who: helena and open. what: getting back to normal, shapeshifting into a bunny, apology tour, etc. when: all of may, some bonus june. where: across the boat. warnings: discussions of repeated murder in various threads.
It feels better to say than you're welcome. It's more of a given, instead of some great act of will. She lets the words die down before she proceeds, hoping that the words don't get stuck in her throat.
"...You've heard part of my story. The broad strokes, but...the details that couldn't be handed out, I'll tell you them."
"I lost my vision as an infant. Therefore, as I was growing up, I was tutored at home so that I might have an education. Traditional school would have been impossible for me. All that is to say, I stayed in generally the same area as I got older, though I did want to go forth and have my own encounters in life, particularly as I started to write and send out works."
She had such dreams of what they would be.
"When I got a letter inviting me to take a trip, to discuss my college education with a benefactor, I was ecstatic. It seemed like a dream come true, and I was eager to set out and attend this seminar. So, I asked my father not to worry, and left home to answer it." A pause there, and while this hurts, it is also recalling memories that have become oddly shaped, something she can only attribute to the deaths. "It was the wrong decision to make. I and the others there became embroiled in a living nightmare."
"Other people, who had received letters speaking of different things. A doctor and a young man who were almost never apart, a mystery novelist, a sculptor...we all had different reasons for heeding the letter, but it was no real seminar at all." A frown crosses her face, sorrow cast on her face. "We were being set up in a twisted kind of game, to hunt or be hunted, with the real gift being that we were allowed to keep living."
And yet. Even that prize was false.
"I died there, and I came back. And I began to realize that by coming to that manor, I'd crossed over to a place that wasn't my realm at all. There were others, beyond our group. Ones marked to fight to survive, ones marked to kill us however they saw fit. A game with no end, where success on our side only bought you more time before your next death. A place where the idea of fighting back was utterly pointless, because they could not be killed, not hurt like us. Only out-thought, evaded for a little while. Where they walked the same grounds as us, and there was nothing we could do about it."
Cassandra's face has gone pale again, all but completely without expression. It's become second nature to her by now, to shut down her own reaction when she can, to be unreadable; less than useless here and now, when there is only one other present and she can't see her.
"Was it ... all the time, that you were hunted? Or intermittently, or ...?"
"Matches would be arranged frequently. One of them, four of us, and there was no refusal if you were chosen that time. To find the way out, or be killed. Bound either to run or to kill. We had our roles, and mine, so often, ended up being to die."
Again, and again, and again. Again, and again. Again.
"If you ask me why, what purpose this all served, I cannot tell you. My memory in places is fragmented or faded or ill-shaped, and I can only attribute that to dying so many times that it doesn't want to hold any more than it does. All I know is that in that place, there was so much pain. So much blood, so much to fear, and to know was inevitable. So much that couldn't be done, however much we tried."
The scars etched into her upper arms didn't come there overnight, or even after a week. They were torn open, again and again.
Perhaps some of what she said makes more sense now. About torture, and one's willpower being worn down, and that she prays no one else knows that life like she does. Whatever questions Cassandra has, she'll do her best to answer, but none of them make the situation better.
A shudder goes through her, helpless revulsion and wrenching pity blended together. "How," she half-whispers, and doesn't finish any of the possible questions caught in her throat: How could you bear it? How can you bear it here, after that?
It's only offered when no other question seems forthcoming.
"How...?"
If she means the resurrections, there is no clear answer. If she means something else, then Helena has promised to answer, and she will. Even if right now, remembering it makes her a little pale, running her thumb on the wood of her cane as a comfort.
She is here, and not there. She is the only one here. Even if the true accounting of time has been lost since that room, she still has woken up every morning in a bed that is not there.
As if she had already resolved to forgive Cassandra before she ever spoke - whatever hatefully had been there at the time, the sting of the wounds that had sunk in, it felt as though it was washed out as she had sobbed into Wayne's shoulder. Now, with the story more in her grasp, the pain she feels is more sorrowful, understanding why it was spoken.
"I mean that. That day...we were all barely holding onto ourselves."
There's something in the tone, but Helena will let it go, as one does a butterfly caught in the hands and let out back to the warmth. And she can't help the way her expression flickers, caught between just accepting it, it's just how it is, and trying to explain the why and how feels impossible.
