[Enoch's sudden hesitation is strange, though it doesn't undo the effect of his words, from which eddies are still spreading like from a rock thrown in a deep pool. The churn drags up memories, and he continues to turn them in his mind and examine them in the light of Enoch's words. To invent reasons or go searching for them is exactly right, or he'd still be a careless thug wandering day to day, thinking like an animal, not an immortal. And it doesn't matter where his path had brought him to - how many closed doors, how many dead ends - worst of all still seems the idea of never starting on it in the first place.

Maybe it would have been better, to never want grace rather than come to the knowledge that he could never have it. But that just seems a different kind of damnation.

He blinks when Enoch's tone changes, and stares, half coming back to the present and taking a while to understand what his friend means. At last his face softens into a sad and sincere version of one of his wry grins. Touching, that Enoch thinks this, but he doesn't understand.]

The human part of me? Don't bother with it, Enoch. The mortal man I was - he was no loss to me because he was barely anything. Everything I am - [his gaze flicks down to his hands as he raises them to look at.] It's all this. But - I'm starting to think that this means very different things than what I assumed.