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Wit spins on his heel to face the new God of Hatred, ignoring the pounding in his heart, and in the instant before he is vaporized, for some reason he thinks of Jasnah, lying on a feathered bed with her, the way she smiles when he finally gets her to laugh, and then—
There is a burst of smoke and light, a searing pain gone so quickly he could have imagined it, then darkness. For a moment or an eternity, he slips, he is nearly gone, and a fear greater than anything he’s ever felt grips his soul. What if it didn’t work what if he’s gone what if he leaves before he finishes he’s not done he hasn’t fixed it—
And then something greater grabs on to his soul and wrenches, catches hold of the anchor he’s left it, and he returns to himself with a familiar twist, a pop, a sigh, settling back into the skin that is not permitted to fade while he is Commanded to Exist.
And Topaz opens his eyes—
He shakes himself, knowing that’s not it. Which one is he?
Cephandrius looks around—
No, that’s not him either.
Wit smiles—and that fits, but uncomfortably, like an ill-fitted suit, like his blood is itching beneath his skin, feeling that something is not quite right.
But Wit doesn’t have time for identity crises, and he ignores the scratch of wrong for now until he can make certain he’s in the right place.
After Ulaam the kandra has left, Wit first makes certain his new body has all the same physical and spiritual aspects as his last one. The tension in the back of his brain is quieter, or at least less noticeable, when he has a task to focus on. He’ll need to face the truth, the memories and the pain they bring eventually, but he has always been quite good at avoiding things that hurt, so he puts that skill into use now.
Wit makes himself busy—he checks the safehouse, the date, takes stock of his location, reads the newspaper, double-checks and refills his storage of all sixteen metals and downs some bronze, brass and zinc, he solidifies his Connection to Scadrial and makes sure he’s speaking the right language, he takes measures to hide himself from Harmony and Bavadin, who thinks she’s so subtle as she infiltrates the planet.
He sheds his Alethi disguise that attached itself to this body, which makes Wit feel even more shaky and thin, a line of paint spread over too much canvas, a note held for too long using too little air to sustain it. He starts burning pewter and tells himself it’s to make certain he can use Allomancy effectively while he sweeps the house to erase all traces of the technology he used to create his new body, no traces of his soul that could be used to track him.
It's while he’s doing this that he finds it.
It’s an innocuous pen, rolled into a corner after being tossed haphazardly onto the desk. It’s Jasnah’s pen, one Wit had accidentally brought with him after one of his trips to Scadrial to pick up supplies. He’d used it to write a note telling her he was leaving and had forgotten to grab it on his way back. Sloppy.
Wit picks it up. Makes his hand stop shaking through force of will. Examines it, hears her voice in his head, cold and cutting. I suppose it can be difficult to see the struggles of humanity, being a god yourself.
He feels something cold and wet on his hand and looks down to realize he’d snapped the pen with his pewter-enhanced strength, and the ink is leaking out. Shards. He’s a coward, but he can’t ignore it any longer.
He takes a deep breath through his nose and allows himself to face the memories.
They rush through him, demanding his attention all at once, bursting the seams of his already overtaxed mind, his pewter running out. Humans weren’t built for what he puts himself through, and it is times like this when he pays for it.
The room swims in front of his eyes, his breath hitches and his emotions crash through the carefully organized boxes he puts them in, to be taken out and used when appropriate. He collapses onto the bed the kandra gave him and presses a hand to his chest, hard, in an effort to control his breathing. It’s fruitless; he could swear the ink on his hands is blood.
Roshar is gone, and his friends are all alone with a new god of Hatred. Shards, they’re his friends, he’d tried to avoid getting attached in case of this, in case of the inevitable pain, and Dalinar is dead, Kaladin, Shallan, so many more unknown, and he’d forced Sigzil to take his Dawnshard, the boy hadn’t even known what it was, and Jasnah—
Shards. Shards. Jasnah.
His fault. It’s all his fault. He’d failed, and now Odium is free. He’d told Dalinar that he would burn Roshar to achieve his goals but in the end, he wasn’t able to do either. (He isn’t sure he can summon the nerve to sacrifice Roshar anymore, and that uncertainty shakes him.)
It’s too much all at once, and the memories of his time on Roshar surge and trigger thoughts of his other failures. Ashyn, Yolen, a thousand times on a thousand planets, and his Breaths shudder as they strain the seams of his mind, threatening to snap it, as Wit screams. What have you done, you god unchained, you FAILED.
He stumbles backwards and lands on his bed, and his back arches against it as he feels his mind start to burn. Pain ignites through every synapse, his mind gleefully turning against him as soon as it catches hold onto a weakness. He has contingencies for situations like this, but he can’t recall them, there is too much for him to handle—
No.
Wit is gone. That part of him, true to an extent, the person who allied with Dalinar and taught Kaladin and comforted Shallan and loved Jasnah—it is gone until he can return to Roshar. In order to survive he has to compartmentalize. He has failed, but he has failed before. He takes all of that, all that emotion and fear, and shoves it to the back of his mind, forces it down and names it Wit—
And Hoid emerges with a gasp, distant from the mind and the memories that nearly ended him, chest heaving as his Breaths reorder themselves.
