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[It doesn't escape him, that she doesn't outright say he departed to the sea, but knowing that any of his former self seemed to be restored--

Well. For right now, it's satisfaction enough for his actions, and for what he left behind for that purpose.]

He was always smaller in our past as well. It seems as if he was somewhat restored, at the least.

How very like him, though, to have forced you to face others of similar faith.

restored?
i think so

he was wearing a hooded cloak like the other shades
but his was white
he was the one who always wore white wasn't he

i think of the two of you i understand him less than you
i know why you hated the sundered even if i don't agree we deserved it
but if elidibus hated us then it was different than your feelings i think

i suppose he'd loathe to know that i was even trying to understand him, right now

he said as much once
just before he forced me to kill monsters with the faces of my friends

Elidibus was his duty, moreso than Lahabrea or I ever were, not to mention the heart of our lord. The sundered were doubtless a reminder to him of the shattered state of the very primal he was a part of.

He was ever our Emissary; in forcing you to kill facsimiles of those you cared for, he meant to force you to confront what you had done to him. To us. To view another perspective, thrown into starker relief. That much he seems to have retained as a part of his duty.

to confront what i had done to him
well i suppose in the end that came full circle didn't it
now he gets to confront what he did to us

i wonder what right the ascians ever had to judge us
as though we asked to be sundered
as though we had any hand in it at all

there was never anything we ever could have done to be enough was there
we never had a chance even from the start

but you were the ones who decided we were half-things not truly alive just because we weren't like the people who came before us

and when you're the ones deciding it's awfully easy to set the rules and measures so that they come out the way you want them

did elidibus just not consider that we had a perspective too
did he think we were too broken of facsimiles to warrant one to begin with

Touched a nerve, have we?

You will never be able to see things in the same way we saw them, because you still consider yourselves to simply be 'not like your former selves'. You do not fully conceptualize the chasm between being a different person and being a part of a person, to our eyes.

Perhaps he did consider it. Perhaps he did not. Ultimately, however, both perspectives could not exist; what room was there for any ground between those who wished to keep living their short lives, and those who saw the same lives as an obstacle to true restoration? Either we killed you or you killed us, and we both know well enough which won out.

[no, she types like an absolute hypocrite, and very nearly sends it, except that she doesn't lie to Emet-Selch. Avoiding truths and sidestepping questions is one thing — certainly no better or worse than what he does himself.

But he doesn't lie to her. For everything else he is, he's not a liar. So she won't make herself into one, either — not to him.]

do you think i like knowing that i was once whole and now i'm not

that at some point long ago someone took me and tore me apart and scattered the pieces all across the shards and i will never, ever have them back again

you told me how horrible it is to see a person you once knew with no capacity to ever recall you

have you considered how it feels to learn you ought to be able to recall someone and will never stand the slightest chance of knowing even a bit of what was taken from you

why do you think i ask so often about azem
about you
about all of it

i know it will never be enough and i will never be enough
that i accept that as true doesn't mean i won't still try to be more than i am anyway

You could have been, had you not refused the only path toward being whole, but the discomfort of not knowing was not enough to leave a comfortable, yet flawed, existence behind for you.

You wish to see a reflection within a mirror you insist upon leaving half-shattered, for you too are a shard of glass, and felt for the ones that would cease to be shards and become a mirror once more.

[She wonders, amid warring thoughts of jagged glass and cast-aside things, what tone of voice he would've used for you could have been, were he saying it to her in person. Would it be derisive, both patient and patronizing at once? Accusatory, full of ire and betrayal at having an extended hand spurned?

Or maybe, some small and near-smothered part of her thinks — maybe it would have been melancholy. An even remark to hide a deeper well of ancient hopes dashed, from a man who can't help but invoke mentions of his friends even when trying to talk about who he once was instead.

It makes her wonder, for a moment, if she's really the one he's talking to, just then. You insist on leaving yourself half-shattered, as though he means the reproach for the one who was ever whole to begin with.]

you're right

[She types it, and looks at the words on the tomestone glowing back at her, and is surprised to find that she's still telling the truth even now.]

azem was more than i will ever be able to be
a shard of glass can never be a mirror, it's true
but glass doesn't lose its ability to reflect things altogether even smaller and jagged and broken

the convocation must've thought zodiark was the only path toward salvation
so the fact that azem opposed it must mean they thought there was another way

so if the ardor is the only path toward being whole again
then azem would have thought there was another way to that too
that doesn't mean i know what it is or could hope to work it out if i tried
but i know they would have believed it

there are shards of them that weren't part of me
all of us broken pieces of that mirror
all of us reflecting some small glimpse of the whole person we once were
one of them was brave and good and did everything right and still couldn't save the world he loved
if that doesn't make him a reflection of azem i don't know what would

so mayhap it is enough after all
i think azem would want it that way is what i mean
that if only some small fraction of them could remain after all the rest of them had broken apart
then at least the part that endured was the part that you mattered to

surely that must be azem's reflection in me
their unwillingness to forget you even when they can't remember you

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