Bury the Dead

I changed. These things often happen slowly. I…well, I just stopped. It was hard. I had to make a lot of tough decisions. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the hate wasn’t worth it. It was like death at first. That other me, when I see him, when I meet people looking for him, he feels like a different person now, a stranger.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to kill you. I just want you to understand, maybe it makes no difference to you, my motive. I stopped my whole crusade for the last twenty years because, well, I sort of stopped everything. Nothing made any sense anymore.

Yet, that was the one good thing my anger did, wasn’t it? Purpose, drive. Also, despite my own shortcomings, you really are a villain. I wasn’t right. Let’s face it, I was a madman, but you, a greedy tyrant and bloody usurper, it was good that someone fought you.

Now here we are, both exiled; I, by choice, and you by necessity with as much of your ill-gotten gains as you could stuff into your saddlebags. I really must have changed these last two decades. You didn’t recognize me at all, did you? Well, I’m not me, not myself, beside myself in a sense; the ghost of my past is here, and I want to be shed of him, of you. I think I can finally bury both of you tonight.