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

It was empty, even when his arms were around her which might've made her heart skip a beat under any other circumstances it was only empty for her. How could this move her heart like that when it just reminded her more that this was impossuble - they were impossible - and nothing could change that. Those words were still far to fresh for this to do anything other than shake her further but rather than allow herself to keep crying in his arms which was already futile, she hardened her heart and pushed him back just a little bit.

It wasn't good for him and it was especially difficult for her to endure. She wiped away her tears to get rid of that pathetic display she'd turned herself into and sighed like it might give her some kind of relief. A chance to centre herself before whatever else.

"I hope that Helle provides you all the happiness and joy I wish I could give to you but... I can't bear to be in your arms again for I fear I might make the words I just said into a lie."

This was crushing to have to admit but the composure was slowly coming back and with it Arcadia felt like her own feelings were no different to a fire. Being smothered and stomped out into embers by her own hands until she took a deep breath and sighed.

"Just call upon me if you ever need me, Cyrus. You carry a part of me after all. I'm always here."

He'd failed her yet again.

That was all that he could think. All that he could feel, as he looked at the woman who had given so much for him. The woman who had suffered so greatly from his own actions, and who knew him more deeply than any other. Cyrus knew, to the very depths of his being, that he had condemned her to a fate more cruel than anything.

Why could he not simply let her go? Let her depart on peaceful terms, let what was between them gradually fall into the mists of time as nothing more than memory? Because he was selfish. Because he was prideful. Because all those very same sins that had led to this very moment were simply being repeated, and once more were hurting her. He had created a situation from which there was no righteous escape, from which he could not ever leave without harming someone. And look at him. Thinking of himself, of his own situation, still ignoring the absolute truth of the situation here and now.

He was ignoring the woman before him, that he had only just crushed for his own lack of willingness to simply decide. Did she deserve such half-hearted measures? Could he, in good conscience, ever live a life where he simply straddled the line between friendship and love for his own ego's sake? He couldn't. He knew that. He wanted to flee from his mistakes, from the choices he had made and still needed to make, but for once he had no other option but to accept it.

Was he overthinking it? He treated this as a world-shattering event, a matter of morals, ethics, of everything that he was or would be. But why could he not simply choose what came naturally to his mind, choose what he tried so desperately to convince himself was not what he wanted? It was selfish, yes. But it was far more selfish to refuse the difficulty of it. Far more selfish to simply stay complacent, avoid conflict.

Avoid the truth of the matter.

"Arcadia. I..."

The hate echoed through him. He was such a weak creature. Such a weak man, who refused to admit the most basic truth of the world simply because he was too proud to admit that he had lived a lie. Too self-righteous to admit he had fallen for a woman that was not the one he had sworn so many times to love above all others, was not the woman who had discerned exactly how worthless he was.

"I do not wish for only a part of you. I want you, Arcadia, in your entirety."

He could not take it back now. He had chosen this path, and had no option but to commit to it. He took her hand in his, looking into her eyes with intensity. With a passion that seemed, for the first time in a long while, to resemble the man he had been when they first met.

"I am nothing, Arcadia. Nothing but a figurehead who has proven too weak to make even a single decision for a woman who loves me. I do not wish to pull you into this miasma of sin and regret, when you shine so brightly. I do not deserve the happiness you would give me, but still, I ask it of you. I beg it of you. I have made a thousand mistakes for the sake of ambition. Let me make this one decision for the sake of my own simple desire. Whether right or wrong, I will make it."

He knew it was selfish. Knew that she deserved better, every bit as much as Helle did. But he knew, too, that Arcadia would never agree with that outlook. Perhaps that was simply why he could not imagine a life without her, as hollow and unjust as that may have seemed. And if she was to be at his side, he would give her everything that he could.

Even if he did not believe he deserved this happiness, she most certainly did. His self-flagellation was not justification to take it from her.

Should she feel hate? She knew that she should, there was no doubt within her mind that the reasonable thing to do after being put in this swirling vortex of contradictions that he had presented to her. Had he not just told her that he could not be her's? Begged her to stay irregardless of all that and in the next instant he sang a new tune. A new ballard that said the very opposite, if she did not know him so well she would think it was intentional. What kind of person would put a person's very soul under so much pressure if they did not enjoy inflicting that pain?

He was. A victim of his own indecisiveness and troubled nature, Cyrus ast-Auramazda.

Arcadia stood there, for a moment her eyes betrayed what she was thinking. A moment of pity for him and the faintest inkling of a prayer that he wouldn't remain this way: guilt-ridden, broken and confused. Could she even help him? If she had to guess Helle had tried but could she really provide him the succor that he wanted, needed.

"At that lake, Cyrus. I wanted so badly to hear you say that. I wished that you would tell me no, that you were making a mistake. I'm just as much a fool as you are."

She couldn't refuse him, she wanted him so much to the point that her own rationality dissolved. It made her feel foolish to be pulled along and swayed with such small things but he had discarded that nonsense or taken the first step towards it. Maybe she had as well, the purpose of her creation seemed distant and foreign to her now. Her purpose for replacing Deveta, being a substitute or embody succession felt alien.

There was nothing she could say, words felt unable to convey her response after she had told him how much she wished that he had realised this sooner but she was still able to convey everything to him. Reaching up to his head and running her fingers through his hair affectionately while she kissed him as best as she could to tell him every word that felt worthless if spoken, pushing him to sit on the bed so that she could sit on top of him and meet him at eye-level and it gave her the clarity of mind to answer him finally. Properly.

"I promise you can have every bit of me, every aspect of me; body, mind and soul. I never meant to enchant you or be enchanted myself. I'll give you all the happiness and love that I can give you but... I need you, all of you as well, Cyrus.

Cyrus knew, even from that briefest look in her eyes, that Arcadia understood perfectly well the truth of the matter. That he was quite far removed from everything that he had once been, that all of his pride and self-worth had been lost in one cruel twist of fate or another. But he, ultimately, had still been the one who had responded so poorly. He had been the one to choose the wrong paths, to deny any reality and simply hope that he could be stronger.

As she kissed him, he returned the affections, almost desperately. He had not even realized the depths of what he felt for her, the sheer longing that had laid in his own heart. That knowledge made Cyrus feel all the worse, made him feel all the more dishonest. Toward her, toward Helle. What was he? A liar, a fool. Even as Arcadia showed him such love, as she pushed him down onto the bed and brought their bodies so close together, he could not escape that question. He heard what she said to him, of course, and understood the depths of it.

"Then I give myself to you, in my entirety. I am yours, Arcadia, for as long as you are with me."

It was so very cruel of him. But he had no doubt that she already understood he would feel that very way, and that understanding was perhaps why Cyrus could not help but feel all the more drawn to this woman, who had stolen his heart away without ever even knowing it. He was the one who had allowed his heart to lie, who had, in his own pride, lied to everyone, including himself. It was he who had sinned more greatly than any other. Who was he?

He, surely, was the Angra Mainyu.