#also love him calling azem repeatedly a good friend of his

[warlordfelwinter]

I'm still thinking about this but I love that for a brief second before realizing it was their "familiar", themis, after azem told him they couldn't come help after all, thought azem fell out of the sky and landed on him. imagine.

[katzenkrieg]

Headcanon - Cam’s Thoughts on Emet-Selch and Emet-Selch’s on Cam

Obviously all spoilers for ShB and 5.3! Read at your own risk.

Also, wow, this is 5 pages long. I knew it felt like it took a long time to write >_>

TL;DR - after 5.3, Cam is like “WHEEEE I’M FREEEEE” and running around happily being a dork and feeling good about everything for the first time since the Empire invaded Eorzea (he was somewhere between 20 and 25 then; he’s 35 now). And Emet-Selch is like, “Oh, fine. :shrug.”

Cam’s thoughts on Emet-Selch and the events of ShB and 5.3 are the first 3/4s; scroll down about 3/4s for my take on Emet-Selch’s perspective.

Emet-Selch/Hades (canon, Unsundered Ascian from the Source, founder of the Garlean and Allagan Empires, and member of the Amaurotine Convocation; likely thousands of years old) - Prior to arriving in the Tempest and defeating both Emet-Selch under his true name and, later, Elidibus (though Elidibus never revealed his true name--it’s possible he no longer remembered it), Cam’s feelings toward Emet-Selch were incredibly straightforward--he wanted an excuse to punch him in the face and be done with him. Despite Emet-Selch’s willingness to aid the Scions in the First, including bringing Y’shtola back from her second self-imposed exile in the Lifestream, Cam saw absolutely no reason to trust him. Emet-Selch showed up when it was convenient to him, took the minimum action possible to ‘prove’ his good intentions towards the Scions, and dropped just enough information to unsettle the Scions but not to truly help them. It’s not hard to catch on to manipulation that obvious, and Cam had had enough experience with manipulation by the time he arrived in the First to call a spade (or an Ascian) a spade. If Lyse had been summoned to the First instead of Y’shtola and Urianger, Cam, Alisaie, and Lyse would have attacked and subdued Emet-Selch the instant he showed up; in retrospect, as is often the case, Cam regrets not listening to himself and choosing instead to assume Y’shtola and Urianger had more of the knowledge and expertise required to make decisions surrounding near-arcanic entities.

Still, some of Emet-Selch’s behavior did genuinely unsettle Cam. Cam might have expected Elidibus to approach him and try to make a deal with him, offer him support, or direct him towards a course of action--that’s what Elidibus seems to do, after all. But Emet-Selch was something new; he didn’t seem to fully be engaged in playing the part of the Ascian manipulator. He repeatedly invited Cam to engage with him, despite a surface veneer of disinterest and contempt, without any clear motivation for doing so. He didn’t seem to be seeking friendship or to ingratiate himself to Cam; whenever Cam *did* choose to take Emet-Selch’s invitation to talk privately, Emet-Selch would quickly push him away again, dismissing anything Cam had to say or simply pulling back into apparent boredom and apathy. Eventually Cam decided this must be another manipulation technique--something intended to keep Cam unbalanced and to play on any curiosity he might have about Ascians generally or Emet-Selch specifically. By the time they reached Mt. Gulg, Cam had largely decided not to engage with Emet-Selch; Emet-Selch’s asking whether Cam remembered Amaurot and hinting at his own memories of it and grief at its loss earlier had actually managed to get under Cam’s skin, and he wasn’t interested in letting the Ascian relate to him individually any longer. Being offered a chance at ascension and survival of all future Calamities at the cost of standing aside to let whole worlds die wasn’t something Cam wanted to hear more about.

Mt. Gulg sealed Cam’s belief that he should have trusted himself and attacked Emet-Selch when the Ascian first revealed himself. It also left Cam as angry at himself and the other Scions, and as determined to go off on his own and somehow finish *everything,* as he has ever been. Cam’s not a lone wolf or someone who believes he has to do things himself to protect others or preserve his ego; in fact, he’s more apt to think he *can’t* do things entirely on his own and doubt his abilities unless he has more scholarly or politically-savvy support at his side. Urianger and the Exarch’s secret plans, the Exarch’s being taken prisoner, and Cam’s own imminent full transformation into a Lightwarden, though, meant Cam felt the end coming. If he was going to end up as a monster, something that could never again be part of the world(s) he cared about, then he wanted to end it on his own terms. And that meant rescuing the Exarch, pushing aside the Scions (especially Urianger, who, once again, had kept secrets and been complicit in enabling others’ possibly unnecessary sacrifices), and destroying Emet-Selch. And then finding some way to imprison himself so that others would have the opportunity to kill him before he could do harm.

The Scions and the Crystarium’s residents as a whole brought him up short, of course, and checked his desire to dive headfirst into self-destruction. As he worked together with the other Scions to reach the Tempest, Cam’s anger began to give way to similarly uncharacteristic despair and distancing of himself from his friends--internally, in large part, though he did also begin holding himself physically apart from them whenever he was able to, always keeping a small ways ahead of the group or off to the side, often out of sight ‘scouting.’ Rescue the Exarch, destroy Emet-Selch, find some way to imprison the Lightwarden he would then become--Cam had stopped seeing anything beyond that. It would save his friends and possibly the First--or at least give them time to save themselves. And that was all Cam could hope for.

