au where emet-selch subconsciously adds functional elpisflowers to amaurot and WoL asks about it somewhen in there and emet-selch doesn't remember it and is initially dismissive but it lingers in his mind as a bit of a ??? because he recognizes it as being part of his own magic sustaining amaurot, but he does not remember this and no matter what the others chose, he has always remembered. And when all the aether's getting thrown around sometime at the end of the Dying Gasp it clicks.
I am an Ascian. My heart's sole desire is to usher in the Great Rejoining.
The look on his FACE. I can't handle it.
You find out that the paltry shade of your dead best friend a/ exists (terrible) and b/ is sustaining awful damage to her essence by absorbing the specific kind of energy which you yourself find most distasteful and painful (traumatizing).
You know they won't be able to handle it—but maybe, maybe they will. You decide to wait and see... because if they can handle the Light... If they're able to actually do what they set out to do, there will be a moment. A moment when all that power is raging inside them, and the world is teetering on the precipice, and maybe they can be convinced. And that moment is impossible, but it's in the future, so you can plot and scheme to bring it about—because if nothing else, you are good at filling an eternity with plots and schemes and looking forward to the moment that they agree with you again.
So you walk beside them, this ghoulish mimic of the hero who you welcomed home after countless adventures. You helped them, as you helped their predecessor so many times.
And then they fail, and the moment they do, someone else tries to force the moment, and you can't live in hope anymore.
You can't pretend that there's still time to find a way to not be enemies.
[Emet-Selch, who has been sojourning with the paltry reincarnation of a dear friend* and not opened up to them directly about things that matter a great deal to him]: "So Thancred, I notice that you have not opened up to the paltry reincarnation of your dear friend about things that matter a great deal to you. Now why would that be? Love...?"
and I'm only paraphrasing half of that quote
*(in this particular playthrough's case, twin sister)
I guarantee this idiot said the exact same thing at like, the weekly staff meeting at convocation HQ