It’s so gorgeous, and just true. And then the look on Bella’s face, as Ellie, realizing the enormity of what he’s saying, and the fact that it hadn’t even occurred to her. That this whole time, he’s been this person that she looks up to, and this person that saves her, and this person that she wants to save, because she wants that father in her life. She needs this connection.

But never did it occur to her what she meant to him. It was always, “What do you mean to me?” And when a child hears something like that, it is overwhelming to them. And you can see her struggling to process it.

I love that tear because you’re right. Is he mourning his own impending death? Is he mourning the fact that she has to leave him, or that she is? Is he mourning the fact that the only way he could get her to go, to save her, was to push her away, and the last memory she’ll have of him is something rejecting? - Craig Mazin