Extremely helpful! Thank you. I don't think you should be ashamed of the MC's internal conflict eluding you. There has been a struggle for me while writing short stories of giving too little information and assuming the reader would infer what I think of with the information I give.
This was also one of the first times I was writing an action scene seriously. I tried to keep it short to make the fights seem extremely fast, however, I forgot to add a lot of breathers and dramatize some action scenes to really give it a punch and not confuse the reader too much. Same with some of the descriptions of what he was doing was kept tighter because I was trying to keep it below a certain word count. (1500 words).
Lastly, I totally forgot that the meaning of his last words doesn't really allude to what the whole story meant. You are exactly right that I should have had some connection with what he was saying. I honestly should have changed those last words to something else as even though I wanted that meaning to come off as something different to add more backstory, it would have no connection whatsoever to the short story.
You have no idea how much this means to me in improving my writing by taking time out of your day to actually analyze it! I sincerely do thank you for what you are doing.