I come before you, a fool [Arcadia, Cyrus]

It was like every step was heavier than the last, her gut twisted and tying into knots if it was even possible for that to be the case. She wanted to vomit and that lingering nausea would not go away, paired with the weariness that lingered in her body and mind. It would be wrong to delay it though and yet she had no idea how this would go. The assuredness that she had felt in the past about things like this had dissolved like the vile thing she had been twisted into.

"Cyrus..."

She spoke it as well as she could muster but it was more like a murmur than anything into his quarters. What awful memories she had of tormenting him in here and enjoyed in that sickening way of making him feel pain. It was never supposed to be that way, it was just what her folly had made of a situation.

The coming of Arcadia to his quarters was something that Cyrus had become all too used to in recent days. He had hated it, but at the very same time he had lacked the strength to truly push her away. Not simply in body, but in mind. After all, how could he, knowing his responsibility in the matter?

But, this was different. He had not even noticed it at first, so caught up in his own thoughts and so used to simply treating her arrival as an inevitability, but she had changed. It was the way that she spoke, the way that she did not simply barge into the place and demand something or another of him.

"Arcadia..."

He stood, with a bit of difficulty. His frailty had passed, but there was such emotion in the moment that he could not fully help but still be caught off guard by it, that he could do little other than stand up and simply...wait. Watch. Ask himself if this was truly her, even as he felt that there was no piece of Mazda within her.

"I've missed you."

This was far harder than she had initially imagined, there was no witty remarks or snide comments that she could muster for they had been tainted by her distorted self's malice and enjoyment at inflicting sufferring. It had become too associated with that to muster any resemblence, she didn't want to play the role of Angra Mainyu anymore. It was as simple as that really. So while she stood there under his gaze and barely able to meet his own she muttered something else.

"....I'm sorry."

Those two words were hard but they didn't mean anywhere as much as she wanted them to mean. She could not convey in those two words how awful she felt about leaving him so diminished and releasing his divine power into the form it was, those words couldn't convey the absolute misery she felt about abusing him and only being able to watch.

It almost made her want to cry if some small sliver of pride and herself remained to keep that in check. Almost if she could to take her other aspect and let him handle it for her but she knew how these feelings would translate; rage and frustration, a man that refused to actually show these kinds of feelings and instead immediately try to find a means of reprisal against Mazda. Cyrus and her guilt would be an after thought to him.

It pained Cyrus more than he might ever have put into words, to hear such things come from Arcadia. He knew her pride, knew the confidence with which she carried herself. He knew, as well, that she undoubtedly meant those two words with all of her being, and he moved closer to her, to simply meet her. How could he respond to her? What could he say, knowing exactly how he had failed her?

"As am I. I...there are countless things I wish to say. But there is not enough time in the world to say them, to convey them, and mere words cannot ever begin to share their meaning."

He didn't wish to maintain the arbitrary distance between them, the games that the two had played. No, that was meaningless now after everything that had happened. Cyrus wished only to be honest with Arcadia, and the honest truth was that she was one of the people most dear to him in the world. He wished to embrace her, but he did not dare to do so yet, when the air was still so tense. When he still did not truly know where they stood.

"I do not wish to say such empty platitudes as 'it is alright' or the like. I will only ask that you forgive me, as I forgive you."

It frustrated her to hear those words, that stupid words of the ignorant martyr. Maybe it was just her motherly side responding like she'd listened to her child ignorantly declare something they didn't understand. Forgive him for what? He was the victim of her games, it was her who had initiated what lead into Mazda and her that had met him as some kind of cosmic counterpart in their elaborate game of role-play. He was guilty of trying to help her and she inadvertently did nothing but stab him in the back.

"There's nothing that you can ask forgiveness for, Cyrus."

Arcadia took a moment to let it hang in the air, watch and wait for his response to the denial of his request. Was she supposed to let him blame himself? Perpetuate this cycle? No, it didn't feel right. It didn't feel like something she wanted to do.

"I've taken so much from you, and given nothing back, I am a parasite that has caused you much grief and manipulated you. I am a fool..."

There looked to be more to say but she bit her tongue, that was just too humiliating and nothing to give him but insult and injury to him. Maybe it was just fear on her own part or that it'd just cause him more pain.

"Is there not? Not for allowing myself to be blinded by hubris, to view myself as anything more than a man who stole godhood? For treating you as simply my counterpart, a poetic counterpart to myself sent by heaven?"

