With Oscar facing him, he did not realize what the boy had strapped to his back until that hesitating moment when Oscar reached behind him. For a moment, he feels unaccountably off-balance. When he had awoken to find it missing, he had thought— he isn't sure.

He does not know what it means, that Oscar has it. That Oscar is here at all, and for weeks, evidently.

"... Ah."

The silence hangs heavy for a very long moment. Then Ozpin reaches out to accept his cane. The weight of it is an immediate comfort, from the moment his fingers brush the intricate patterning, more familiar to him than any part of his own body. He extends the shaft and sets it to the ground, and it feels like regaining a lost limb.

"I suppose it is."

But the hesitation betrays him. Of the two of them— but that is the trouble, isn't it. Are they two? Can two souls be neatly cleaved apart, once the process has begun? Has Oscar been saved from his fate, here, turned free?

What does it mean that The Long Memory arrived with him?