Perhaps it's how it is, when one cannot be angry on their own behalf anymore. But Cassandra already knows so much now - one more piece breaks off easily.
"Is it strange if I say I don't see it as kindness? More that...I don't think anyone should have to apologize for their own pain, or for feeling what they do."
Except her. Except when she's giving people too much to bear, when her burdens are being pushed on someone else. She knows her own habits. She has to bear that in mind.
"Feeling, no. I do not apologize for that. Nor for my position; I stand by it. But what I said to you, at that point, was ... uncalled for. And I appreciate your understanding."
And, a little helplessly: "You seem to have so much of it."
Because the idea of her having much understanding is bewildering. There's so much still that she gets wrong, so much that she wants to say, so many judgements she still makes. When it comes to the greater world, she still feels like she's barely begun to step into it - this ship thrusting her into situations she couldn't fathom.
"Do you mean because I'm not angry at you? Because I'm not angry at any of you?"
Her hand goes still on her cane, the thought in her mind too large to accomodate anything else.
"I...don't think I would know how to be angry at you for that. Perhaps if you had been trying to go after someone I love, hurting them and not stopping, I could be upset then, but...being angry at you for myself doesn't make sense. I was the one arguing that you shouldn't strike back at the person who put us all in that room, who hurt us so. It follows, doesn't it, that you'd speak like that, that any of you would, that I'd have to hold to what I was proposing in the face of sound arguments and those who were more injured than me. And even then, in the end...I didn't want to risk hurting anyone more, so I left."
A soft sound, and she briefly closes her eyes.
"You're welcome to call me selfish, when I tell you that part of it was me being afraid that if Sparkles was killed, we'd all be flung back to where we came from in that moment. To lose my friends, the ones I care for...to go back to that place. I didn't want to risk it." It wasn't some pure plea, after all. There's no nobility in being desperate to not to return to a world of repeating pain. "I shouldn't be selfish. That's what I've always been told. But right then, I couldn't help it."
"Why --" She has to swallow; her throat is aching again, that feeling as though she's been screaming, all too familiar. "Why didn't you say that? That isn't selfish, that's practical. I was never arguing to kill Sparkles, or the Captain, precisely because we don't know what will happen to us if we do -- we could destroy ourselves completely if that story's to be believed, and we agreed --"
To Cassandra's eyes, the last part of that seems like it is completely ignored. In reality, it's lodged there in Helena's mind, but it's not something to pry into right now. She'll save it to contemplate later, to maybe discuss later.
"Does my personal wish to not return to where I came from outweigh other people's desire to go home? 'Alright, Helena, I won't take justified vengeance for myself and my loved ones and try this method that might return us all from where we were plucked, something so many of us want, because you would be unhappy to return.' Even saying it now, doesn't it sound wrong?"
There's something in her expression, the way some people tell a story and then expect themselves to be in the right - only it's the reverse. She's in the wrong, isn't she? Wrong enough to need to go around apologizing for it, for wanting to put her needs above other people's.
Besides, there were those that would have risked destroying everything for their revenge. She knows that. Any form of pleas wouldn't have reached them.
Cassandra has to take a few moments to breathe, to wrestle the tangle of emotions into some semblance of ordered words.
"Does it sound more wrong to you than the other way around? 'So sorry, Helena, you have to go back to constant torment so that I can go home' doesn't strike you as equally selfish? To say nothing of how it sounds in comparison with 'Very well, I suppose we'll all just continue suffering until our tormentor spontaneously manifests a conscience'?"
"At least in one of those options, the rest of them wouldn't be hurt anymore. I'm not more important than they are."
There's not an option in there where her own suffering isn't guaranteed, whether she's being cut down or having her mind exploited for fuel. It makes it simpler to isolate the greater good, the one where at least someone gets to be happy. She's not the only one in that situation - she's just probably the one who doesn't see a future without pain in it.
"None of those options are the right one, though. None of them work."
I'm not more important than they are; Helena says it not with the pure selfless conviction Cassandra would half expect, but with a kind of insistence, as though struggling to convince herself. As though certain this must be the right thing to feel, and trying hard to feel it.
It makes some deep part of her resonate like a plucked string, not on the same note but one that harmonizes with it.
