After a while, Leon looked up. "If I’m you..." He hesitated, searching for the right words. "Will I become like you?"
The older Leon didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to understand what lay behind the question. The child had seen what he had done earlier, and now he had been told that the person responsible was also himself.
"Not everything that happened in my life has to happen in yours," he eventually said. "You have your own life now, Leon. The people around you, the choices you make... those are yours."
"But I’m still you?"
"No, you are not me, but I was you."
Leon lowered his gaze, trying to make sense of an answer that didn’t seem to fit with what he knew about himself.
The older Leon watched him quietly before speaking again. "There’s more you should understand about that life. But we don’t have to rush through everything at once."
Leon remained silent for a moment. His thought of the dream earlier, the countless bodies scattered across the battlefield, and had seen each events take place.
But now after this conversation, and knowing who the man before him was, those scenes carried a different meaning.
"After you killed them," he asked quietly, "did it stop hurting?"
The older Leon’s expression changed. He looked away briefly, as though the question had taken him somewhere far from the empty space surrounding them.
"No," he answered. "It didn’t."
Leon waited, but the man didn’t immediately say anything more.
For a while, neither spoke. The older Leon was in no hurry to break the silence.
"I thought it might," he continued after a while. "After everything was over, I thought there might be some relief, but nothing changed. They were still gone."
Leon looked down. He had seen the happiness in those memories, the ordinary moments that had made that life worth living. He had also seen how suddenly everything was taken away.
"Then what did you do?"
The older Leon gave a faint smile. "Nothing meaningful. I kept moving forward. There was anger left in me, and I had nowhere else to put it."
"But you knew they wouldn’t come back?"
"I knew."
Leon looked up at him. "Weren’t there people who hadn’t hurt your family?"
The question made the older Leon go quiet again. "There were."
"Then why..." Leon stopped, unable to finish what he wanted to ask. He wasn’t sure how to put it into words.
The older Leon understood his view as he had seen what happened, but he hadn’t yet felt the loss and pain that had driven him there.
"By then, I was no longer thinking clearly about who deserved what," he continued after a while.
"I had lost the people who mattered most to me, and everyone connected to those responsible became part of the same enemy in my eyes."
He didn’t try to soften the admission or offer an excuse.
Leon listened without interrupting. He had already seen the older Leon’s anger, but hearing him speak about it felt different.
"Do you regret it?" Leon asked.
"There are things I regret," the older Leon replied. "But regret doesn’t change what happened either."
He looked back at the child. "I can’t tell you that I would make every choice differently if I could return to that time. I don’t know what I would have done. All I know is that I can’t take any of it back."
Leon seemed to consider that answer for a while. "Then I don’t want to become like that."
The older Leon studied him. There was no amusement in his expression now.
"Then remember what you’ve seen. Not just what I did, but what brought me there and what remained after it was over."
He paused. "But don’t spend your life being afraid of becoming someone you haven’t even grown into. You have choices that I didn’t make, and you will face things I never did."
Leon gave a small nod. He still looked uncertain, but the answer seemed to have eased something within him.
After a moment, another thought came to him. "What about my family here?"
The older Leon’s expression softened.
"What about them?"
"Will I still remember them when the other memories come back?"
"Of course."
Leon looked at him, waiting for a clearer answer.
"Those memories won’t erase the life you’re living now," the man continued. "Your family, the people you’ve come to know, everything you’ve experienced in this life, it all belongs to you. Remembering the past won’t make any of your present any less real."
Leon lowered his eyes again. He had not thought about it that way. Until now, the idea of recovering another life had seemed like something that might take the place of his own.
"Good," he murmured.
The older Leon gave a quiet chuckle. "You seem more concerned about that than anything else I’ve told you."
Leon glanced at him. "Why wouldn’t I be?"
"Fair enough."
For the first time since their conversation began, the tension between them eased slightly. The older Leon looked at the child for a moment, his expression carrying a trace of sadness.
"You’ve still got a lot of growing to do," he said. "Don’t let everything you’ve seen make you forget that."
Leon didn’t answer. He was still trying to understand how the stranger before him could be both someone he had never met and someone whose life belonged to him.
After a while, the older Leon spoke again. "I think that’s enough for now."
Leon looked up. "Are we finished?"
"For the moment."
"But I still have questions."
"I know." A faint smile returned to the man’s face. "You can keep asking them as you grow. You don’t need all the answers today."
Leon hesitated before asking, "Will I remember this conversation?"
"Yes. Even if the details become unclear, what matters will remain."
The man let the answer settle before continuing. "There’s one thing left. Do you remember what I told you about the emotions tied to those memories?"
Leon nodded slowly. "They’ll return after this?"
"They will. And when they do, don’t mistake them for something happening to someone else. Those feelings belonged to us. They’re part of you, too."
Leon looked uneasy, but he didn’t turn away. The older Leon watched him for a final moment.
"Whatever you feel, let it come. You don’t have to fight it."
The empty space around them slowly began to change. Leon noticed the place itself was shifting. He looked at the older Leon, wanting to ask one more question, but the words failed to come.
The man offered him a faint smile.
"Take care of this life, Leon." Before he could answer, the emotions tied to that part of his life began to wash over him.