not me seeing this ask, saying ‘I’ll answer it tomorrow,’ and then forgetting this thing even existed for… apparently 15 days

but YES. yes I do. they’re one of the aspects of PH that’s like, harder for me to talk about, because MOST of my meta is me laying groundwork to extrapolate from or write fic about, and xai and oscar’s dynamic is interesting and meaningful but not in a way where I feel like I have anything to add to it—discussing them would just feel like, repeating an aspect of the text without further analysis/purpose, which isn’t all that fun

BUT that does not mean I do not love them and their parallel—they’re such a small part of the story and yet, such a significant one. It’s that fundamental mirroring between them both as brothers and Oz’s father figures, and the way their differences were really only ever shaped by one life-changing choice. Both of them lost their wives and by extension what they believed to be their family, but Oscar looked at what he had left and chose to love those things instead, while Xai lost himself to bitterness and vengeance, resenting a child for taking away the life he was supposed to have and alienating even the blood family he DID still care for in the process. Oscar was happy because he chose to be happy; Xai wasn’t, because he didn’t. There was no meaningful difference in their circumstances, only in their responses.

And that, that’s why Xai can’t stand the fact that Oscar died smiling. He’d spent the last 25 years deriding his brother for softness and cowardice and foolishness, but when it came down to it, Oscar had been happy, right up to his dying moment, and Xai couldn’t stand that, because it proved to him that he’d made the wrong decision all those years back and, in doing so, wasted his life. It was never Oz that stole a life from him, only himself.