Hannah K.C. Davis

Igor feels a deep ache and he's had that deep ache since 1999 and that ache became even deeper when he stood and made a truce with...her.

The Timekeeper is 16...Lopera was around her age. Or more like the Timekeepr was around Lopera's age.

She stood there with the same sense of silent bravery as her mother, Urd.

The Urd he knew from 1999 and sought for, even when he met her again and again under a different name, a different lifetime of experiences and yet it was still technically her, that same brave soul.

Of Igor's regrets, the deepest rooted one was the Timekeeper.

No...

Vertin.

Her name is Vertin.

So close and yet so very very far away.

His daughter.

He never truly saw himself beyond that of a soldier, not even as he and Urd had grown closer before the first "Storm"...at least not until it was all gone, along with the future.

And in the face of that first "Storm" and the loss of memories of the year 1999 itself to all who survived, Igor had become...driven to reclaim something he never thought he'd wish for.

A quiet life with his daughter and the person who probably understood him more than anyone else in all his years.

Back when he was still believed in St. Pavlov, Zeno, and Pax, he thought he'd be able to find that again, Vertin was safe at SPDM, and once he brought back Urd, then maybe he could keep her safe too and once Manus was defeated, he could retire and build a quieter life with them and possibly several adopted siblings that Vertin could grow up with.

But the world is much less than ideal, as are the circumstances and a dream can only really be a dream sometimes.

Manus Vindictae and St. Pavlov Foundation; two sides of the same coin. They play games with people's emotions, desires, and dreams in order to use them for their own ends, never considering the harm they cause to the innocent or outright relishing in it.

St. Pavlov dangled Vertin as if she were a carrot on a stick for a hungry animal in order to make them follow one direction or another. Of course they'd never let him truly meet her and get to know her. She was too important in their goal to keep a status quo that had now been completely shaken by Arcana.

And perhaps it was partially because of this dream that also influenced his actions towards Lopera...

One thing that has been common among survivors of the first "Storm" was meeting family that had been reversed with no memory the survivor. How devastating it was to seeing one's mother only for her to believe one to be a crazy time traveler that has had the police come to take away.

That projection of a life that never existed thanks to the "Storm"...

Lopera had come to him, running from her cruel father, and quickly became another member of his family...until the rebellion drew near and in a moment of silence...he realized he projected onto her the weight of his deepest desires of a life he never had with his daughter.

It wasn't fair to Lopera.

And he still did come the day of the rebellion.

He found himself unable to ask for Lopera to join him and the rest of the rebels. He couldn't put her in the kind of danger that the Manus presented because he would never do so had it been Vertin instead.

He knew Moldir would use a tranq on her and he was so very relieved Moldir used it and left Lopera alive. She'd be free to walk her own path beyond his projection of a daughter he never got to meet.

He knew how much he hurt Lopera and she hated him as she should.

One day he will face her and he will explain his thinking.

And maybe one day he'll have the courage to properly introduce himself to Vertin without the Foundation interfering.