Reaching Your Sorrow at Last — 2
The sensation the Coffin of Memories offered Adrian was a strange one — unlike anything she knew.
It was nothing like seeing Robert with her own eyes. When she had searched through his memories before, her sight had returned to her, if only for a breath; this time, the divine power simply poured into her mind and unspooled visions there.
As Robert steadied her swaying body, Adrian squeezed her eyes shut and let out a small breath. This was a sense apart from merely glimpsing someone's memories — it felt as though the memories themselves were seeping in, wrapping themselves around her. A weightless, drifting feeling; as if she were only now recalling something she had long forgotten.
Adrian, who already knew of Robert's regressions, realized at once that these were part of the "forgotten memories" the Coffin of Memories had chosen to reveal.
"My head... it aches. May I lean on you, just for a moment?"
"Of course. And if you are seeing the same thing I am, then please, stay just as you are."
Robert's expression, as he watched the scenes unfold before him, was inscrutable. He had always known he would have to face this someday — he simply hadn't expected it to come so soon.
How would Adrian take these memories? He had never once imagined that the Coffin of Memories, built to revive what was forgotten, would show her something like this. Fear crept over him. Perhaps that was why his hands were trembling.
Brushing a hand down a face paler than usual, Robert exhaled a long sigh and took Adrian's hand. At the feel of his fingers closing around hers, she turned her head. He wasn't saying a word, yet it felt as though he were begging her not to let go.
What welled up inside him was fear, and bewilderment, and sorrow — and loneliness.
Robert did not know that she had already seen these memories. Was he afraid, then, that her feelings toward him might change now that she knew?
The memories settling into her mind were ones Adrian already knew — the deaths repeated beyond counting, memories she had grieved over before, having watched Robert die with her own eyes.
Hadn't she promised herself? That if Robert ever sank back into that loneliness, that would be the moment she would hold him.
When Adrian gently folded her hands around his, his expression eased, if only a little.
The scenes before them continued to shift. The Coffin did not lay bare everything the memories held — but everything he had done, it showed without the slightest filter.
It felt like being punished. A past he had wanted to bury. A past he never wanted to live through again. The more he watched memories he'd believed forgotten and overcome replay before his eyes, the more his already-tangled heart felt as though it were being dragged down into a mire.
"Ngh...!"
At the sight of himself meeting his third death, Robert's hand clenched around Adrian's without his meaning it to. He had no room in his mind to care whether he was hurting her. He only wanted, by any means at all, to look away from what was before him.
But he knew there was no escaping it. The memories pierced straight through his closed eyelids, tormenting him without pause.
When he watched himself die with his throat cut, Robert traced his own neck and gave a small, hollow laugh. When his heart was run through, he released Adrian's hand with a sigh, murmuring an apology even as his face stayed deathly pale.
As the silence from the woman beside him stretched on, his mind grew dim — until at last he crumpled where he stood, leaning his back against the wall.
Caw—
In a field where crows cried, he saw himself as he had been — staring at the spear buried in his body, and smiling all the same. When had that been? Most likely in the days he'd fled the pursuit of the imperial army. A time still far from earning the name of Sword Saint, still wracked by his madness.
That Adrian was watching this memory too was unmistakable. Seeing her face grow paler by the moment, Robert gave a faint, wry smile. In truth, that pallor was worry — for him — but there was no way he could have known it.
When his voice finally escaped him, it had sunk low and quiet. Resigned, he moved his lips softly as the deaths continued to unspool before him.
"I thought you were probably watching."
A past he had never wanted to tell anyone. A past he had refused to speak of — had sooner wished no one would ever remember. So many lives had been sordid, cowardly, ended in futility. The sight of himself, unable to protect even one precious person, was too ugly to bear; Robert had never wanted anyone to know his past.
"About my deaths."
Adrian said nothing. Though his hand had slipped from hers, she could feel him beside her with perfect clarity. His voice alone told her enough: that a mind always hanging by a thread was on the verge of snapping. That whatever he did next would be decided by how she responded.
However badly she wanted to speak, her mouth would not open. Even though she had seen these memories before, she could not so much as guess what heart Robert had carried through them all.
He had died beyond counting, and yet sought the same person every time. He had despaired, and still pressed on toward his purpose. It had never been a purpose of killing anyone. He had simply carried one wish — that people would believe in him — and walked forward with nothing else.
When she had only read the memories, she had grieved simply for the dying. But now the memories were flowing into her. The emotions Robert himself had harbored, the things he had remembered as he died — they were pouring into her, raw and unfiltered.
"Robert..."
Adrian's voice as she called his name was drowning.
It was a voice that seemed it might break into tears at any moment. A hundred deaths, and then a hundred-and-first life. It was impossible to fully understand, to fully accept, everything he had felt — and yet one thing she knew for certain. Not once had he blamed anyone. The heart of a man who, dying a hundred times over, shouldered every sin as his own — what state could it possibly be in now?
She could not even imagine it. Adrian pressed her quivering lips tightly shut. If she let so much as a word slip, everything she had suppressed might come bursting out. She could not be the one crying. She was the one who was supposed to hold him steady — how could she let herself be swept away by feelings like these?
Saintess.
She had always thought the name did not fit her. Too young, too clumsy, she had believed, to shoulder so heavy a calling. She did not possess a mercy deep enough to make her a saintess, and she knew full well she had harbored wants of her own — hardly the stuff of the virtuous. She had simply believed that God had given her a single role to play. That if she could embrace even one person, then she would. However lacking she might be, if she could save even one soul, that alone was her mission.
