( Sariel is like this, huh. Soft, and then - something firm beneath. He'd found as much when he'd killed him; he meets it here, too. Perhaps he'd have recognized it before, if he'd looked a little more carefully. )

You did.

( He can't apologize, not really, but he can acknowledge what has been done.

The question, though . . .

He shifts, seeming to settle into himself, seeming neither anxious, nor certain. He's a wondering thing in between - someone who drifts and has never had a place to stop. It might feel better to be killed by someone who knows themself.

He knows he's not the only one. And yet - why do any of them feel so at a loss when they're faced with it? Mmm, if he thinks of himself as Balthazar, and he had to explain to Balthazar why . . . )

... Because I know that hurt, and it's my own. I know its name, and I can say surely that it loves me, and I can tell whether I've gone too far or not. But here... there's so much uncertainty. I can't tell when I've messed up, or when I'm going to... I don't know what's going to last, and what's going to pull away.

I like it. I do like it. And... I want to treasure what I've found; what remains.

( It's different than what he's known before - where he has dipped in and out of people's lives, superficial and defined by what he was. )

But that doesn't mean it's not scary, still. It's a stranger, still. But one I'm coming to know.

( ... )

It wasn't scary for you at all, when you were freed from your role? Were you content from the start?