Paul looked at his sister for what he knew would be the last time, wanting so desperately to tell her the truth, knowing that he would not. To know the future is to be trapped by it. Not for the first time, the Emperor of the Known Universe asked himself if that were true. Maybe everything, always, was predestined, and chance and choice were both always mere illusions, and he had simply seen through the veil. If he did not know already that he would not have the courage to tell her, might he have had the courage? Would he still have despaired? It did not matter: he could see the future, and he knew he would not tell her.

How could he? It was too horrible, too shameful. How could explain what it had been like for him and their mother, fleeing alone into the deep desert after the murder of his father and the ruin of their house? Leaning on each other under the hammering heat of the Arrakis sun. Shivering, clinging together for warmth in the bitter cold of the desert night, wondering if they would freeze to death in each other's arms before dawn. Never knowing if a Harkonnen ornithopter might appear overhead at any moment and kill them both, or if a sandworm might burst from underneath and swallow them whole in an instant. And, above all, turning to each other for comfort in their shared grief.

He wants desperately to tell her, to explain to her. He knows that after today they will never see each other again, and he wants so much for there to be honesty between them, even if only at the end. To finally be able to tell her who she really is, who they really are to each other. To tell her now, when they are together for the last time and she is still herself, how he feels. It is a selfish desire, he tells himself, to justify not doing so. No one would understand, least of all Alia herself, and the truth would only drive her sooner into the madness and Abomination that Paul could already see awaiting her. He might have wept, knowing what was coming and helpless to change it. Instead, he shut his eyes and turned away, for the last time, from his daughter.