How many times growing up do you think N reminded themselves not to dwell on the if-only, not to wish for more than they'd been given, when they'd been so "lucky" (as they describe their childhood having been to the MC) already?
How many times do you think they felt greedy for any scrap of information they could have about their father? How often do you think they envied Milton for having that which they lacked—in this case, the ability to know more about himself and be secure in his own identity by virtue of getting to know his 'real' father?
How often has N pushed aside their own yearning, tacitly reframing it as ingratitude whenever the ache became too sharp? Convincing themselves that wanting answers—wanting more—was selfish or unfair?
N's so-called vices—envy and greed—aren’t about wealth or power or conquest. They’re about wanting. Wanting what was denied. Wanting what was never on the table to begin with. Wanting to know their father. Wanting to know themselves. Wanting more time with Milton, more truth than anyone was willing to give them, more meaning than the world ever seemed inclined to offer.
And they hate that want. They punish themselves for it. They dress it up in generosity and tuck it behind gentle smiles. Because to want so deeply and so endlessly—to hunger for what cannot be regained—feels like a failure of character, doesn’t it? Like they are somehow less good for feeling that void at all.
(And, after all, isn't all that not-knowing—all that wanting—what drove them to try to uncover the truth of what happened to their brother? Isn't that at least partially to blame for their subsequent "downfall" at sea?)
So they make a virtue of deprivation, confusing starvation with sainthood.
And that’s what immortality has done to them, too, isn’t it? It didn’t strip away their humanity so much as it calcified it—all those all too human longings trapped forever in them like amber. Envy and greed didn’t vanish when they became something more-than-human. If anything, they became something sharper.
Because there’s no outgrowing it now. No closure. Just infinite time to sit with the ache. Forever wanting more than the world has allowed them to have. Forever compensating for their perceived vices, as though selflessness could somehow redeem the parts of them they’ve learned to see as flawed. They engage in a constant negotiation between the virtues they value and the vices they fear define them, each act of care an implicit apology for the envy they refuse to voice; a counterweight to the hunger they bury.
