resistance gets! I'm giving us hope that there are natives out there who still fucking like us! And there are! That's just as important right now!"