[He walks for a moment after listening to her, a small crowd moving past in the opposite direction. His lips twist into something that at least resembles a smile, though it is thin and not fully realized, weighted instead with him considering his response.]
Well. I admit it is a curiosity to see how you may handle it — any differently than I, perhaps with more grace? Or less? How long before it becomes too much, or shall it just become a baseline for you, since you’re not going to harbor more of it?
[Thousands of years ago, he had pushed through it all. The pain, the nightmares, the way his insides felt changed from the core, the way he could feel his humanity being leeched from his soul. All for the sake of others, and he had suffered so much for it. A small part of himself — the part that harbors that awful thing called regret — wonders if he had just been foolish. If she will possess more sense than that other him and choose to let go of the darkness, because she could, if she wanted to. He never got that choice.
But in the end, it’s fallacy. She is stubborn, and her motivations are different. She is wanting to understand him, but she is lacking the foundation of why he chose to become a healer in the first place — to aid others. It will never be the same, and it wasn’t the pain of the Starscourge that truly rent him in two. It was the betrayal that came afterwards, the rejection of the gods, the way his family cast him aside, tried to execute him after all he did—]
Your self-imposed quest to understand the kind of man I am will just prove detrimental to you, in the end. Do you intend to carry it with you for thousands of years?
no subject
Well. I admit it is a curiosity to see how you may handle it — any differently than I, perhaps with more grace? Or less? How long before it becomes too much, or shall it just become a baseline for you, since you’re not going to harbor more of it?
[Thousands of years ago, he had pushed through it all. The pain, the nightmares, the way his insides felt changed from the core, the way he could feel his humanity being leeched from his soul. All for the sake of others, and he had suffered so much for it. A small part of himself — the part that harbors that awful thing called regret — wonders if he had just been foolish. If she will possess more sense than that other him and choose to let go of the darkness, because she could, if she wanted to. He never got that choice.
But in the end, it’s fallacy. She is stubborn, and her motivations are different. She is wanting to understand him, but she is lacking the foundation of why he chose to become a healer in the first place — to aid others. It will never be the same, and it wasn’t the pain of the Starscourge that truly rent him in two. It was the betrayal that came afterwards, the rejection of the gods, the way his family cast him aside, tried to execute him after all he did—]
Your self-imposed quest to understand the kind of man I am will just prove detrimental to you, in the end. Do you intend to carry it with you for thousands of years?