Reaching the Tempest and the recreated Amaurot made those feelings more intense, rather than less so. While the other Scions felt the sense of loss associated with being Sundered and close to reminders of Amaurot, Cam felt it with an almost crippling sharpness--enough so that he assumed it had to be related to his growing aether hunger and impending transformation and largely just tried to force himself through it rather than stop to examine it. Hythlodaeus’ revelation that Ardbert and Cam originated from the same Amaurotine--and one Hythlodaeus had once known well--didn’t really register around all of that pain. (Ardbert, on the other hand, did pay close attention to the news and drew his own conclusions from it, leading to his offering to Rejoin with Cam later.)

When Cam and the Scions finally confronted Emet-Selch and learned the full story of Amaurot and its fall, Cam still really didn’t have much emotional energy left to care. He’d fought people twisted by grief and the desire to re-create and relive the past before; this was just more of the same on a larger scale.

Only after Rejoining with Ardbert, surviving the fight, and having time to recover back in the Source did Cam actually start to think about who Emet-Selch and the Ascians were (or had been) and about the way Emet-Selch had related to him and how Cam himself had felt around the remembered city of Amaurot. He tentatively concluded that Emet-Selch--or, more accurately, Hades--had been testing Cam the whole time, both wanting and not wanting him to be whomever Hades and Hythlodaeus had once known. Maybe being able to contain the Light of all of the Lightwardens combined would somehow have convinced Hades that Cam was enough that person to be seen *as* a person and brought directly into the Ascians’ plans as an equal. Cam also suspects that Emet-Selch’s final reveal of his true name was a last-ditch attempt to see if Cam would suddenly “wake up” to being his Amaurotine ancestor if Emet-Selch revealed a name and form that person would have been certain to know.

In any case, Cam was relieved to have failed all of those tests. Whoever his soul (and Ardbert’s) might have been in the ancient past, those people had died long ago and passed their aether down to others who went on to live their own lives and be their own people. Escaping transforming into a world-devouring monster was good; escaping the attempts of ancient demi-gods to awaken a fellow demi-god in Cam and erase the significance of his own life and existence was *also* good. Cam was mostly left feeling frustration and regret that Emet-Selch, whether due to being Tempered or due to jaded bitterness (or both), couldn’t bring himself to just *tell* Cam about the person he saw in Cam and was trying to prod him into being. If you hold grief in for millennia and feel it’s impossible to share your memories and your sorrow with anyone else, of *course* it’s going to destroy you. Cam would have been happy to listen, as long as it didn’t come with the expectation of being or becoming the person he was hearing about.

Prior to Elidibus’ reemergence in Ardbert’s body, Cam hadn’t really talked about any of this with Cid, the Scions, or any other friends or family members. Following his first fight with Elidibus in Ardbert’s body in the Tempest and Hythlodaeus’ revealing the Convocation’s memory stones--including the stone of Azem, created by Hades out of love for his friend--, Cam felt resignation creep back in. Though he’d been given the stone, he didn’t use it; it was obvious to him, though, that he would almost certainly be forced to use it to defeat Elidibus. Which meant that the fate he thought he’d escaped--his existence being erased to give way to something inhuman and immortal--was still impending. In a way, Hades was going to win and get what he wanted even in death.

Contrary to Cam’s expectations, though, the final fight with Elidibus as the Warrior of Light incarnate and finally being forced to draw on the stone of Azem and play into Hades’ plans for him *lifted* those fears from Cam entirely. When the moment came when Cam finally had to draw on Azem’s stone to survive the Void, it didn’t overwrite his own personality or memories or change his feelings towards his family and friends or towards the Ascians he had fought for so long. Instead, he only felt a conviction that who he was and the path he was walking and continued to walk were in keeping with the path walked before and that whatever the past had been, it would stay in the past and do no more than help him continue to assert the right to forge his own way forward. Even feeling Azem’s voice within him was no stranger than speaking in Ardbert’s voice immediately after their Rejoining. 

And whatever or whoever it was that appeared to lend Cam the power he needed to return from the Void and defeat Elidibus--whether it was Hades’ own stored version of a previous self, like his re-creation of Hythlodaeus, or the actual soul of Hades, lingering before finally passing into the Lifestream--it *did* significantly change Cam’s feelings about Hades. Together with Hades’ final request to remember Amaurot and the lives of those who had come before (but not to re-create and *become* them), Hades’ shade in its final appearance felt different from the Ascian Cam had hated. Instead of saving Cam *as* Azem, Hades brought Cam back to finish the fight as himself. 

