#phantom arknights

Well, it’s nice for you that you were able to get this closure, that you were ambivalent enough to the way this man shaped every aspect of your life that in the end you managed to reconcile with him in this way, but you can understand that this is because you were his favourite, right? He liked you, significantly more than he liked any of us, and he repeatedly used this fact to hurt both us and you.

It’s nice that your experiences with that man had enough positives to them that you can pity him without malice in the end, but it’s not like that for me. He unequivocally and unambiguously ruined my life in pretty much every conceivable way. He ruined my ability to connect with others beyond the superficial. He ruined my ability to trust or understand myself. It’s nice, for you, that you’re able to look back on it all with this detached wistfulness now that you’ve reached this understanding with him, and that you can feel like there was some meaning to it all now that you’re succeeding this title, but you can’t seriously expect that the same will go for me.

You and I had very different experiences. We still do. Because you still are his favourite, and the rest of us lived not just in his shadow but in yours as well. Do you understand that? Everything awful that happened to me was, from his perspective, little more than collateral damage on the path to shape you into the kind of person who would dedicate your life to him in the way you did. I can’t move on from that just because he’s dead now, and you can’t seriously expect me to either. Even just expecting me to take your word that he’s not a danger anymore is asking a lot, you know? Because you’re his favourite, and the shadow looming over me all these years was yours as well.

Everything I did back then to try to keep you safe, you’d respond by stubbornly trying to get closer to him instead. Can you imagine, up on your pedestal, how that might have made me feel? I stick around after my failed debut because I want to be there for you, you stab yourself in the throat for him. I try to get us both out, you say you’re not coming with me after all, you’re going to dedicate your life to him instead. Are you kidding me? Ten years later, you show up at my workplace, you get yourself into a special kind of trouble that only I can fix for some reason, I get over myself enough to save someone I did ultimately still consider dear to me, and the moment I finally get you out of that castle you immediately run off to chase him again.

It’s been twelve years since we broke up at the river, you know, and I haven’t actually changed my mind about what I want from you, and you clearly haven’t changed your mind about stubbornly refusing to see what that one thing is either. That obsession of yours hasn’t faded one bit, and neither has your habit of taking for granted that I’ll be there for you just because I value being reliable. And you may tell yourself and me that you wanted to kill him for my sake, and I will even believe that you genuinely think that is the case, but I don’t think that is actually the truth. You chased him for his sake and for your own, and any benefit I would see from the result is collateral, because I’ve always only ever been collateral.