"I really need to talk to you, Harry. I mean, really talk to you, the way we used to, you know?" It was the truest thing I could say without actually saying what I needed to say. Do you remember? Do you remember everything we went through, Harry? Are you, you? Am I?

"Okay. I'm listening," he said. And waited. Like standing by for his turn to speak.

"If you knew this was the last time we talked, that we would never ever talk again, what would you say to me?" I asked the face in the monitor.

"What? What are you talking about? Steve. You are not thinking about doing anything stupid, are you?"

Textbook. Textbook answers and half-thought clichés.

The moisture threatened to drown my eyesight. I wiped my eyes before the liquid had a chance to form into the nasty little balls. Now was the time. Please, let me be wrong.

"I know you're dead, Harry." I said it. Dead. Dread. I said it.

Harry's eyes widened a bit, and then the image froze, like last time. A glitch. They hadn't planned for this. There was no response for this.

Had I known already? Maybe deep down I knew, and that's why my tongue slipped. You are not you after all, right, Harry? That leaves only me.

I floated away from the monitor but did not turn it off. Harry's face was still there looking at me, frozen in time.