Reinhard sighed within the memory, but his own fist clenched involuntarily.
Trembling started in his consciousness, thoughts he'd been vehemently trying to ignore and push away, forcing themselves forward.
He didn't want to think about the consequences or what-ifs that would follow if this expedition failed.
He didn't want to see his siblings' faces in his imagination. He didn't want to know their reaction or what they might say at his grave.
A thought slipped through despite his resistance, making him bite his lip hard enough to taste copper even in this memory-state. Did we mean so little to you, Rein?
The parallel to Dune's pain was too exact, too perfectly aligned. The question his siblings might ask mirrored what Dune had asked his parents' graves.
The anger, the sense of abandonment, the confusion about whether love had ever existed or if it had been conditional on something never properly understood.
