Malkuth remembers the lives of a billion dead

“It was odd,” He said at last. “Sleeping. Being able to sleep without remembering the lives and deaths that made me. Odd, somehow. So when I realized what was happening, I willed myself awake.”

At that, I sighed.

“Would you like to tell me why?”

“I would, if I knew,” He mused softly. “But even I’m not sure. Maybe…maybe I’m just not sure who I am without it. The nightmares and dreams, histories and tragedies…it reminds me that I’m just the sum of my parts.”

“I’d say you’re more than that,” I replied.

“Would you?” He asked me. “If you stripped away all the lifetimes I remember, all the people I know I once was, all the memories I have—what would be left of me? From the moment I was born, I knew exactly what I was and where I’d come from, because I remembered every moment of it. Everything I did, I did for them. Because of them.”

“Did you really?” I wondered, raising an eyebrow. “Is it because of them that you’re here with us now?”

He was silent, expression briefly unsure and then blank.

“You remember countless lifetimes,” I continued. “And most of them ended in tragic ways. You are, in a way, the sum of those people—but at the say time, there’s more to people than simple math. What you remember made you who you were, but you’ve lived with those memories and created your own, same as I have. None of those people acted like you did, because none of them remember all the things you do. Those lives ended and continued in you, but…you’re more than the sum of your parts.”

He remained quiet for several more seconds before sighing.

“Maybe,” He whispered at last. “Maybe. But sometimes, it’s hard to believe. I joke and laugh and I remember Rahel doing the same. I make something and it’s Urdu’s work I see. Sometimes, I even feel like it’s what I should see, what I should remember—because if I don’t remember, who else ever will? It’s been less than twenty years and I’m the only one who still cares. Who still even knows everyone who died.”

“That’s a hard way to live a life,” I said. “As a memorial to something lost, instead of as a person. Is that what you want to be?”

“No,” He answered at once. “I hate it. In fact, sometimes I think I even—“

He cut himself off and looked down.

“It doesn’t matter,” He said. “It’s stupid.”