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Oz knew that Jack’s fingerprints on his soul would never really go away. It was clear in his immediate reaction to any and all possible threats to Alice—it was clear in his appearance, his eyes and hair that weren’t his and yet that he pictured when he thought about himself far more than he thought about red eyes and black fur—it was clear in the recurring nightmares he’d had as a child, the ones he hadn’t known were of the Tragedy of Sablier until finally, finally, far too late, he remembered who— what he really was.
Oz the stuffed doll had been good. All he had known was Lacie and Alice’s love, and he had loved them back in turn, simply and easily. He had assumed everyone was good, and trusted that things would remain so. He had—and this was utterly ridiculous—believed in promises.
But Gilbert believed in promises, and Gil’d been through far worse than anything Oz ever had, and Alice believed in promises, and she’d killed herself in front of his eyes, and Lacie had believed in promises, and she’d lived her entire life walking to her death, eyes open and gaze unrelenting.
And Oz, the toy, who had never been real and never worth anything at all, didn’t. Couldn’t. He couldn’t understand it at all. Of course, there was Gil’s absolute, but that existed in the nebulous realm of Gilbert, whom Oz always had made exceptions for and who was all that was good in the world wrapped up into one person—which was probably also why he was an idiot.
But who was Oz to say? He wasn’t even a person. He wasn’t real, and he wasn’t good, even though he now remembered that he had been once, and, though Gil had thrown everything away to stay with him, and he’d called Alice back after they temporarily banished Jack, he had no idea where to go from here.
Something like him didn’t deserve to live. Something as corrupted, as rotted, as destroyed and destructive as him ought to be crushed until it couldn’t harm anyone more, but Reim had made several good points about turning himself in, and Oz didn’t know what to do anymore. They needed to stop Jack—they needed to restore the Chains—they needed to free Alyss—
“The Core of the Abyss,” said Gilbert, “could do it.”
“Would she, though?” asked Alice. “She—she won’t free Alyss.”
Oz swallowed. “What if we could make her?” he said. “If—we convinced her to fix the Chains, and then after that, we could use my power to…to fulfill Break’s vow to her.”
Alyss had been just as stained by Jack as Oz was. Judging by what she’d made Break promise, and what she’d tried to do a century prior, and literally all of their interactions after Oz had gotten out of the Abyss with Alice, this was not a plan she would protest.
“Absolutely not,” said Alice.
“I don’t like it either,” said Oz, “and it should be our last resort, if all else fails. But…”
“How would it work?” asked Reim.
“She would make a contract with me, after my contract with Jack runs out and we’re both brought to her,” said Oz. “After that, she would order me to attack her. I would do so, which would…either kill both of us instantly or separate her from the Core, at which point we’d all be home free…other than the dissolving Chains thing.”
“Unless we manage to convince the Core to fix those even with Alyss’s destruction,” said Reim.
“We aren’t killing my sister!” said Alice. “Or Oz!”
“Definitely not,” Gilbert agreed, though Oz couldn’t shake the feeling that he was agreeing more to the second part of that statement than the first. And it wasn’t that Oz wanted to die—he truly didn’t, not anymore, he wanted to live with Gil and Alice and Alyss and everyone, and he felt like a suicide now would be spitting in the face of Elliot’s sacrifice—but it was, currently, the best option.
And what Jack had left him with nobody could fix. He was tarnished, dirtied, imperfect. Broken. Worthless.
Despite it all, he wanted to live—but if this was their only option, if there was no other way out of this, at least there was some small chance that the destruction Jack had wrought on his soul would fade with his life.