Shade ordered himself forward mechanically, a soldier falling in line, his heart beating in time to some clock at the end of its worth, but only if told– only if he remembered most consciously to do so.  Oh, to be numb, to be so blessedly calm within; never had he expected to long for the emptiness he had always known. He raised his hand to his chest now, standing before doors meant for beings taller and prouder than he, as though he could keep all the ache and chaos from shredding a hole in him and pouring forth.

When did this begin?  When did thinking become such a focused cacophony, when did feelings seize his heart with such conviction that it could bring him to his knees?  When did his nightmares spring forth before his eyes and steal away the light from within, even as he suffocated in blinding radiance?

When Thancred fell, then Y’shtola and Urianger, and each time he wished it was him.  It was easy to say so: “If only I had fallen instead.” It was true, and to those who were left– fewer each time– it may have seemed a noble sentiment.  Yet he was well aware that no such thing as nobility tugged his heart. He knew not his companions’ urgency to wake the stricken, only an urgency to join them.  To match the voice he heard in those anguished moments to your hazy face that haunted his memory and smiled from every sunbeam, ever in the corner of his eye.

When he found you resting in the most impossible places, dreaming of so long ago.  Well, long ago to you, but moments ago to him, again and again and again. He was always lost in memories of you, falling into tireless conversation, speaking of Allag as though the empire would spring up around you at any moment, speaking of languages, speaking of destiny.  Things then that he and you had thought of as just study, unknowing of how poignantly each word would bury in your souls like glass shards. When he sat beside you and spoke of what you wanted to do, perhaps the first time anyone had done so in a century. Did you know the elation your answer brought to him?  The sorrow? Did you ever imagine that what you wanted more than anything else was all he had ever dreamed of? Never had he hoped for a future without you by his side. Never could he fathom it.

When he stood triumphantly, forlornly, over Innocence, over a soul misguided.  One who was told he would do right by all– who wished to do right by all– who lost sight of the world beyond his nose and harvested misery where he would plant peace.  Alphinaud had seen himself in the man; but Shade saw himself in the ruin.  In the sin eater. Not for the pervasive light; not for the ravenous, bestial longing; there was something so familiar in the trembling humiliation of lying powerless before those who would bring your world down around you, who would steal your dreams from you to reach for their own.  And did they not have the right? Did he not have the right to desire, and to stretch out his hand?  

Did he not have the right to touch what had been before him all along?

When he sank to his knees, feeling his very soul fragmenting.  Not the feeling he’d always called heartache, rivers of emotion spilling from seams in his skin where he’d forgotten to ward against the cold.  Something literal, something that stole his breath and broke him down to nothing. An exquisite wound, the likes of which could not be described.  When he turned his gaze up, unfocused, half blind and half unseeing, and all he could focus on was you.  The phantom he had never outrun, his goal, his longing.  A voice clear in his ears– in his ears!– and a face more real to him now than anything around him, his vision fading to white save for this.  Save for you.

When he called out the name that burned on his tongue, that brought rain to his eyes when even the feeling of being torn asunder did not.  When you hesitated as your eyes met his, when you understood, perhaps for a moment, what he would give for you– and what you must give for him, for the place you had came from together, for the place you had come to call home.  And you hoped too, perhaps, that he understood; though you knew he did not. Not now, maybe not ever.

Understanding has never been a requirement for action.

When he told himself he would let this and every world fall to ruin, if only he could meet you again.  If only he could have the chance to share the precious few words he needed to. If only those words bled from his hoarse throat, and not this wretched, screaming light.  Not this, not here, not now.

Or perhaps, with a certain irony, when he resolved to save this world that you had come to love, that he too had come to call home.  When he followed you to the bottom of the ocean, and he did so with every intent to save you, while each step brought him closer to resolution.  This should have filled him with wonder, so fiercely has he always loved the waves. Even his name was testament to his devotion to the water. But this did not bring him joy.  The towering spires he walked past should have filled him with awe, finality, enlightenment– they did not. He took it in to marvel at it later, but with each murmured conviction offered by his scion companions, the tempest of his heart swelled, and he could only see the path he needed to take now.  The past was gone, no matter how exalted, no matter how dearly missed.  That which was could never be again.

And so he stood before impossibly tall doors, his grip tightening on his book pulled to his chest, the clothes he donned in memory of you swaying in some imaginary wind.  This city around him was not real, but it had been once. Just as you had been. Nothing could bring it back, of this he was most certain. He could not let a phantasm of yesterday destroy all that had come to be for love of memory.  And if that meant your sacrifice, well… neither was it his own right to throw away life for love. You trusted him to realize this.