daemonized | RECOLLE IC CONTACT.

To keep some of the adjustments Retrospec has made to us a secret.

We finally got together that neighborhood watch-crisis response thing, and I'm not in charge. I explained the cyberbrain, and didn't even take thirty seconds before people were trying to figure out how to exploit it.

People cannot help their fascination with the new and strange. And finding ways to use it to their advantage is merely human nature.

But now you know why that I would rather remain hush-hush about some of my abilities, to the network at large.

I'm sorry this happened to you, however.

It's not that I don't want to use my changes to help, but that I want to do it on my own terms. Which I know is exactly how you feel.

But. I know this didn't happen to the guy I'm remembering, the cyberbrains are too commonplace in his world. That's not true for you, is it? Even in that world, your healing is rare? I got that indication.

I healed many; I assume that I was a rarity, given that so many people flocked to me. Of course, this is assuming that I recall the whole of it, and some vital detail isn't missing completely from my mind.

Hmm. You're still waiting for some other shoe to drop? The memories where you are feeling the other person's hate or disdain, as you called it, it still doesn't sit right with you?

You know my thoughts on the matter. I believe in you.

I appreciate it, Togusa. And yet in some ways, the shoe has already dropped, I think.

[The urge to try to calm or minimize the damage is already there. But maybe now's not the time for that.]

... What did you see?

The state of the world after a long, long dark. Daemons running rampant across the lands. Nothing particularly pleasant, needless to say.

Daemons. Like in that building we saw in October, but everywhere? Hell.

[And there's the one thing Togusa has never been able to rectify, as much as he wants to encourage Ardyn; his own voice ringing out and mocking them as they traveled. He's heard this man Ardyn is worried about.]

Do you know what you were doing in that world, or were you just living in it?

I was doing more than just living in it. And though the details do escape me, for there are still things which I cannot quite recall...

[He stares at the rest of this text message, exhaling long. He types the rest of it out.]

I'm fairly certain that I was the cause of everything. The darkness. The daemons. The state of the world.

[Togusa has to stare at this text message for a very long time, before he realizes that the longer he delays any response, the worse Ardyn will worry about his reaction. He just has to take it in.]

You can't blame yourself for this. Not the man you are now.

[It takes him another few minutes, just working through what he knows in his mind, and his usual optimism has to fail in this instance.]

I know you've thought this through more than I have. Normally, I'd be trying to minimize, it can't be as bad as you think. But there's not really any other explanation, is there? Given what we heard out of him in October? Something happened to change that man.

What do you feel about it all?

[And yet he has faith that Togusa will take it with a mote of understanding -- but always there lies that fear, its claws hooking into his mind, that some shall look upon him after this revelation and shrink away, realizing what sort of man he used to be.]

I don't want any of those feelings, of those memories. I used to say that I would rather face the truth than be oblivious, but there is a limit to even that, I think.

And yet here I am, holding onto this information and it makes me feel more... defiant. That I refuse to let these changes carve out the core of who I am and replace it with someone who was so hateful.

You know? That's exactly the reason that I think you'll be fine. It's good to know that you're still willing to change your position based on the facts. Everything you were teaching as a professor, everything about the law. You gather the information, because keeping blind to it is as good as making yourself powerless. But when it gets too much? You're willing to adjust what you're doing.

Someone who has changed from the healer you were describing, to the man we heard in October? They're clinging to some level of hate, resentment, something that they will not let go of. Until it consumes them.

You know what to keep close. Family, friends, Grell. Too many cats. You won't let go of them. But those won't turn you to hate. You won't hold fast to the things that would. At least, that's what I see.

[There's no immediate response, as Ardyn reads all of this. And gratitude swells in his chest; for a moment, he doesn't know what to write in return.]

Thank you. It isn't enough, those two little words, to illustrate how much I mean that. It is the support of others, including yourself, that helps me remember just who I am now. Not who I was in the past.

I've always been the stubborn sort, after all. Not one very easy to give up and give in. I don't see why I should be any different now.

RECOLLE IC CONTACT.

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