On the willows there, we hung up our lyres

He imagines his life if he had never come here, and spent the next few years questing with Percival instead -- becoming more and more ashamed of his love and desire, with no other friends except the man he most wanted and most hated wanting. If God had continued to speak to him, guiding him towards his duty and warning him away from his sin, until at last he found the Grail and then was forced to live, filled with despair -- if, while he lived, Percival died. He imagines the world without Percival's light in it, without Percival's salt, and nothing else, either. He misses Percival here, and he thinks he'll always miss him, but he has Claudius and Magnus and Shen Yuan and Lan Wangji; he has other people who make the world bright and worth living in. If it had always only been Percival, and then Percival were gone-- He can understand how he became someone whose only thought and hope was death.

"I miss him," he says truthfully. "He was the first person who chose me."