It's funny, in a sad sort of way. I raised them. I spent eighteen years with them. Some parents would be lying to themselves if they thought that they had taught their children everything they know. But I really did. I taught them everything. There was no one else to do it. There was not even a society to help me, to teach them the ways of this world. This... unfamiliar world.
I have memories. I remember things they'll never know. The cool scent of dawn on a faraway shore, the priveledge of waking up with the morning sunlight on your face, the responsibility of... shouldering the world? I suppose I did that. Though, in honesty, I suppose I do it now, as well. I shoulder their world, and I have for eighteen years. It's funny how the world seems to get so much smaller when you see so little of it. I've been in this sewer for the better part of two decades. Nothing exists beyond it.
And yet I remember. Memories. The pain of betrayal. The fear of failure on a grand scale. I suppose I can't put that past them. They understand failure. They understand that a poorly-executed attack may cost them their lives. But I don't think that they will ever truly understand failure. They are stronger than I was. They might taste defeat - everyone will at some point - but they have each other. God help them if they betray that. It's all they have.
I had that. So long ago, I had that. Friendship. Loyalty. Love? Perhaps. It might have been love that I felt at one point. But that seems... so far away now. It truly was a different life. But what am I if not a product of my experiences? Past lives still haunt my dreams. Those memories still flicker to life in the eyes of my sons. I watch them make my mistakes, and I catch them when they fall. And yet they don't know me.
I suppose it's my fault. I won't let them know me. I... can't? No, I could. I won't. I'm... not that masochistic. I would rather die alone than to live in constant remembrence of what I once was. In fact... I feel... I have died. And I am only a ghost.
-Hamato Yoshi