I looked away for a bit, then sighed as I faced her again. "Fear...? Shame...?" I shook my head a touch, then nodded. "Guilt."
I felt the shadow, the burden of the years of my self-torture lift at the admission, and room we were in became brighter, until the light washed over and faded everything to white, save the door before us.
Syrana gestured before the portal, now open. "You may continue, Griffin."
* * * * *
I watched a younger Griffin hold Claire in his arms as the poison coursed through her veins. To the right of me, her mirror image watched the scene unfold.
"You want me, Griffin, only because I remind you of her?"
I nodded in honesty. "At first." I turned to look at Lucia, finding all of those things that I saw in Claire, and also noticing the differences. "But who is to say that there might not be more there to find?"
She seemed pleased with this answer, and she pointed off to a distant door, which was open to seemingly nowhere in the middle of the rain-soaked forest.
* * * * *
I stood on the end of the clearing. The pouring rain had turned the ground to mud.
The younger Griffin was there again, as Dyson held Claire by the throat, keeping the poisoned blade pressed against her flesh.
I invoked the magic of my cloak and moved behind them as Dyson spat curses towards the man whom I was, and just as Griffin threw his knife, I yanked Dyson's hand away, and the knife found home buried in the man's forehead. The future had been changed. Claire lived, and then regarded me -- the *real* me.
"You can't change what has passed, Griffin."
I looked at her for the longest time. The last time.
"I know, Claire. I accept what happened now. It is time to move on."
She leaned forward and kissed me, very softly, on the cheek, and looked off in the distance, where there was one last door.
I crossed the threshold.
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