#and in the end wyn felt like it cheapened the sacrifice that she had already made

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

The thing that I feel like I have a hard time getting across when I offer a quick summary of Wyn's backstory is that her brother Came Back Wrong, but it was still HIM who came back.

It wasn't a tainting of the soul or some deception by the being that brought him back. It wasn't a function of the revival. I don't even think this is something that would necessarily happen to EVERYONE upon revival in Wyn's typical fantasy d&d world. When Atticus came back wrong, he didn't come back wrong because of the way he was brought back - he came back wrong because of HIM.

(under a cut because it got long. tw for not-so-implied self harm btw)

His fear of death was so profound that he dedicated his life to trying to push it back. It was his life's work, the all-consuming thought that Wyn used to have to drag him away from just to get him to eat regularly. He was so afraid of waking up one day to find that his time had run out that he was willing to put all of that time towards staving it off. What happens when someone like that is suddenly and irrevocably thrust into the heart of their greatest fear?

In Atticus's case, I think it possessed him. You know how people who are afraid of something become fixated on finding out more about it, about knowing EVERYTHING they possibly can? I think what happened was a function of that. It's a bit of a Jane Prentiss situation. "The song is so beautiful and I am so very afraid," etc, etc,. Wyn dragged him away from the heart of his fear after he had already succumbed to it, and all of the dedication and fervor that he had for running away suddenly became pointed like an arrow directly back towards death. Obsession. Possession. What is the endless sprawl death if not another kind of immortality?

So I think Atticus came back already preloaded with a cult-like worship for his own end. I think he was so afraid and so fascinated and so wholly in the grip of his own overwhelming awe that when he came back, he came back as someone that Wyn didn't know. But it WAS him. He DID know her. He DID love her. He DID, in his own way, want to make her happy. And when he eventually pulled himself out of his own fear-drugged stupor to recognize the terrible cost that she was STILL ACTIVELY PAYING to bring him back...well. Knowing that he was siphoning off her life to extend his own, the one that wanted so badly to end? It just didn't seem like the thing a loving brother would prolong.

So he didn't.

And I'm very interested to think about the implications of what Wyn would do if she knew that.