I’ve been rolling this one around in my head for a while.
There's a version of this story where love was never the starting point. Where it took Feofan a very, very long time to fall for Zandik, and arguably it only happened once Feo had grown out from under Zandik's shadow entirely.
The relationship begins, as survival. Zandik had ill intentions for Feofan, and Feo simply talked his way out of them. He was useful, he was clever, and he made himself impossible to discard. Somewhere in that ongoing negotiation, Zandik became intrigued; and intrigue, between two people like this, curdles slowly into partnership, and partnership into companionship. I’m not going to say love. I’d like to believe they did love each other, but Feo’s reactions regarding Zandik’s treatment after he died give me pause. While Feo could have been upset over the death, it doesn’t seem like he was angry over the treatment of the body. He may not have tried because it’s par for the course at this point, but I don’t think that’s the case. Omega seems to paint a more romantic version of the events, indicating Omega believes Feo is far more infatuated with him than he actually is.
This is why Feofan paints such a different picture of what he had with Dottore versus what could have been with Zandik. They are not the same man, and Feo knows it. That fact adds to the tension in their relationship. It’s what keeps Omega from ever fully being able to claim Feo as his. Omega isn’t the original specimen. Try as he might, he is bound by the limitation given to him by his creator. Omega will never be what Zandik was by the end of his life. While time gives Omega a longer relationship with Feo, it does not erase a life built over 50 years together. It does not alter that Feo’s heart will always remain with Zandik.
My personal theory is that Omega has to work the hardest for Feo's affection, and the irony is exquisite. Omega is frozen at the version of the man Feo met before the relationship truly formed. But Feo himself is no longer who he was. He has matured across a long life, to the point where even the elixir of immortality holds little sway over him anymore. The desperate dependence that might once have leveled the field is gone. As Pantalone, Feo holds most of the cards. He is Dottore's primary source of funding. Omega can threaten to withhold the elixir, but Omega is intelligent enough to know that destroying Pantalone destroys himself. So they meet on more even ground than Zandik and Feo ever did, which is precisely the problem. Omega wants to be regarded by Feo as the original was, but he has none of the original's leverage and all of his arrogance.
What Omega does hold over the other segments is memory. He is the first to carry a piece of Feofan, and he embodies Zandik's original feelings for him. I personally believe Feo prefers the older segments, but that doesn’t stop Omega from clinging to being the keeper of the beginning. When Omega says Feo chose to work with him, it can be read as a reference to that original partnership; but in this theory, it's also an admission. After the deletion of the other segments, there was tension between Omega and Feo. While Feo ultimately respected Omega’s choice in the deletion, Omega still had to work to bring Feo back onto his side. The choice he references isn't only the ancient one; it's the reconciliation he had to earn.
Zandik's death was made bearable only because the segments survived. 35, 45, and 65 each carried a thread of the life Feo built with him; which made the grieving both easier and far more complicated. In the immediate wake of the loss, Feo may have been closest to 65, the version nearest to the original Zandik. But as the rawest grief mellowed, he drifted toward 45; the one who stayed home in Snezhnaya with 8 while the others went out on Fatui business. The three of them, Feo, 45, and 8, could have settled into an odd, strange little family. And Omega, out in the field or simply on the outside of it, was jealous of exactly that warmth.
Interestingly, I think “Boattore” may have been 45. Which if true, means 8 may have been with Pantalone at the time of the deletion. The betrayal gets that much deeper if Feo comes home to find 8 destroyed, only to later learn of Omega’s actions in a staff meeting.
The destruction of the other segments isn't just a tactical loss, it's the erasure of that built life. With only 35 remaining, what survives is the beginning and nothing else: the meeting, the early infatuation, before any of the tenderness was earned. Everything that came after is gone.
This is where it turns out to be the most tragic. In Irminsul, what's briefly reforged isn't Omega at all. It's Zandik, made whole again, the soul reassembled for a moment before the fire takes it. The scene becomes a rectification of the past: Feo is finally given the chance to say goodbye to the partner and lover he never got to properly mourn, only to lose that whole version of him for a second time, this time for good. The tragedy is doubled, because even if Feo opts to die, which is likely; there is a strong possibility he will never be reunited with Zandik. Unlike other souls, Zandik’s didn’t make it into the ley lines. His soul is destroyed, eliminating any possibility of Feo and Zandik being reunited in the afterlife or in the next life.
In terms of a final resurrection, Feo knows, even if he recreated Zandik from his own memories, it would not be the same man. That knowledge is exactly why he hesitates, why he insists that so long as the soul survives, there is no need to resurrect that which is gone. To rebuild from memory would be to make an Omega of his own: a beginning without the long middle, a likeness that remembers being loved without having lived through the experience of creating that life together.
While Feo could build a new life with his version of Zandik, it would be a short one. Even with all of Zandik’s surviving research, the resurrected version would have all of the information, with none of the capability. Meaning, the new segment will not be able to manufacture the elixir of immortality. In the end, Feo will do to the new segment what Zandik did to him. Feo will die. With that death, Feo will leave behind a false version of his lover, with only the scattered memories of life that was never the segment’s to begin with.
