I lost my partner through the tesseract a few months ago. He'd been here for years, even longer than I had. And I know what he'll go back to, if the tesseract refugees are indeed returned to their homes. He died in the war. And I think, after what he saw, after the way it changed him, death was what he wanted there. I suppose you could say he chose it, too.
But I... I don't think he regret being here. I know things were difficult for him. Especially at first. But we built a nice life here. He got to see his mother again, as a young woman. He made friends, he wrote his poetry, and for a while, he built a life free from some of the burdens of his old one. And the fact that it's-- over, that doesn't make it worthless. A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts.
None of us ever really knows how long that will be, anyway. I didn't expect to die when I did. Some uncertainty is... inevitable in any life.
I still think of this opportunity as a gift. A gift we can't control and didn't ask for. A gift with terms and conditions we neither know nor understand. But a gift nonetheless. We can't right our wrongs or undo suffering we've caused, but we can atone as best we can. We can look at our mistakes and learn what we can from them. We can build a life on the ashes of our old one.