[ He does try for malice. Once or twice. The thought of family, of the Butcher of Komarr and his evil wife and their son who had to be small and broken and ugly...It raises too toxic and mysterious a cocktail of emotions in him. For that moment, he pushes back, and pushing back means using the only defenses he knows: anger and hatred. But his hatred of the Emperor feels...It suddenly feels toothless. Warmongering feels like a pointless slander in response to the deep distress that's palpable, the memories of averting that war. Vicious - no. Useless depressive is a little closer to the truth, maybe, but that wasn't one of the more popular slanders the clone had heard from the Komarran. All of it had always centered on his viciousness, his puppeteering by the warmongering Butcher. His weakness. His probable distraction due to his own...
The clone passes over those fears briefly. He feels that dread. And he simultaneously...He wants to shrink away from them. But he also wants to look at them. Not to use them as a weapon, not to exploit them. But because he wants to see what they look like. The clone's genes come half from the Butcher. The Emperor's are half from the pervert and sadist Prince Serg. Are this man's fears...When he lets himself be afraid, how many of the Emperor's fears look like his own?
None. He doesn't know what you went through. The pain of becoming Miles... But there's more to the clone than just that pain. There are other fears. More primal ones. In the end, he doesn't pull those memories apart. He lets them alone.
But the search slows. It becomes less urgent and frenzied. The brief bubbles of pride, of deception, calm the clone. It reassures him that maybe - possibly - there really isn't anything being hidden. No one in the entire galaxy is good. It's only once they admit the ways in which they're awful that maybe you can start to trust them. A little. ]
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The clone passes over those fears briefly. He feels that dread. And he simultaneously...He wants to shrink away from them. But he also wants to look at them. Not to use them as a weapon, not to exploit them. But because he wants to see what they look like. The clone's genes come half from the Butcher. The Emperor's are half from the pervert and sadist Prince Serg. Are this man's fears...When he lets himself be afraid, how many of the Emperor's fears look like his own?
None. He doesn't know what you went through. The pain of becoming Miles... But there's more to the clone than just that pain. There are other fears. More primal ones. In the end, he doesn't pull those memories apart. He lets them alone.
But the search slows. It becomes less urgent and frenzied. The brief bubbles of pride, of deception, calm the clone. It reassures him that maybe - possibly - there really isn't anything being hidden. No one in the entire galaxy is good. It's only once they admit the ways in which they're awful that maybe you can start to trust them. A little. ]