Following Elidibus’ defeat and the Scions’ triumphant return to the Source, Cam has had time to ask Cid, Y’shtola, and Urianger about Tempering and how and when its effect ends upon a soul’s physical death. They’ve all told him that no one, scientific researcher or arcane researcher/scholar, knows for certain, but Tempering does seem to end when a soul passes into the Lifestream and returns again. This has left Cam uncertain--was the Hades he’s now seen twice after the Ascian’s physical death finally free of Tempering? Even before returning to the Lifestream? Or was the specter that saved him from the Void the memory of a younger Hades--someone who still had some faith in his friends and in the future and some ability to change?

Regardless, defeating the last (to his knowledge) of the Unsundered Ascians *and* the incarnation of the Warrior of Light in primal form; freeing Elidibus to remember, grieve, and move on; putting Ardbert’s physical existence finally to rest; realizing that he would never actually have to *become* Azem; and receiving Hades’ blessing, from whatever version of the man it was given, have left Cam almost euphoric with relief. He’s survived, as himself, everything he’s most feared--the threat of ascension, whether as primal, Lightwarden, or Amaurotine--and everyone invested in pushing him towards any of those transformations is gone--and gone having accepted Cam’s existence as himself. Of course, having defeated the Warrior of Light as a primal concept doesn’t ensure that that primal can’t be resummoned and reembodied--but, psychologically, having defeated it, Cam *feels* as though that threat is gone.

Still riding the high of finally feeling secure in his own continued existence, Cam actually feels gratitude towards Hades--and towards Azem, whomever he may have been. He’s added the Tempest to the places he visits every year to honor people he knows and cared about who have fallen, and has begun very tentatively (and always with accompaniment, in case he *does* run into any threats of being overwritten) working with Azem’s memory stone and exploring the Tempest for records of the lives of the Convocation. He’s also talked with G’raha about whether the other memory stones’ records might still exist within the Crystal Tower in the First. None of these have been things he’s pursued urgently, but he is open to learning more about Amaurot, Hades, Elidibus, Azem, and the Convocation in a way he wasn’t before. They seem very securely like people in the past now, people it would be safe to learn about and who, like Ardbert and the First’s Warriors of Light, might have a story worth hearing and one different from the tale told either by common memory or by themselves.

On Hades’ part, he *did* see Azem in Cam, and Cam was correct--that drove his hot-and-cold opening up to and pulling away from Cam. After the Sundering, Hades had run into shards of Azem several times. Hades approached his first encounter with a shard with some hope that the shard might remember being Azem and remember Hades; discovering that the only thing the shard had in common with Azem was his tendency towards not listening, making friends with and helping everyone and his brother, and undermining other people’s plans, Hades’ bitterness and resentment towards any future shards he might encounter solidified. Meeting any of these shards felt like meeting a stick figure drawing of a lost sibling; just enough of the broad strokes there to suggest the person Hades missed, but none of the substance and detail that had made that person someone who had been part of Hades, in the way a close sibling is part of someone. Eventually, Hades disengaged from anything to do with shards of Azem and deliberately kept himself from learning anything about them; the other Ascians could do what they wanted with them. 

Irritated by Elidibus’ insistence on pulling him back into the struggle to force the Rejoining, Hades was more irritated by having to work again with a shard of Azem--with *many* shards of Azem, essentially, since Cam was partially Rejoined many times over. And especially since Cam was the closest any shard had yet come to looking like Azem, even down to having the Amaurotine’s mask markings as facial tattoos--and clearly had no clue about the significance of either those markings or his appearance. (It was also incredibly irritating that someone *not* an Ascian could pull a shard of one of the Convocation members across the rift between worlds; Hades wouldn’t have admitted it to himself or anyone else, but *that* degree of ownership/influence over Azem was something he considered appropriate only if *he* had it.)

Watching Cam, Hades had to deal again with the hope that maybe this time a shard would *remember* something. Along with his appearance, Cam’s behavior was incredibly similar to the Convocation member’s, to the degree that Hades kept initiating conversations with Cam to test this and then withdrawing when Cam’s answers sounded uncannily like Azem but showed no self-awareness of that fact. 

Cam was also correct that, had he been able to contain the Light without transforming, Hades *had* promised himself that he’d see that as a sign the man was worth working with and had the potential to become Azem in full, even if he seemed worthless at the moment. Cam’s failure increased Hades’ disgust and anger--not just at Cam, but at himself for allowing himself to hope at all. Still, Hades would have the satisfaction of using the twisted remnants of Azem to destroy the First and hasten the eventual full reincarnation of Azem.

Again, Cam denied him that pleasure when Cam showed up in the Tempest still in human form and still in (fading but there) control of himself, with the same barely-human barely-sentient friends by his side. Hades still gave him one last chance, exposing him to the fall of Amaurot and then showing one of his true forms and sharing his true name with Cam, moments after the man’s soul suddenly became even *more* like Azem’s. 

Nothing. 

But Cam still won. And the weight of Tempering and the long fight could finally be set down.

Whether Cam was Azem or not, Hades had to accept that Cam was carrying on the legacy that Azem had begun--and that Hades no longer had the power to deny him the right to claim and walk that path. Whether the version of Hades that appeared in the fight against Elidibus was a memory or Hades’ actual lingering soul, Hades had accepted, before fading entirely, that the only way to honor Azem’s past existence was to allow Cam to continue his own.