voidseeing | [Anonymous Voice/Written]

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[Anonymous Voice/Written]

[The events of a week and a half ago still hang heavy over Gai's mind, something that's unusual for him. He's had his body altered without his consent, even his mind during a few experiments before, but to have his memory messed with... it's far more disconcerting than even he wants to admit. Add in everything else that happened, and you've got one broody former terrorist leader who can't even take out his unhappiness in the Battle Dome due to that damn virus.

So he opts to express himself in another way that's familiar to him, one that doesn't require any physical exertion. Something tells him that he's not the only one feeling this way right now...

When the journal entry begins, the camera is covered, obscuring its owner. All there is is a song playing over the journals, letting the music and the lyrics speak for themselves.

But that isn't all. Once it finishes playing, a written message will appear in a neat and practiced hand.]

There is a universal constant among this world and every other. The world will always force a choice on those within it: either to sit quietly by and be selected out, or to adapt and change. Those are the only two paths that can be chosen.

Our opponents made a fatal mistake when they expected us to choose the former. They underestimated our desire to survive, and that proved to be their undoing. We rose to the challenge, and we survived. And we will keep on surviving, no matter what they may try to send at us. We won't roll over and play dead the way they expect us to.

Well done, Luceti. You should be proud.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not many people are fortunate enough to have the people they wronged forgive them in person. But even so, I don't think that's enough.

I forgave someone for something a few weeks ago, but I don't know if he honestly believed me. I think before he can accept what I said, he has to forgive himself. I can repeat it over and over, but it won't do anything.

Many people believe that they aren't capable of forgiving themselves until they're forgiven by the ones they've wronged. Others don't believe they deserve forgiveness at all, from themselves or from anyone else.

In the end, whether or not to accept that forgiveness is a decision only they can make.

But what if the people you want forgiveness from are dead? Then you would be chasing something impossible your entire life.

Then they may never be able to accept it for themselves.

And then what? What happens after that?

That I don't know.

[If he did, he would never have made this post in the first place.]

But there has to be something after that. Life goes on, it doesn't stop even if you can't talk to the person you wronged. You have to keep living regardless.

You keep living and attempt to right your wrongs in whatever way you can.

Even if it means your death.

No, that can't be right. How could anything be righted if you die?

[She's getting a little personal here.]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and a life for a life is the same thing.

The world isn't going to miss one sinner.

[Okay, she's very done now.]

[There's no response to that immediately. But a few minutes later there's a suspicious rattling at Gai's doorknob. Elizabeth is too angry for knocking, she's opening the door the way she knows how.]

[And clearly she's angry enough to make short work of it. Elizabeth pushes it open hard enough to let it slam against the opposite wall.]

[A part of him was expecting this response, or perhaps even something worse. But she needed to see this... she needed to see the real him and know the truth. There was something much worse than a gun in his heart, and she needed to know what it was.

So he just sits there quietly on the couch and waits for her to do whatever she feels is the proper response to the things he's been saying.]

[Elizabeth spots him on the couch, her mouth pressing into a hard line when she finds him. She turns and slams the door shut, keeping her back to Gai as she tries to contain her feelings.]

[She's always been awful at that, though.]

If I hadn't made that promise with you at the beach, I would have walked in here with a pistol to my head. The world wouldn't miss one sinner...

[Elizabeth turns sharply.] And then what would you have done?

You're no sinner.

[There's conviction in his voice as he says this. She has the innocence that had been stripped from him so long ago-- she still dislikes killing, even if she can look at it without cringing away.

He's the one who can put a bullet into someone's brain without a moment's hesitation. She isn't anything like him at all.]

Whatever you've done, it wouldn't even hold a candle to the things I've been responsible for.

Shut up, shut up you don't know half of what I've done! [First Daisy, then those scientists, Songbird and the Vox, all of New York...]

Tell me what part of driving a pair of scissors through someone's back doesn't make me a murderer? Tell me what part of watching her gasp and reach for me while I was covered in her blood doesn't make me responsible? [She holds her head between her hands, trying to calm down before tears start flickering around her. It's a losing battle.]

Tell me what part of lighting the entire city of New York on fire makes me better than you!

[There's the barest flicker of surprise in his grey eyes when she says this... yet he finds he can't blame her one bit. She'd been imprisoned in a tower for her entire life and had never even seen the outside world before Booker broke her out. Who wouldn't hold at least some sort of grudge for that? Who wouldn't want to repay at least a little of that pain?

Sometimes you just want to watch the world burn. Gai knows. He'd sent Shu to use the Kaleidoscope and watched in grim satisfaction as Guin's entire unit went up in smoke and flames.]

Did you enjoy it?

[Elizabeth steadies her breathing, manages to look Gai in the eye despite feeling suddenly exhausted and empty.]

...I haven't gotten there yet. I don't know.

