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[astralera]

Hello,

I have a question I am hoping someone might be able to answer.

You know a person who makes you feel safe, comfortable, and relaxed. Whose presence makes you feel warm and content. A person you wish to see smile, and whenever they do it makes you so very happy. Who you are always excited to see and spend time with.

This person who also makes your insides flutter uncomfortably, like the feeling you have when you wish to punch someone in the face very badly, though you have no actual desire to punch them at that particular moment. Who can aggravate you like no other in the span of a single breath, yet also calm your fury just as effortlessly. A person you cannot fathom being absent from your life.

What would you call that kind of person?


My thanks for any insight you can offer.

Comments

[scourgingstars]

[...oh, honey.]

That is not something you can merely switch off, surely you don't need me to tell you this.

[astralera]

I know nothing of this sort of love. It is not something I'm meant to have, and I need it to go away.

[scourgingstars]

[...]

There was a time when I thought much the same way. Often what we believe we're meant to have varies sharply from what circumstances give us.

[astralera]

He is my enemy, Ardyn. Responsible for the destruction of eight worlds, and the loss of countless lives upon my own. He does not even see me as truly alive.

[scourgingstars]

I can't speak to what he's done before I met him--only you can do that, and judge accordingly as you will. I am, in more recent days, more and more of the opinion that matters of morality can and should not be weighed in absolutes.

I believe when you say he's killed innumerable people, and that is not something I have any wish to condone. Perhaps he is such a terrible person. Frankly, he utterly terrifies me on a scale I lack the words to truly express.

But at the same time, has he not reached out in aid to us both? True that I barely know him, but I have difficulty reconciling that with a killer so thoroughly detached.

[astralera]

You have the benefit of possessing an unsundered soul, Ardyn. To him, you are well and truly alive. Meanwhile my soul is the shattered remnants of a woman he held great affection for.

Do you recall the story I told, of the destruction of Amaurot and the summoning of Zodiark?

[scourgingstars]

I do, yes.

[astralera]

He was one of the Convocation members responsible for summoning Zodiark, and thus his will is not his own. He is bound to his god, and is incapable of going against His wishes.

The soul I possess belonged to dissented against the summoning of Zodiark. She left, then played a part in summoning Hydaelyn. While I am not tempered in the way Emet-Selch is, my soul belongs to Hydaelyn just as his belongs to Zodiark.

I fight for those we can yet save, and he fights for those he has lost. His wish is destroy all life that is and ever will be in order to bring back the lives that were. There is no middle ground, nor reasoning with him. He and I will never be of the same alignment. He tried to turn me into that monster and bring about the destruction of another world. He tried to kill those most dear to me. To restore Amaurot he would condemn all life and feel not an ounce of remorse for it.

That is why Emet-Selch died by my hand, Ardyn. And why I cannot feel such things for him, of all people.

[scourgingstars]

[So she had, essentially, been telling her own story. 'Hers' in a vague and disconnected way Ardyn couldn't fully grasp, but he'd presumed she was closer to the circumstances than she chose to let on. There was a long silence on the other end of things--it didn't shock him that Emet-Selch was some world-ending murderer, and yet he was honest in saying he couldn't quite match that to the fellow immortal that had offered Ardyn help bearing his own centuries, who had talked him out of his own detested hallucinations.]

[Shades of gray, indeed, but could it outweigh acts like that?]

I can not tell you what to do or how to face that one way or the other. I can answer only what those feelings are called and advise you that you can't be rid of them.

If he is all that you say--and do not take that as doubt on my part, for I assure you I believe it wholeheartedly--then tell me, why is it you feel comforted so by his presence?

[astralera]

Surely there must be a way to make them stop?

My soul was nearly destroyed by Light, and it was indescribably painful. For all that it has healed it still bears the trauma of it, and I find the presence of Darkness soothing. It is as a balm to a burn, and also why I inadvertently found my way to you.


The Amaurotine that my soul belonged to loved him dearly, which leaves me uncertain as to what feelings are my own and what are hers.

[scourgingstars]

There is not.

One's heart scarce cares for anything of reason or sense. It only comes down to you to determine how to handle and approach it, or in this case to sort through what may or may not be yours to begin with.

[astralera]

Is there any sort of procedure for this?


May I ask you a personal question?

[scourgingstars]

It's not the sort of thing that adheres to strict guidelines, no.

You can ask. I can not promise an answer.

[astralera]

If you were to encounter her now, reincarnated millennia later, and found her to be lesser in spirit — not as bright or vibrant as she ones was — what would you think of her?

Assume you could not merely avoid her, and that your fates are inexplicably bound together. You are forced to ally with a woman who is her, but not. What would you feel toward her?

[scourgingstars]

I fear any answer I could give would be of little help to you. While she would not be the same, so too am I a shadow of what I once was. And even I have barely a fraction of the years Emet-Selch does, so anything I say would surely not reflect in the same manner.

But even considering that--were I to meet such a woman, it would certainly ache somewhat. But I would

I would wish to know her better, if it were me.

[astralera]

Even knowing she would never be more than a whispered echo of what she once was? To forever be a disappointment when compared to the memory of who she was?

[scourgingstars]

She wouldn't be Aera.

Is that in itself some manner of crime? Merely existing in a way she never asked to, unaware of anyone she once was? Nonsense. Her life would still be of value as its own unique existence.

[astralera]

You would not resent her for it?

[scourgingstars]

What would she have done worth resentment? What would she have done at all past have been born in another's shadow?

It would hurt me to know her, surely. But it would be cruel to hold it against her.

[astralera]

Then you are far less cruel a man than he is, Ardyn.

[scourgingstars]

As I said, I'm not going to speak on his cruelty when I know naught of it firsthand.

But when one has been hurt so deeply--say, as with the incident you describe with the summoning of Hydaelyn--it is to say the least difficult to trust again. Isolation is easier. Acting as though nothing matters and keeping others at distance ensures you can't so easily be hurt again.

I will not say I think him right, or claim to take one side over the other. These matters are complicated ones, that's all.

[astralera]

Thank you for indulging me. I appreciate your input a great deal.

[scourgingstars]

I'm sorry there's little I can do to help. The two of you and your world are all perhaps beyond my understanding, even with so many similarities.

[astralera]

Love beyond family or friendship is something far beyond my limited scope of knowledge. You've helped a great deal, little shadow. More than I could have hoped.