Her anger may have been understandable to any other soul, but Kaj could not comprehend it. He stared bewildered and unblinking as he watched her slim bodice practically vibrate with the intensity of her emotions. They scalded him, boiling water injected straight into his veins, and he hated it. Hated her, for her depravity, her sick display of such profoundly uncomfortable feelings. This was the sort of woman Other Kaj had associated with? It was a further example of how far he’d fallen. Kaj understood the importance of emotions. He was not without a soul, just reverted to the archaic soldier he’d once been before Helovia had changed him. But emotions made you blind, made your skills falters. Emotions got you killed in war. So he could appreciate them, could feel them, even cherished them with the memories he hadn’t erased from Helovia. But it still made him uncomfortable to hear her words hurled at him, her blatant insults and disrespect, when everything in him cried out for her punishment.
 
If this was going to become a routine, it was going to get really old, really fast.
 
“Other Kaj was the coward then, not I,” he corrected, tone a tad sharp with the insult he felt at being spoken down to. “It’s not that I am incapable of feeling them currently, it’s just far more strategic not to!” It was an uncomfortable sensation, to be almost pleading for her to understand, to be so uncomfortable and unsure in his own skin. Perhaps Other Kaj was used to that, but this Kaj was not. He owned his presence, his power, and he associated himself with it wholly. But this? A jaded mistress, lover, mate? Whatever she had been to him at one point in time he could not recall it, but her pain was valid and scorching against him.
 
The necklace felt hot and vile against his skin and he frowned hatefully down at the woman, hating her for her assumptions but incapable of hating her in the way that mattered. Because he did remember her. He remembered her gentle nature and soft laughter, he remembered how she’d relied upon him to learn and find the confidence to wield her new magic. “Of course I remember it,” he snapped defensively, chin tucking subconsciously as if to shield the necklace from her view. “I haven’t taken it off, it still means something to me.” Just because he’d forgotten any romantic developments between them didn’t me he did not care for her.
 
“I don’t know if Miykael can return those memories to me, and furthermore if he can do it singularly. Brisa…I’m sorry but if the only way to find those memories again is to erase every single block he put up…I can’t do that. Other Kaj was weak and a coward, and I will not become him again.” His voice was deep and grounded, rolling like thunder in his chest, eyes sad but severe. He would never fall that far, not again. It was akin to suicide, for his own mind would be erased just as Other Kaj’s was. “I’m still here now. I’m just…different.” Didn’t that mean something?