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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.]

Don't talk like it doesn't matter.

[It matters when somebody dies. He can't articulate it right - the weight of living, of having been in the world and known people, of being ripped out of that - but it matters.

He hesitates. He doesn't like to think about death, even if he's practically taken it up as a hobby because he can't help it. Doesn't like to hear about it more than he has to.

Maybe she needs to get it off her chest, out of her throat. It's with reluctance that he finally writes:]

What happened?

[There's another pause. There's the long story, which covers too much of her life but also shows how everything winds together, and there's the short, brief version. For brevity, and because there's still too much Ginia's not ready to dive into, she opts for the short version.

Her writing still comes in slow, measured, words carefully chosen and memories placed on paper.]

There was a medical program created to treat patients of trauma. The original intent was to find a way to suppress or block memories. It took several years but they finally found a way. From there, their research changed; if they could remove and block memories, couldn't they add in fake memories too?

A soldier who could go in for a mission and have their memories removed after. A spy who didn't even realize they were a spy. The possibilities were endless.

As it turned out, the treatment worked best on kids and teens. Brains still developing, malleable. Who would suspect a kid too?

I met one such subject. Her and her handler. Her handler had found out too much and was trying to help her escape, get her away from the program, find a place she could have a regular life in. He was an old friend of mine and came to me for help.

I accepted. Sheltered them for a few months until the government tracked us down, then went on the run with them. Always a step ahead, but never enough.

Finally I put my resources into getting them out of the country. Fake IDs, booked passage with people who wouldn't ask questions or share answers, got them in the hands of friends.

As their plane was leaving I stayed behind to buy them time.

[Stayed behind, planned to stay behind. Buy time and maybe end things for herself. The government wanted Natalie as much as they wanted her. Natalie was a subject, but Ginia was a loose end, one that needed to be tied up or severed.

Got that wish, didn't they.]

And here I am now.

[He reads over her words slowly, half of him wanting to stop and half of him masochistically wanting to know. Subtracting memories, adding fake ones - it sounds too incredible to be true, but isn't that what the Malnosso do too? His gut twists as he tries to imagine a world where people are manipulated not just for the sake of gathering experimental data, or whatever the hell the Malnosso do, but for the sake of forcing them to kill or infiltrate or any number of terrible things.

And he falls into the age bracket that can be shaped most easily. As if the thought wasn't unsettling enough.

And here I am now.

She doesn't need to explain more. He's perfectly capable of filling in the blanks himself, and grateful she didn't flay this open in more detail. In the end, he doesn't really know what to say.]

What a way to go out.

[In with fury, out with a bang. Ginia sets down her pen and looks over the words she wrote. A brief, sanitized story of the lat few months of her life, but it was her story. Even with reassurance from Evan Whitecap was done, it didn't take back all the people who died to keep it a secret or serving the project, the hundreds of lives ruined by the project, all the kids and teens forever changed.

Two lives to save two lives. All the people she killed on the tarmac (they were only doing their jobs) to save all the lives ruined by Whitecap. Lives lost to save lives. Always a zero sum game.]

Your life, your choices. Don't regret things like I have. You're too young for that.

I try not to.

[He has wondered more than once where he would be if the gate to Trost hadn't been kicked in that day, just as he had secured himself a spot in the Military Police. He has wondered just as many times what he would be doing if he had never enlisted to begin with. He doesn't feel as young as she says he is.]

I don't regret picking the Survey Corps over the Military Police. I thought I would, but to be honest I don't think I could live with myself. [A long pause as he debates if he should write this next thought or not.] Sometimes I wish I'd never signed up for the military at all. Everything would just be easier that way, you know?

[He's young comparatively, but he's a soldier too. There's age that comes with that and given the average lifespan of his world, he's pretty much an adult. However if things went well he'd have years ahead of him too. Enough years for things to pile up, enough years for regrets to sink in, or good memories to be had. Some die too young, some grow up too fast. Life is hard like that.]

I understand that. [Given how worlds work, there was probably a version of him out there that wasn't in the military. Maybe he was happier. Maybe he wasn't. Both were valid.]

My family owned a bar. I always thought I'd eventually inherit it or go off and start my own.

Definitely sounds simpler.

My dad's a carpenter. I thought that was too boring, and I didn't want to be working hard the rest of my life. Thought I was meant for better things than that. [As if someone so recklessly self-absorbed deserved to stow himself away in a life of indulgence. It took him too long to see that there's no room for that sort of life in a world ready to collapse on itself.]

It doesn't really sound all that bad now.

No one really wants to work hard. It's the big dream in my world; work enough to have a good living, retire rich and happy. Few get there since life throws curveballs at you.

[All she ever wanted to do was have a bar, travel the world, and maybe get married and have a family. Two out of three happened in a roundabout way, and even the third had been close until she broke off the engagement.]

We're all the products of our lives and our world. And for every world, there's a thousand versions of it. There's a version of me that died as a Squad Leader in your world just as there's a version of me that never became a hunter in my world.

It's still hard to understand all these other worlds that are out there somewhere. [Until he came here, he never even knew how wide one world could be, or that any other world could even exist - to think that hundreds of versions of the same world could exist, splintered apart by the smallest and biggest differences, is mind-boggling.] If there's a world where I'm in the Military Police, or one where Marco is still alive, then who knows what other versions could be out there.

I don't know how important all that is though. Those are choices we didn't make, or chances we never got. I don't want to get hung up on that.

It's a lot of wishful thinking and speculation in the end. Happier in some worlds, worse off in others, but the only world and life that really matters is your own.

[They've certainly trailed off from the original subject, but it's all been good. Different paths to get to the same point.]

I'm glad we could talk, but what are you going to do now, Jean? And what do you want me to do? If you want me to leave you alone, I will, but you have to say that instead of avoiding me.

[He's already wasted enough time wondering what he could have done better. If he could have given better orders. If he could have complained less. If he could have saved Marco, had they been assigned to the same squad. If he could have done more in Zompania, if he could have been braver. In the end, he can't go back and change anything; there's only redemption to look for the next time.]

You don't have to leave me alone. Avoiding you like that, it was stupid of me. It's not that I hated you, I just wasn't comfortable with a lot of what happened. I wasn't comfortable with my role in it either. I think it's because I respected you that I didn't know what else to do.

[But he needs to confront what had happened, what she had done, what he had done.]

Sorry.

Apology accepted.

[Because even if she understood why he was avoiding her, a conversation needed to be had at some point or another before the silent treatment went on.]

And I owe you one as well. I didn't give you a lot of choice in things and I should have considered your feelings more. I did things I shouldn't have done out there. Torturing cultists for information, that was unnecessary. We shouldn't have gotten you involved and I am deeply sorry we did.

You couldn't have known that when you started. There's nothing we can do about it now.

Yeah, apology accepted. [Because that's all they can do. Despite everything, she's still someone he holds respect for, someone who has supported him in the past and can continue to support him in the future. After a pause, he'll scratch out below:]

Would you mind giving me more lessons in sign language?

Don't mind at all. We'll have to see what you still remember.

I remember plenty. I'm an honors student, you know.

Of course.

See you around, Jean.

[July 9th, Written]

wipesfaith - 2014-09-23 19:58 (UTC) - Expand