[And he's right enough. Julian pauses midway between raising the bread to his lips for a second bite, expression turning darker-edged.]

Oh. Right. That.

[He takes a breath, steady and slow, the hand holding the bread dropping back down to his lap, his renewed appetite already slipping away from him, quite forgotten.]

After the hanging, when the Hanged Man returned my memories to me I uh, well it all came back to me. And look, I realise now why you er, felt so resentful towards me. Back then. I know they're the one you wanted, all along. That is was never me. And that...it was my fault, wasn't it? That they died. All that time spent working at the palace, slaving away over the cure, I didn't...they were apprenticed under me at the time, I should have taken better care, should have known but...I was so absorbed in what I was doing, I didn't even realise they'd contracted the plague. I didn't know they'd been...that they'd died, until after it had happened. Until it was too late.

[The unaccountable honesty, again, but there's the slow sinking feeling inside of him now, the return of his usual darkness, and it pushes the strangeness of his openness to the edges of himself.]

I'm sorry. I know that I failed them.