"You're not the only one who's terrified to go back," she says. Makes herself say. "You're not the only one who came from somewhere worse, or -- there are people here who will die if they go back. Even some of those who want to leave here don't want to return to where they came from, they want to go somewhere else. And you're right, none of those options work. Forcing people to stay or forcing them to go, neither one is right, and nor is doing nothing."
She nods, slowly, trying to not ask the question that hovers over both of them. What do we do, then? It'd be too much to ask it right now, when the wounds from the bridge have barely healed, when they still need to live with the shadow child in the walls.
"Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I want to hope we find the way where no one has to suffer. Where we don't have to condemn some to save others. The option that works, without falling to our worst instincts."
Even if they don't agree with her, even if they'll kick and scream and hurt her in the process. They deserve not to suffer. To not be ripped and torn by what's happened to them, to be able to forget what they went through.
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come_sailaway2023-05-20 09:09 pm
no subject
It feels better to say than you're welcome. It's more of a given, instead of some great act of will. She lets the words die down before she proceeds, hoping that the words don't get stuck in her throat.
"...You've heard part of my story. The broad strokes, but...the details that couldn't be handed out, I'll tell you them."
no subject
no subject
"I lost my vision as an infant. Therefore, as I was growing up, I was tutored at home so that I might have an education. Traditional school would have been impossible for me. All that is to say, I stayed in generally the same area as I got older, though I did want to go forth and have my own encounters in life, particularly as I started to write and send out works."
She had such dreams of what they would be.
"When I got a letter inviting me to take a trip, to discuss my college education with a benefactor, I was ecstatic. It seemed like a dream come true, and I was eager to set out and attend this seminar. So, I asked my father not to worry, and left home to answer it." A pause there, and while this hurts, it is also recalling memories that have become oddly shaped, something she can only attribute to the deaths. "It was the wrong decision to make. I and the others there became embroiled in a living nightmare."
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"The others," she says, low, "attending the seminar? Other scholars?"
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And yet. Even that prize was false.
"I died there, and I came back. And I began to realize that by coming to that manor, I'd crossed over to a place that wasn't my realm at all. There were others, beyond our group. Ones marked to fight to survive, ones marked to kill us however they saw fit. A game with no end, where success on our side only bought you more time before your next death. A place where the idea of fighting back was utterly pointless, because they could not be killed, not hurt like us. Only out-thought, evaded for a little while. Where they walked the same grounds as us, and there was nothing we could do about it."
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"Was it ... all the time, that you were hunted? Or intermittently, or ...?"
no subject
Again, and again, and again. Again, and again. Again.
"If you ask me why, what purpose this all served, I cannot tell you. My memory in places is fragmented or faded or ill-shaped, and I can only attribute that to dying so many times that it doesn't want to hold any more than it does. All I know is that in that place, there was so much pain. So much blood, so much to fear, and to know was inevitable. So much that couldn't be done, however much we tried."
The scars etched into her upper arms didn't come there overnight, or even after a week. They were torn open, again and again.
no subject
What does survival even mean under those circumstances?
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Perhaps some of what she said makes more sense now. About torture, and one's willpower being worn down, and that she prays no one else knows that life like she does. Whatever questions Cassandra has, she'll do her best to answer, but none of them make the situation better.
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How can you possibly be this kind, after that?
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"How...?"
If she means the resurrections, there is no clear answer. If she means something else, then Helena has promised to answer, and she will. Even if right now, remembering it makes her a little pale, running her thumb on the wood of her cane as a comfort.
She is here, and not there. She is the only one here. Even if the true accounting of time has been lost since that room, she still has woken up every morning in a bed that is not there.
no subject
no subject
As if she had already resolved to forgive Cassandra before she ever spoke - whatever hatefully had been there at the time, the sting of the wounds that had sunk in, it felt as though it was washed out as she had sobbed into Wayne's shoulder. Now, with the story more in her grasp, the pain she feels is more sorrowful, understanding why it was spoken.
"I mean that. That day...we were all barely holding onto ourselves."
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"Thank you. Truly. It's ... kind of you."
Oh, she hopes that doesn't sound as bitter as its aftertaste on her tongue.