Cyrus certainly did feel as though there was much to ask forgiveness for. He was not so blind that he could not see Arcadia's own failures, but he did not wish to make this about casting blame one way or another. Perhaps it was simply his own idealism shining through even still, the faint glimmer of the man he was coming through past all of his despair.

"You are hardly a parasite, no more than I am for seeing you as a part of my delusions. You are someone dear to me, Arcadia."

It felt incredibly awkward to stand there, she didn't feel at all like the danava that was born from folklore and stories of a diety. If she was then surely she would still have that same assuredness and confidence? The ability to say what she wanted without a single care or regard, a shining beacon of confidence. No that being was someone completely different to her - the real thing compared to the broken simulacrum that she was made to replicate that individual.

"Cyrus. I am a fool."

Standing up straighter she dared herself to meet his dark eyes with her own crimson ones, far weaker and sadder than she'd ever shown through the windows to her soul and her ghost of a smile which conveyed neither happiness or anything besides acceptance to the situation. A person who had resigned herself to the reality of this moment.

"I'm a fool for falling in love with you and that's why it hurts me beyond words to have to live with what I've done to you... what I would've done to Ninsianna... what he's made me do."

It was surreal, in a way, to hear those words leave Arcadia's mouth. To hear them spoken in her voice, that voice he had associated with so many other things--

But he supposed that the most surreal part of all was that he did not hate it. In a way, he had hoped it. What a cursed thought. What a dreadful, abysmal thought to fill his mind. That he was not simply sad about hearing it, that he could not simply feel a faint bit of guilt and tell her 'all is well.' For all that Cyrus despised Mazda, for all that he was the worst things in the world, he also knew that Mazda was still made up of all the things that he was.

He knew Mazda would not have taken Arcadia for his own simply of his own accord.

"...It...would be a lie, if I told you that I wished you had not said that. If I claimed that I had not thought of it before."

Cyrus had lost confidence many a time, yes. But now, of all times, there was practically none left. His morals were more than sufficient to never even imagine the sin of adultery, of sullying himself, or Helle, or Arcadia in such a way. But at the same time, he could not lie to the woman before him.

"It is selfish of me, to say that I still wish to have you at my side. But even so, I can only say that. I can only ask that you do not leave, for having lost you once already was a grief I could not abide."

She knew those were the words she should expect, had she thought them many a time in her final time before Mazda came for her. Arcadia just let out a resigned sigh and her shoulders slumped just a tiny bit to the point it was noticeable. The red eyes retreating back to look at his chest. She felt like a stupid fool that shouldn't have opened her mouth or said those words. It only felt harder for her to stomach his answer. What an awful thing that he told her.

I cannot be with you but I cannot be without you.

He asked her to keep sufferring like this, a selfish request. How much easier it would've been had he just told her and to have him try and tell her to remain at his side would've brought out more of her prideful arrogance to reject such a thing but he had to ask her for that.

"I'll be with you until the end."

Arcadia couldn't even keep her eyes open as she said it and the composure that she'd done so well to maintain up until now broke like her heart while she heard her own voice utter those words. The sheer irrationality of them and knowing that her love for this stupid man had made her commit to such an unfulfilling life.

For the first time since she was brought into this world through ritual sacrifice as some amalgemation of stories off some ancient demon that she knew nothing about, she broke down and started sobbing in front of him. This man that she'd never be able to have and would continue to remain here and care for him.

A familiar feeling rang through Cyrus' mind, through his heart, through the whole of his being. It was one he had felt before, directed in every bit the same direction and with every bit the same intensity as it had last been. It was hate. Sheer, unrestrained, unrefined hatred. All of his being was filled with that, and it was directed toward no one but himself.

Not toward Mazda, not toward Arcadia, not toward Helle. How could he hate anyone but himself for the sheer weakness that he displayed? It was one more failure, one more display of selfishness and hubris. He wanted Arcadia. Loved her. She understood him as no other did, and he would have been a liar to deny that fact. But it did not change that he loved Helle any less, did not change that he was with her, and the fact that he had ever allowed this situation to even arise, the fact that he had not stamped it out, and now the fact that he still lacked the strength to simply cut it all off--

Cyrus hated himself, more than words could ever possibly express. He wrapped his arms around Arcadia, but he knew that no matter what, it could never truly be a meaningful gesture. It was as empty as his own being, nothing more than a shell of something that might once have meant so very much.

He wished for her to be happy. For Helle to be happy. For all those he'd cherished and worked for to be happy. But with every day that passed, it only seemed all the more affirmed that he could not grant such a blessing to even one single soul.