[What love? How would you love someone you'd never met before?]

Yes. She was running for her life the very night I was born. She never told me that she had been fleeing the witch hunters, nor that I'd been adopted. I was raised ignorant up to the day the witch hunters found her again, led by a man who had my face.

[Ithaqua didn't mention that he had blood family for nothing, after all. He also took great care to mention that he was only one of two sons born that night earlier.

Then he leans forward, and takes Urianger's hand in his, as if Urianger is the one who needs comfort.]

I shall spare you the details of what happened to her, but just know that everything he did to her burned such horrors into her mind that she could no longer look upon me and see her own son. She could only see him. I believe she no longer knows who she is, much less that that she has a son.

Because I must care for her now, I require the mask to keep her calm.

[And... well. He has a terrible, cruel twin and he would rather not have to see the same face when he looks in the mirror.]