[It's a valuable lesson to have, especially since it's one Taako doesn't. Maybe it's an elf thing, to hold long grudges without the fear of death pressing down and running out of time. Maybe he just spent too long trusting when it really mattered only to be rejected and hurt and almost killed. A lot of things could have been different, but they weren't, and he took the wrong way out from Lucretia's plan. He could have realized that there was no hiding, no protecting himself from everything, so coming down and healing was the answer.

He didn't. He built his walls higher, clung tighter to the people already inside. And the few people who have learned to scale it, even begun to get there--

He doesn't know if he remembers how to open the door. Really let someone in and invite them into his heart.

It's not the act of even doing it that gets him, it's the fear they'll burn the place to the ground once they get there.]

Damn right, better them than us.

[He would never let that be him, even though it has been, he just gets more outs than most people. For a second, he tastes powdered concrete and takes too sharp a breath, seizes his hands like that control will be gone from him, and then covers it with a bit of a cough.]

Guess not everyone has second chances on death missions or whatever. We'd have been way more boned if death was forever. So y'know.

[He drums his fingers on his leg, caught between wanting to tell him everything and never speak again.]

At least we have the time to look at it without getting immediately killed, but who knows if that's worse.