wipesfaith | ( appointments )

I know. It was a terrible bloodbath and a lot of things were done.

[She can still remember her knife cutting repeatedly into a cultist, skin giving away to metal. Erwin asking questions, his own uniform splattered with blood. That he's gone now makes it worse in some ways. No one to vent to, to resolve things with. She's the only one left with the memories of all she did and the one who has to live with it. There's a lot everyone has to live with now.]

It's why I want to talk.

I don't know what's left to say about it. It happened and none of us can take it back.

[The dead don't come back. Or they're not supposed to, but here the laws of reality are bent - life can be stuffed back into the body it left behind, and time is allowed to fold back on itself. But that's something only the Malnosso know how to do, right? The blood on his hands, then, is final.]

[The dead can come back - she's proof of that - but there's still a large population that will never live again. Never see their home, their loved ones, never exist again.

And if he has nothing left to say, then she'll ask a question.]

Do you hate me for everything I did out there?

[The question itself sounds so juvenile. Even if he does hate her, there's no changing that. He wouldn't be the first, probably not the last, it's the price to pay being morally grey. But she needs to know if only to force Jean to confront his thoughts and feelings and for some peace of mind for herself.]

[Hate is a sharp word. It's easy to hate circumstances, ideologies, behaviors, but harder to hate the sum of a person, when you have seen them reflected in a multitude of lights.]

I don't know. I hate what you did, but you weren't wrong. Even if I argued with you back then, I can't say you were definitely wrong. I don't know if you were right either. But we needed to stop them, and we needed to survive.

[He wants to survive, more than anything. The toll that is inherent to surviving is steeper than he planned - dying means giving everything up, but living is not without its sacrifices. Sometimes it comes down to a choice you don't want to make, me or them.]

You did what you needed to do. So did I.

But you're still avoiding me.

[Which is the crux of the problem. There's something else Jean doesn't want to talk about, doesn't want to confront, because otherwise why avoid her?]

[Because they did what they needed to do, but it wasn't okay. It still isn't okay.]

I hate the things I did too. [He's afraid of what he is capable of when cornered into it, to the point where maybe he had started avoiding Ginia because he wanted to think that she stood more in the wrong than him. Because he didn't want to think they could be the same. That sort of childish self-righteousness is a sham, though.]

Our approaches might have been different, but taking a life is taking a life. What's the saying? It's like comparing the king's shit to dog shit. It's still shit, no matter how you dissect it.

I just didn't want to acknowledge that.

Edited 2014-07-18 05:19 (UTC)

[And there it is. For as skewed as Ginia's morals are, and she knows they're skewed, she knows he's right. No matter how many serial killers or human traffickers or rapists she killed back in her world, there was still very little separating her from them. Those who fought monsters always ran the risk of turning into one.]

It may surprise you to know I don't disagree. Even if it was us or them, every life lost was one lost. I don't doubt the cultists have their own families, people to mourn them.

But they went into battle knowing there would be deaths, hell, maybe it's even an honor to die in combat. The people they sacrificed, they were dragged out of their homes and murdered. Adults, child, young, old, it didn't matter, all of them were killed. They will never see their homes, their families, their friends, they don't exist anymore. So I can't feel that much guilt over the cultists dying.

[Still an excuse. Still some attempt at justifying things. Right or wrong, good or bad, as if the world was black and white. It wasn't. It was various shades of grey and different perspectives.]

I'm not a good person, Jean. I learned that long ago. But I will dirty my hands to keep good people safe.

[A pause, almost uncomfortably long before Ginia writes again.]

I suppose Erwin and I have that in common.

Edited 2014-07-19 04:24 (UTC)

I know the cultists have a lot of blood on their hands. That doesn't make it easy to kill them, even if I know I have to. I told you, I wasn't trained to kill people. It never even occurred to me that I might have to someday.

[But he did. He met the challenge, blades out and arms shaking likes twigs in the wind, and it bothers him. It won't settle in the pit of his stomach, the pockets of his mind, where the battlefield still unfolds itself. He never thought of himself as naive before, but now he wonders if he's just been fooling himself about that too.]

I don't know if I'm a good person. I'm still a coward. I followed orders, and it's not like my hands are pristine either.

You're still a good person. You still have morals and good instincts. But I warned you once about following orders. I've seen war crimes committed in the names of following orders. Don't go down that route.

I told you before don't end up like me. Do you now understand why I said that?

[There's a pause in the delivery of his next message, as he picks apart her warning.]

You don't want me to become complacent with it. [Taking lives as easily as ripping a weed from the ground, as easy as breathing in and breathing out.]

Part of me wants it to get easier, because I know I'll have to keep doing it. But then part of me never wants it to stop being so hard to do.

That's one reason, yes.

Those who fight monsters always risk becoming monsters themselves. If it becomes too easy, then you stop seeing how valuable life is. But as a soldier, you can't be a liability either. [Know when to take the shot and when to hold.]

Another is one you begin letting your morals slide, you can go a long way before you realize how far you've fallen. You begin letting things slide when they shouldn't, give up a little bit more because it's no harder than last time.

It's a narrow line to walk, in other words. [His life has turned out to be a lot of things he never planned for. He doesn't know how long he can keep up this juggling act of his duty, his humanity, and his sanity, but he knows that he can't afford to rest.]

