It is so utterly different from how he knows the other man, and yet it doesn't shock him. Watching, listening to his friend's words, so many small truths hidden between layers of fiction, gives shape and substance to what he'd had only inklings of before. It fits. It feels right. The knowledge that Balthier has constructed such an elaborate facade seems no more unnatural than the fact that he'd done so himself.

"No difference at all, to them." But to him? His gaze is soft, knowing. Yet, it isn't the same. Jack's masks are meant to hide, to repress. What Balthier describes seems a clean break from the past. Real change.

"I knew I liked you for a reason," he says after a beat, words that could be cynical but in this moment are sincere. Almost envious. "Not for what you left, but that you left it."