And to Adrian, that moment was now. In a room where only the two of them remained, was she not the only one left who could reach out a hand to him?
Her steps, frozen in place as though she had turned to stone, finally began to move. If someone had been a lover he had known in another life — a bond that had once, even briefly, been love between them — then she was the only one alive who could understand what those memories meant to him.
Adrian walked, slowly, toward Robert.
It was a silence of only moments, but to Robert it felt endless. A hundred deaths could hardly be witnessed in an instant; watching it all simply took time.
What would Adrian's face look like when she had faced all of it? She might see him — a man who had taken lives — as nothing but a murderer. She might see a cruel creature who, fleeing the fate he carried, had stretched his tainted hands toward others as well. She might even see a coward. Would she pity him? Would she decide the purpose he had carried was a hollow thing, and tell him to find a different road now?
They were bitter thoughts — but that had been his life. A life where no one trusted him, where even the few he had trusted turned their backs. Perhaps that was why this felt so frightening; it was the first time it had ever happened.
The memories Adele had recovered were not the whole of them, were they? If she saw everything — all of this — who knew what she would come to feel about him.
His chest tightened until he could barely breathe, and he clutched at it. Breath after labored breath, his face had gone a sickly white.
"Robert."
A voice reached him, and he did not answer. He was afraid to.
It isn't pity or sympathy I need. I'm not asking to be condemned for what I've done. I don't even want her to mourn my deaths. I just — I just —
It would be better if she said nothing at all.
Yet for all the turmoil inside, his face remained blank. His eyes, fixed on some middle distance, were utterly empty — different from lately, when his feelings had sometimes shown through. Like a doll's eyes, holding nothing at all.
"Robert."
Adrian's lips parted. However blank his face, what raged within him was shaking her more than anything. It would not have surprised her if he shattered then and there. Had he truly wanted no one in the world to know of these memories?
Though guilt welled up in her, Adrian forced it down and slowly reached out her hand. There was nothing around them but pitch darkness — and still she could hear it, the small sound of his breathing.
At last her hand found him, and his warmth came through. The moment their bodies touched, the anxiety churning inside him became impossible to miss. She turned over and over in her mind what she ought to say, until at last words spilled, slowly, from her trembling lips.
"I knew. Even before I saw these memories — I already knew about the deaths you endured."
Robert only looked at her quietly. He could not quite grasp what the woman who had come to his slumped form was saying. Knew — surely that meant the memories. But before he could make sense of it, Adrian spoke again.
"...I just — there's so much I want to say to you. So, so much. And I don't know how to say any of it."
She wanted to tell him not to grieve. She wanted to tell him that Mirajen's death had not been his fault. She wanted to tell him that she had wept alongside him when she chose to die alone, and burned with rage at how cruelly she had been killed. And she wanted to tell him that he was wrong — wrong to believe, every single time, that it was all his doing.
But she knew those were not the words Robert needed. It wasn't comfort. For the words of the only person who knew his memories in full, they were far, far too ordinary.
Robert's gaze turned to Adrian. He could not tell what she was crying for. Surely she was speaking from having seen his memories — so why was she the one grieving? If it were Mirajen or Adele, he would have understood. But Adrian — hadn't they only just become acquainted, in this life? Across all his lives, their paths had scarcely crossed. They might have exchanged a greeting once or twice, but this life was the first in which he had known her by name and walked beside her. And yet why... why was she crying like this? It was an emotion foreign to him. He had expected puzzlement, at most pity — not tears.
A soft touch.
Warmth, vivid and unmistakable, spread from the hand against his cheek. It wiped carefully at his tear-dampened eyes, then gently drew his body into an embrace. Just as on that day at the Moon Tower, when the wind had been unusually cold, Robert could only stare, dazed, at Adrian holding him.
"I don't understand... why you're crying. There's no reason for you to grieve like this, Adrian."
"Because I only understand it now. And I'm sorry that I didn't sooner."
She reached out, and simply held him.
It's a different feeling from the day I first glimpsed your memories. Back then, it was the sorrow of seeing your deaths — I learned of a death no one in the world knew of, and grieved because its agony struck a chord in me. But this time, it is the feeling of coming to know your sorrow itself.
"I'm here."
The loneliness you carried. The sorrow. The regret. I wanted you to know they are no longer yours alone.
She had sworn she would not cry — but the moment she read the trembling inside him, the tears fell before she could stop them.
"So please, don't grieve alone. It wasn't your fault. It was never a sin for you to blame yourself for."
She hesitated, then parted her lips once more.
"Just for a little while... may I hold you?"
Robert's eyes looked faintly hazy. He could not name what stirred in him at the words of the woman wrapped around him. Only — wasn't it warm? The dark feelings he had carried until moments ago scattered, if only a little, and he let himself sink into that gentle embrace.
The woman with whom he had first formed a bond in this life was the first to understand what he felt. It was still only conjecture, and yet Robert had become certain: Adrian had read the whole of his memories. If, knowing all of that, she could still say these things to him — if this was sincere — then what, he wondered, was he supposed to say to her?
Inside that coffin where the thirty-fifth memory flowed, Robert quietly held Adrian close.
For a long, long while — until their warmth had passed completely from one body to the other.