I don't think you're all bad. Yeah, you've done terrible things, and I didn't know what to think of that because you were always so helpful to me, and patient with me. But you don't make excuses for yourself.

And you do it for others. I mean, on the battlefield there's always some part of you that's doing it for yourself, just so you can stay alive, but you're also doing it for everyone who's fighting on your side, and for the people off of the battlefield.

Very narrow and it's easy to step off it without even noticing. [She certainly did a few times, though when your targets weren't people but faceless corporations or corrupt governments, it was easy to forget about all the innocent people caught up in the system.]

I'm a hunter, not a soldier, not a merc. That means everything I do is my decision alone. I serve no country, no one but myself. When I became a hunter it was on the personal promise I would do it to help people less fortunate, in need, or who couldn't protect themselves. Because in my world there were a lot of people who were willing to harm others for their own gain. Seemed so easy, so black and white. Obviously wasn't.

But I guess that idea stuck. Take care of others, protect others. [Pay back to karma somehow, make sacrifices as needed. In a situation where death wasn't quite permanent, laying her life down for another was too frightfully easy.]

I'm not trying to make excuses, but I am where I am now because of my choices and it's very difficult unlearning years of experience. I can't stand by and let others fight when I can take up arms, and I can't let people get hurt on my watch.

[Worlds apart and they walk different paths, but the paths are parallel - while they may never meet or cross, they reflect each other, however faintly. He knows what it's like to sign up expecting one thing, and to be thrust into something else entirely, something you never asked for.]

Do you regret it? Becoming a hunter.

[It's a question Ginia's poured over countless times. As Hatter always said, it was never too late to walk away, but no one ever talked about life after. The lifestyle was almost like a drug, full of promises of adventures and wealth and making changes in a fucked up world. It was easy to get hooked and harder to walk away. Maybe a better person would have more success. Maybe a person with more to life for.

And the base truth was she would have never become a hunter if her parents hadn't been murdered. Never become a hunter if she didn't know Erika.

Yet if she hadn't been a hunter, what would have happened to all the lives she did change for the better? Was it selfish to think she made a difference because she was there? Or would someone else have simply taken her spot and done the same?]

I don't know. There's a lot I regret, a lot I wish was different, but there are things I'm proud of too.

The very last thing I did before coming here was save the lives of two people I care about. I think if the sum of my life was to prepare me for that moment, I could live with it.

Edited 2014-09-09 23:24 (UTC)

For you, it's all worth it as long as you make a difference in the end, is what you're saying.

[It's impossible to stumble through life without mistakes, without regrets, but he wonders about the threshold beyond which the things you regret outweigh the things you're proud of. The things you can still stand firmly on. He doesn't want to make it there.]

Maybe. I don't know if all the good you do can outweigh the bad things. Maybe some things can't be forgotten or forgiven. Maybe I'm lying to myself in the end.

I guess I'm trying to pay back to karma while I'm here. Try to make things better for people while I still have time left.

I don't know if you can add it all together. Doing a good thing won't undo a bad thing, but I think the reverse must be true too, if that makes any sense. But regardless of your reasons, if you're helping people that doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

[While she still has time left. That phrasing catches him, and even though he can't help but think he already knows what it means, he asks anyway.]

What happens when you leave here? You'll run out of time?

[There's a long pause, probably long enough for him to confirm what he's thinking. A few people in the village know she's dead, but all of them were dead themselves. Ginia's not sure how she feels telling Jean, a teeanger, making him carry that burden, but she's also promised herself not to lie to him either.]

I'll be dead again.

[He anticipated the blow, but his stomach crumples up all the same. He wonders if it will ever stop hitting him so hard. People die. That's a fact. He's seen and felt scores of lives pass. He's shouldered the weight of the dead for a while now; that's not something he can ever take a break from, ever lay to rest, no matter where he is.]

I was kinda hoping you meant something else.

I wish I did too.

[If only for his sake. Ginia accepted she was dead in her world; all of her choices had led to a moment where she knew she wouldn't walk out alive. Didn't plan on walking out alive.]

[But it is what it is. She's here on borrowed time, and it could run out through her fingers at any minute. He feels the weight of every grain.]

Marco knew, right?

He knew. Shortly after arriving in Luceti, I made a post on the network asking about how people were handling being dead in their world and alive here. Marco and I talked though we didn't realize it until later.

[Seven months and two days. Ginia's accurately aware of how much time has passed since her death, of how quickly the hourglass could run out. Seven months and two days and if she leaves, it won't have mattered except to the people who knew her.]

Levi and Erwin knew too.

[No response comes for a while. He doesn't know what to write. He's useless with words of comfort, and he suspects she doesn't want them anyway.]

Guess I'd rather know the truth than be ignorant.

[But he hates how small and cold that sounds.]

I'm sorry.

Don't be. I made my choices. There were worse alternatives.

[With the knowledge and foresight she has now, Ginia knows she was planned into a corner. All the same, she still can't regret the end result. Two lives for two lives, zero sum, but Jack and Natalie were better people overall. Better they lived.

Ginia pauses, pen hovering over the page.]

Do you want to know how I died?

[It's incredibly morbid to ask, to know, and she realizes it may be more than Jean ever wants to know. At the same time, Ginia also knows no one else really knows the full story. Not even Evan had all of the details.]

[July 9th, Written]

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