Rathma had very nearly burned his father's journals several times over.
Rage, frustration, sadness - they were all very powerful emotions, ones everyone struggled with. Even Rathma. He had stood, fires lit, and awful ache in his heart, ready to drop the wretched old things into their destruction.
Something always held him back though. Maybe it was the information the tomes held. Maybe it was that destroying knowledge went against everything Rathma stood for. Maybe, just maybe, they represented some of the few good memories he had of Inarius. Maybe that was why he wanted to be rid of them so badly some days, and read them over and over on others.
It was easier to pretend that the angel had never loved him, and that there had been no bond between them. Easier to say, if asked, that Inarius had simply detested him from the moment of his birth. Easier than admitting that he had once basked in the love and affection of both his parents, before losing both. So, so much easier to pretend that, in the quiet-empty-lonely hours of the night, he didn't think of the days so long ago when they had been a family. (He was too old for these things. Or so he told himself.)
Linarian had been beloved. Rathma was but a misbegotten wretch.
On rare occasions, the ancient caught himself wondering what became of Inarius. Angels were stubborn, adaptable creatures, and he was more so than most. Odds were, he was still alive somewhere. Rathma didn't particularly like to think about it though.
The longer he stayed around Tyrael, however, the more he thought about it. Tyrael was awfully like his brother. They sounded alike, they acted alike, hell he even seemed to think like Inarius sometimes.
The idea had come to Rathma seemingly at random one evening. Tyrael never asked where he went for those extended periods of time, which was a good thing, because Rathma wouldn't have told him where he made his (as Kalan liked to call it) lair. It was as ancient as he was and in disrepair, but it was home. It hadn't been home since the founding of the Necropolis, but he wasn't quite sure when he'd be ready to face that mess.
Cleaning out his old subterranean domain was by far preferred. It gave him something to do with himself, and provided plentiful peace and quiet when the bustle of Westmarch became too much. Sure, the place was a mess and a half, but really it was a simple matter of relocating all the dust and dirt that had settled over everything, and reinforcing the structure where it had begun to collapse. After that, all the old den really needed was a rug or two and probably some new furniture. Maybe.
(Rathma didn't much care about the furniture, but Kalan had stressed that such things were a requirement for any home. The man had more experience with society than he did, so Rathma had to assume he was right.)
Making his lair habitable again gave him something to focus on that wasn't...everything else. The longer Rathma stayed in Westmarch, the more painfully aware that this was not the Sanctuary he remembered.
As it happened, once he'd squeezed into his old-old study, most of his books were still intact. The study was the most well-protected part of the structure after all - knowledge was a precious thing. He'd spent a long afternoon sorting through the various tomes and scrolls and texts. A mountain of dust and several cleared shelves later, and he'd found them.
Three dusty journals. There wasn't anything particularly extraordinary about them. They were bound in soft leather, and the pages were still thick and pulpy, as all paper had been back when they were written. No, nothing extraordinary about them at all, save for who had written them.
Inarius had apparently found human society fascinating enough to write about it. By a stroke of luck, Rathma had found his father's books a short time after they'd been abandoned by the angel. He'd kept them here in the study ever since.
Not even Kalan had ever been permitted to read them - he hadn't even known about their existence. Rathma wasn't entirely sure why he'd kept the books so secret, but he'd stuck to it.
Except now. He and Tyrael seemed to have come to terms with one-another. Or rather, Rathma had come to terms with Tyrael's existence, and Tyrael hadn't pushed him. Gift-giving was the typical way Nephalem said thank you for something, and so Rathma had done as his own culture bade. He hadn't really thought of his father's books until he'd come across them, but he knew how Tyrael was feeling about humanity right now.
And he knew that the former angel was starting to feel really quite isolated. Lonely.
And those books...weren't doing any good sitting in a dusty old cavern, where he wouldn't read them. Where he honestly didn't want them.
The decision had been surprisingly painless. Shuffle the books into a bag, continue tidying the old study (he had a half-dozen other bookshelves to go through, who knew what else he'd find.) Dump the tomes on Tyrael the first chance he got. The former angel would probably get far more use out of them than Rathma ever would.
Becoming something one wasn't was not an easy journey by any means. He had to grudgingly admit that Tyrael had been doing an admirable job thus far, but even so. Inarius's situation had not been the same, but it had been similar. Close enough.
Tyrael's delight when he finally figured out just what Rathma had given him was...pleasant. It was nice bringing some happiness into the world.