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Perhaps it's how it is, when one cannot be angry on their own behalf anymore. But Cassandra already knows so much now - one more piece breaks off easily.
"Is it strange if I say I don't see it as kindness? More that...I don't think anyone should have to apologize for their own pain, or for feeling what they do."
Except her. Except when she's giving people too much to bear, when her burdens are being pushed on someone else. She knows her own habits. She has to bear that in mind.no subject
And, a little helplessly: "You seem to have so much of it."
no subject
"Why do you say that?"
Because the idea of her having much understanding is bewildering. There's so much still that she gets wrong, so much that she wants to say, so many judgements she still makes. When it comes to the greater world, she still feels like she's barely begun to step into it - this ship thrusting her into situations she couldn't fathom.
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"What do you mean? You ... the way you spoke to everyone. Even me."
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Her hand goes still on her cane, the thought in her mind too large to accomodate anything else.
"I...don't think I would know how to be angry at you for that. Perhaps if you had been trying to go after someone I love, hurting them and not stopping, I could be upset then, but...being angry at you for myself doesn't make sense. I was the one arguing that you shouldn't strike back at the person who put us all in that room, who hurt us so. It follows, doesn't it, that you'd speak like that, that any of you would, that I'd have to hold to what I was proposing in the face of sound arguments and those who were more injured than me. And even then, in the end...I didn't want to risk hurting anyone more, so I left."
A soft sound, and she briefly closes her eyes.
"You're welcome to call me selfish, when I tell you that part of it was me being afraid that if Sparkles was killed, we'd all be flung back to where we came from in that moment. To lose my friends, the ones I care for...to go back to that place. I didn't want to risk it." It wasn't some pure plea, after all. There's no nobility in being desperate to not to return to a world of repeating pain. "I shouldn't be selfish. That's what I've always been told. But right then, I couldn't help it."
She shakes her head a little.
"I know. It's not an excuse."
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"Why --" She has to swallow; her throat is aching again, that feeling as though she's been screaming, all too familiar. "Why didn't you say that? That isn't selfish, that's practical. I was never arguing to kill Sparkles, or the Captain, precisely because we don't know what will happen to us if we do -- we could destroy ourselves completely if that story's to be believed, and we agreed --"
She shuts her mouth hard, stopping that sentence.
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"Does my personal wish to not return to where I came from outweigh other people's desire to go home? 'Alright, Helena, I won't take justified vengeance for myself and my loved ones and try this method that might return us all from where we were plucked, something so many of us want, because you would be unhappy to return.' Even saying it now, doesn't it sound wrong?"
There's something in her expression, the way some people tell a story and then expect themselves to be in the right - only it's the reverse. She's in the wrong, isn't she? Wrong enough to need to go around apologizing for it, for wanting to put her needs above other people's.
Besides, there were those that would have risked destroying everything for their revenge. She knows that. Any form of pleas wouldn't have reached them.
no subject
"Does it sound more wrong to you than the other way around? 'So sorry, Helena, you have to go back to constant torment so that I can go home' doesn't strike you as equally selfish? To say nothing of how it sounds in comparison with 'Very well, I suppose we'll all just continue suffering until our tormentor spontaneously manifests a conscience'?"
no subject
There's not an option in there where her own suffering isn't guaranteed, whether she's being cut down or having her mind exploited for fuel. It makes it simpler to isolate the greater good, the one where at least someone gets to be happy. She's not the only one in that situation - she's just probably the one who doesn't see a future without pain in it.
"None of those options are the right one, though. None of them work."
no subject
It makes some deep part of her resonate like a plucked string, not on the same note but one that harmonizes with it.
"You're not the only one who's terrified to go back," she says. Makes herself say. "You're not the only one who came from somewhere worse, or -- there are people here who will die if they go back. Even some of those who want to leave here don't want to return to where they came from, they want to go somewhere else. And you're right, none of those options work. Forcing people to stay or forcing them to go, neither one is right, and nor is doing nothing."
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"Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I want to hope we find the way where no one has to suffer. Where we don't have to condemn some to save others. The option that works, without falling to our worst instincts."
Even if they don't agree with her, even if they'll kick and scream and hurt her in the process. They deserve not to suffer. To not be ripped and torn by what's happened to them, to be able to forget what they went through.
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