[She folds her arms over her body, squeezes her elbows trying to get herself to talk again. These were the things she had never wanted to tell Gai, things that were too hard. Things that even she hasn't figured out yet.]

Comstock told Columbia that his prophecy came from an angel, from God. But it was science, all science. He saw what I did, what I do, and said... 'The Lamb shall sit the throne, and drown in flame the mountains of man.'

And Booker saw it. It happens, it already happened, it's happening right now. I take his throne, Comstock's throne, and do exactly what he tells me to do. I roll over and play dead.

You have more fight in you than I do, more spirit, goals that better other people. I... I'll give in in the end.

I die in the end.

[It's something he hadn't planned on telling her yet. He'd wanted to break it to her gently when he was sure she was ready to hear it, not like this. Not in the heat of an argument over who was the worse person of the two of them. But it's the only thing he can think of to retaliate with, to prove that he doesn't get a happy ending just for having more fight (she thinks) than she does.]

I accomplish my goal and die in the process. My stepfather's "evolution" was bested by a single boy with the ability to reach in and draw out peoples' hearts. All of that effort and years of research was rendered meaningless in less than ten minutes.

In the end, I wasn't the one who won the fight. It was Shu.

[At first, it feels as though she's been punched right in the stomach. She can't breathe, she can't process what he's telling her. But of course it had always been a possibility. Pepper had told her, from day one, that she could be dead in her world and alive here. Gai was dead, then... That's what he was talking about when he'd said that he would die to make up for his transgressions.]

[Seconds go by, Elizabeth's eyes are wide and she's silent. She starts shaking. A tear blows wide open with her at the center--and it's full of medkits. Dozens, maybe a hundred, all stacked together in piles and tucked into corners, towers of medical kits that reach the ceiling.]

Elizabeth...

[At once, his expression loses all of its coldness, and he's standing and moving towards her. When he sees that tear with the medkits, though, he stops in his tracks, realizing what they signify. She'd opened that tear with harpoons when she had been frightened at the beach; they'd represented what she'd wanted or felt she needed at that moment. A weapon to attack her perceived assailant.

Now there are medkits, and the meaning behind those twists his heart into a painful knot. Swiftly he closes the distance between them and just pulls her into his arms. It's probably poor comfort after having a bombshell like that dropped on her, but right now, it's all he can really do.]

It's all right. I was satisfied, and I don't regret it at all. Besides, it means I no longer have any ties to my world. There's no reason for me to go back there ever again. I can stay with you, either here or in your own world.

[It probably won't make up for the fact he's dead, but it's something, at least.]

[Elizabeth can hear him, but she still isn't processing what he's saying. All she can see is Gai dying, over, and over, and over. Each time in a new, maddening way. Each one more gruesome than the last.]

[Hands still shaking, she presses them into Gai's back. As though trying to convince herself he was still there, still solid, still alive. But her mind was running away with her, Gai being shot, brained, fighting off crows--]

[Dead in her arms, with her knowing that he never wanted this.]

[She fists her hands into the back of Gai's shirt and screams, trying to blow the image out of her mind before she starts crying.]

[And Gai just squeezes her, as if trying to meld her against his body, show her that he's alive and well with a heartbeat that no doubt is resonating in her ears right now. Telling her was the wrong decision, he realizes that now. It was foolish of him to expect her to react any other way... but at the same time, he didn't feel right keeping something so important from her. It was something that she had to know.

Maybe if he keeps telling himself that, he'll stop feeling like such a horrible person. When she screams, he swears he can feel his heart break within his chest, and all he can think is this isn't what I wanted...]

[She doesn't scream again, apparently just the one was all she could handle. But she's sobbing, rather steadily, against Gai's chest. And she won't let go, she just keeps tightening her arms around him with her ear to his chest. She can hear it, and she can feel him breathing, but the image of him dead won't leave her--imaginary as it is.]

How... How could you think I wouldn't care? Did you not tell me because you thought I wouldn't care?

I didn't tell you because I was afraid you would care too much.

[And that much, at least, is the truth. He was afraid she'd react exactly the way she's doing now-- getting upset, crying, even screaming. If there's one thing he's learned over the past two months that he's been with her, it's that he can't stand seeing her unhappy. And this... this is more unhappy than he's EVER seen her before.

It hurts him probably just as much as what she's learned is hurting her now.]

That happened a while ago... [Elizabeth shakes her head into Gai's chest, shoulders shaking again from sobs. The second Elizabeth waded out into the middle of the ocean was the same second she grew to 'care too much'.]

[Her grief didn't come from Gai being dead in his own world. He was perfectly alive here. It came from the fact that he died thinking no one would miss him. He died and Elizabeth wasn't there to save him. He was dead and if the Malnosso sent him home...]

Don't ever tell me I wouldn't miss you. Understand?

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