He sits up cautiously and reaches out with his life senses to make certain there was no one around him, that no one saw his moment of weakness. When there is nothing, he sighs, tries for a smile. The blood ink on his hands is still wet.
“Well then.” He says under his breath. “That was not pleasant.” A ridiculous statement. Utterly not clever. He’s still regaining his balance, so to speak.
He stands and strides over to the table to pour himself a bottle of bad Scadrian whiskey. It won’t accomplish anything, of course, but it’s something to do.
All that emotion is still there, but it’s dulled, like it happened to someone else, while Hoid was a very close observer. It’s a method he’s perfected over the millennia after a few incidents like the one he’d just had. The human mind just isn’t made for what Hoid puts it through, and he would’ve died or gone insane from the sheer weight of his life many centuries ago. He had had to shore up his defenses after what Taravangian did, but the discovery of the many uses of Breaths had been essential.
At the thought of the new vessel of Odium, a very strong hatred surges up from the part of him that remains Wit. He hisses through his teeth and knocks back the drink, thinks of his friends trapped on that disgusting rock planet because of that man’s arrogance.
Hoid examines the now-empty glass, admiring the way the light reflects through it, and then turns and slams it against the wall. It shatters on impact in a very satisfying way.
The remnants of the Dawnshard that remain in his soul shift restlessly at the thought of destruction. “Shut up,” Hoid says, and pours himself another glass.
Ulaam comes and goes within the next few days, raising his eyebrows at the glass shards scattered throughout the floor, some of which are stained with Hoid’s blood since he hasn’t bothered to put on shoes. The small cuts heal instantly, after all, and the pain is a reminder. As he plans his next move, reaches out with his Fortune to find where he would be most useful, he thinks of Roshar and the mistakes he made.
Because while Hoid might be imperfect, he learns from his errors. In the case of Roshar, it was that he got cocky.
Riding the high of finally bonding a spren and being able to access the truly remarkable levels of power that afforded him, a plan that was nearly guaranteed to defeat his worst enemy, a relationship with the most brilliant woman he’d met in half a millennia. But he couldn’t give her what she wanted—not really. It’s why he tries to avoid committed relationships. He can never give all of himself to one person. There’s just too much of him.
But Jasnah—she was just so interesting. She saw through so much of him, she could keep up with him. It’s so difficult to find people that didn’t bore him, that he could see as an equal. For the most part. He had gotten so caught in the high of having a partner that could think as fast as him and see the end of the chess game within a few moves, that he’d forgotten.
With her, sometimes, he could forget his age, could feel young again. But he shouldn’t have tried to have a relationship with someone so—fragile. She’d rip him apart for calling her such, but that’s the problem, wasn’t it? He can’t see anyone as an equal anymore. The price of immortality that no one advertises is the way everyone becomes children.
It aches, the way he knows he hurt her, through his own carelessness and selfishness. He couldn’t be what she needed. And he swears he won’t make that mistake again.
But what if, in two hundred or two thousand years’ time, he decides that those memories just aren’t important enough, and excises them? If memories make him who he is, than would the man he is now even exist in the future?
He tries never to forget his failures. Jasnah will be one of his greatest ones, on the list right next to Ashyn’s burning and Jerrick’s death. She’s always been determined to be remembered, and if she knew that one day, time would erase her, as it did everything—that the only trace of her was a point in a list of his mistakes—Shards, but she’d hate that, if she knew.
(He can’t bring himself to feel guilty. At least she’d remain somehow, if only in his mind.)
His greatest fear is to become repetitive. To repeat behaviors without realizing it, to become predictable, stagnant. Worse, to become like one of the spren on Roshar, or the Fused—a caricature of himself, something that wears his skin but has nothing of worth inside.
He remembers a story he’s heard and even told before—a ship, so legendary and well loved by its people, that any time a board rotted, it was replaced. And eventually, there is not a trace of the original ship left, but it looks the same. Is it the same ship, or a completely new one, masquerading as the first?
He does not tell this story very often.
He’d prided himself on his decision to remain himself, to give up a power he’d killed God for. But had he accomplished anything, in the end? His change may have taken longer, and he may not be as warped as poor Ati, but how much of him remained, after all these years?
He wonders how much human there even is left in him.
Jasnah had once told him that he acted as if he knew everything that was going to happen. He’d shot back that most of the time, he did. But didn’t that expectation ruin him, in the end? If he hadn’t been so focused on what he knew must happen on Roshar he wouldn’t have missed the possibility that Dalinar would throw it all away for—what was it called? The Sunmaker’s Gambit?
Ignore us now, Dalinar had shouted to the cosmere while dooming himself. It was remarkable. It was idiotic. It was oh so human.
Hoid would never have done such a thing. He would have kept the situation on Roshar exactly as it was—predictable, typical, stagnant. Dalinar’s plan had been singular, but Hoid should have thought of it first.
He doesn’t stay on Scadrial for long. It reminds him too much of a home he’ll never see again.
(Are you happy? He wants to scream at his younger self, the idiot child who’d thought himself so clever. Did you get what you wanted?)
Time and time and time again, after worlds fall and kingdoms burn, there is only him, walking through the ashes. It’s very lonely, to be surrounded by those who look like him, but to still be the only one of your kind.
Humans were never meant to live so long.