[He knows, on some level, in a way that had become purely instinctive back then after so long under Dante, that even if he had tried to protect Wrath or Lust or Gluttony or any of them? He would have wound up punished or discarded as useless himself. There had been no room for genuine attachments, their master would never have allowed them to start coming together in earnest and possibly challenge her authority. He'd been just as trapped in it as the rest, even if he'd thought he wasn't.]

[He's not the one who threw Wrath into the Gate. He didn't erase Gluttony.]

[But he wishes he'd been more unwilling, or had woken up sooner. He wishes he hadn't just stood there as it happened. The cruel, biting, angry words had been all him. So he's glad that Heather isn't trying to tell him he didn't do anything wrong--he knows he did.]

Yeah...I know the worst was because of her. But not all of it.

[He drags a hand back through his hair roughly, and at her question of what Wrath himself had said, the corner of his mouth quirks upwards a little. This part, at least, is a relief.]

After I apologized? He said it wasn't me he was mad at. And said we both did stupid things, and he wished he hadn't done some of them either. I told him I'd been really stupid, and that I wasn't mad at him. We hugged for a while.

He'd been apologizing to Lust, when he saw her. But both of us forgave him that years ago, the first time he was here. He's just...I think he's really messed up about it anyway.