"You think being [i]fixed[/i] is desirable? You think it is just!?" 

Despite everything, he stands. He is a mess of sap and blood, new shoots bursting out from ruins and tears. Still he blossoms, as unfeeling and unseeing as the wood that makes up ever more of his body.

"Of course you can't have what you want. If everyone could have what they [i]wanted[/i], where would we be!? Despite [i]everything[/i] I did Athena never showed me the slightest tenderness, and I never wavered in her service!" The spite in that is absolutely feral, the hatred of a thousand held-open doors unrequited. "Because that's not how the galaxy works. You [i]are[/i] nothing. Love means [b]shutting up[/b] and [i]waiting[/i], even if you have to wait forever. Anything less is degenerate [i]hedonism[/i]!"

Aphrodite, sitting off to the side, smiles a little and smokes a cigarette.

And then you feel footsteps next to you. Interlocking shields pass between you and he, and spears lower en mass to present the broken tyrant with an indivisible phalanx. The Coherent have formed up around you, a hundred warriors with a hundred different bodies and shapes, all acting with unified purpose when it comes to protecting you. And then, above you, Redana - Redana as you have never seen her, Redana radiant - reaches down with an extended hand and a smile. And here you are, amidst friends.

Say what you will about degenerate hedonism, but it has its perks.