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There are some things Emet-Selch doesn't like to think about, but that has never stopped him before.
He has lived for a long time. Too long, perhaps, by many a standard. He doesn't think that many out there, creatures and people alike, even if they want to evade death at all costs, would consider his unending lifetime something to strive towards. If he is honest, neither would he. This has never been his plan, and yet, in a twisted way, perhaps it always has been. To fulfill his duty to the world, to make a worthwhile contribution, and then, when all is said and done, return to the star to be at peace. That had always been his expectation, though he could never have anticipated that his duty would stretch this far, would encompass all this.
Emet-Selch doesn’t look back. He can’t afford to. He can’t dwell on the part of his life that is gone, not if he wants to focus on bringing it back. The world he so dearly loved is in the past, but if he wants it to be his future, he can not linger there. There had been a time when he wouldn't have hurt another living soul, where the mere thought of some of the things he has done since then would have made him recoil in disgust, and yet he can not stop, can never give up.
He has long moved past such sensibilities, of course, by necessity alone. One cannot save an entire people without getting one's hands dirty, after all. He would like to tell himself sometimes that it has gotten easier over the millennia, but for someone like him, someone who prides themselves on their knack for honesty, it feels like an insult to pretend that is the case.
Nothing gets easier, not the grief nor the death and pain that he brings with him wherever he goes. And yet, every now and then, he manages to fool himself a little. It's not an outright lie but perhaps a convenient bending of reality. Like when he takes an entire misplaced people, driven from their home and desperately clinging together in their fear of extinction, and manages to almost make himself believe that he is doing it for them, too.
Emet-Selch has once been honest to a fault, no matter if his honesty had been flattering or scathing. Over the years, he has learned to wield it like a weapon, to take the inherent truths in everything and twist them to fit a story of his own making. It's an act, of course, but one so raw and rooted in truth it's indistinguishable from reality.
He takes a young man's face and appearance and rises through the ranks of their rather sorry excuse for a military quicker than it should be possible. He doesn't have to worry about getting caught up in a net of deception, not when he lives and breathes this young man's truth as if it were his own. Though, in a way, it might just be.
Sometimes he wonders why he chose that face in particular, among them all.
Emet-Selch likes to think he is rational. He is a meticulous planner, setting up elaborate schemes that can take decades to come to fruition. His plans, intricate as they are, always work because he considers every eventuality and sometimes things that seem almost impossible on top of that. He has always been a man driven mainly through reason. Choosing someone who bore a remarkable visual similarity to how he used to look once upon a time could look like sentiment to the outside observer. Could read as an attempt to go back to a time before, but for Emet-Selch, it is far from it.
He found out a long time ago that consistency helps keep him on track. The same body over and over again keeps him grounded in who he is. When he looks in the mirror each morning, he doesn't see the Garlean soldier who's life ended early and unbeknownst to anyone close to him. Emet-Selch sees both his past and his future, the man he used to be and the man he could maybe one day become again. When his own face looks back at him, it reminds him that this is all one great, elaborate act. His armor a costume, his weapon a prop in a play for the future of his star.
And yet, the more years pass by, the longer he lives the life of Solus, the more obvious they are, the parallels between them. It's another life, a whole different time, and a broken, shattered world, but in a way, what Solus wants for his people is rooted in the same desires Emet-Selch has for his own. Restoring a home, a place devastated by something they could neither stop nor control. Wringing it back from the forces that work against them and returning their people to their rightful home. It's almost a little too close for him sometimes, a little too hard to maintain the distance necessary. Like he is looking for something in these fleeting existences that could soothe his own pain.
He gets wrapped up in the lives he lives, sometimes. To do what he does, he has to believe in it, after all, and that makes it only all too real sometimes. Like when he holds his newborn son in his arms for the first time and feels a connection that he should scoff about. It's a sundered, imperfect being, after all, and yet it is undoubtedly his child, and it matters . Enough, so he plays his role a little bit too long, maybe. After all, setting a system up to fail, while requiring meticulous planning, hardly takes constant supervision once it's up and running. The Empire will destroy itself without his help by now. He could have left the Garleans to their own devices much earlier, but he doesn't. He stays. And on some days, he almost forgets a little that Solus is not even his name.
When his son dies, it is such a day. Emet-Selch has gotten used to grief being a constant companion, but on that day, it reminds him in no uncertain terms of how fragile life is, how broken and messed up this world he meddles with truly is. And how far he has gotten wrapped up in it. It doesn't make sense, this splintered existence, not like the world of old had. There is no meaning to be found amidst the chaos, no greater purpose than living life for the one fleeting moment it lasts.
In a very twisted kind of way, the tragedy may almost be a blessing. A reminder for him, who can not afford to forget. And once again, he moves forward, never daring to look back. He knows full well he wouldn’t like what he sees. Perhaps if he looked to the past for too long it might paralyze him, making him unable to march on.
Sometimes he wonders if the others haven't received a somewhat kinder fate. With Lahabrea losing himself in his work so much that he never manages to quite find all its parts anymore in the end, it would seem like Emet-Selch is better off. He doesn't have his obsessions chipping away at his insanity, doesn't have his restlessness driving him from host to host and leaving his soul torn, fragile, and frayed at the edges. And unlike Elidibus, he remembers everything. In far too much detail on some days, when the thoughts of their lost home haunt and pester him and won't leave him alone. No, he is not like the other two. Emet-Selch can never forget, and he can never let go of the tight control he has over himself. He has the patience honed by millennia to play any game necessary, no matter how long it might take him. And yet, there are moments where he thinks that being the only one of them left with both his mind and his memory intact feels more like a gruesome punishment than an achievement.
By now, he truly is the last one of them who genuinely remembers. Who still has vivid memories of a world unsunderd, a people unbroken. He is the only one that still knows mankind's true potential, knows what they once were, and hopefully, one day could be again. He is the sole keeper of all memories of a past so distant it feels almost unreal. By now, Emet-Selch has lived for longer on this broken mockery of a star than he had lived in their paradise. Long enough, perhaps, to feel a strange kinship with the broken sometimes. But deep down, he knows that these tattered souls are not his brethren, not his people. They aren't even people, he reminds himself. Pawns are all they could ever be, too weak to replace what he has lost. And he will not cry for them when they have played their parts and outlived their usefulness.
Still, the lives he lives impact him more than he would care to admit. When he sheds the mantle of Solus and lets the body he inhabited for so many decades die of old age, Emet-Selch is so very tired. Some lifetimes require a greater rest because they remind him far too much of home, drive home how shattered existence truly is, and how long the way he has to go still stretches out before him. In those moments, he yearns for the blissful promise of nothingness - at least for a while. His home is still so very far away, both in his future and his past, while he is stuck in the middle of an endless road, ever condemned to wander on.
Perhaps Garlemald was a poor attempt at being a substitute for a while, but even with all it was lacking, it still managed to almost feel real for a few moments. They were gone in the blink of an eye, and yet the feeling lingers enough to make him wistful. Perhaps, if he were better at lying, Emet-Selch would find some happiness in those moments. He knows full well that the first person he would lie to is himself, after all.
But as he drifts on the currents of the lifestream, turning his eyes away from the view of his Empire crumbling under its own weight, he can not help but wonder if he is already better at it than he thinks he is. Maybe the most significant role he has played so far is that of a man that, after all he has done, still tries to make himself believe that he is not the one that is inherently broken.