The man considers Astarion, briefly, but with his lack of interruption-- he turns his attention away.

"You would have had more success," he tells Emet-Selch, gently, "had you kept your distance. Had you never experienced age, nor illness, nor death. You have had so much taken from you, Emet-Selch, and only invited further loss-- would you not resolve this, were it possible?"

"It is not," he says, his tone harsher. "I have done what was necessary to orchestrate--"

"You never needed to have an heir. You never truly needed the bitterness of mortal life, my friend."

Silence, aside from a slow exhalation of breath.

"If you could repeat it all, knowing their measure from the very beginning, would this not make the process easier?" He looks back to Astarion again, then, glances between him and Emet-Selch. "Ah, or could you not distance yourself from them even for our sake...? 'Tis odd company you keep!"

"And I kept it with you as well." Snappish, unsettled. "It is not all so simple as distance. I could not have..."

-could not have succeeded in what he needed to do otherwise. He's always been so set upon the paths he chose, always evaluated them carefully, and although inevitably they led toward a single end... it is an end he already accepted.

Still. Still. Acceptance meant never seeing this place again, and it is as much a cruelty to have it before his eyes once more as a kindness, with his friend offering such things.

"They are more than I believed them to be," is what he eventually decides upon. "You would have thought the same."