i want your love and i want your revenge
It’s not that he forgets the Nexus, but rather that he becomes so busy that there’s simply no time to pursue it, not even a little. Maybe there could have been, if he’d forgone the extra time with his daughter, or the few more hours of sleep squeezed in each month. And maybe he should have taken the time or made the time or even just vanished for a few hours, so that his glorious return isn’t what it is.
He doesn’t care.
There is a man laying at his feet, bound, beaten, and he’s breathing in ragged, wet sounds that signal some delicate internal thing’s demise. The captive doesn’t understand, his eyes darting between his enemy and the mirror image of himself watching the proceedings from the corner. This can’t be real.
“I warned you,” Treize murmurs as he strokes his hand over the journalist’s hair, gentle in disturbing contrast to his cold violence just minutes prior. “I warned you and I told you that I don’t lie. This is what happens.”
He tries to speak and Treize makes a soft chastising sound, brushing his fingers over the younger man’s lips. “I know what you’re thinking. Plastic surgery, perhaps even a clone. It doesn’t matter what you believe, ultimately, but I’m going to tell you the truth, because I have values, Mr. Starterson, values that you lack. This man is not a replica; he is you. He is you from another time - he is the you that lost his family - ah, well, the details, they’re a bit personal, aren’t they? And it doesn’t matter. Not really. He’s the you that is going to run an apology and then spy on that godawful liberal newspaper of yours for me. He’s the you that gets your life - the one you wasted. He’s the you that would have listened to the warning about running that article about my daughter.”
Silence. Disbelief.
Terror.
“Mmphh-!!”
“It’s just beautiful, I know.”
Treize smiles, presses end of his handgun against the journalist’s forehead, and pulls the trigger.