All at once, he realizes: It's what he was going to do to Goro. He didn't have any kind of attachment to their world's Isshiki, but Falcon clearly did, and Falcon killed her anyway, because he couldn't do anything else. It would have been like that for him, after Niijima's Palace. The regret, the pain, and the total pointlessness of it all. Goro would still have been dead, whether Ren was sad about it or not.

He struggles for words, but all that he can find is, I'm sorry. And it doesn't matter. It matters that he changed his mind, that Goro might survive. That's all. He clings to that thought. Shido is how he is in every fucking world, and Isshiki is marked for death. But at least Goro is safe.

"I really wanted to kill him," he hears himself say. "Not just... as a way to survive. I wanted to."