[She shakes her head.] If it could be fixed, then it's mine to do, my responsibility. That's - I just have to live with that. Actions have consequences.
Part of me hates that it's more important for you to be sane and healthy than me. I thought I was basically sane, you know, before this started happening. I thought I was in control of myself, and even if I was a terrible person I was at least a deliberate one. But now that I'm pouring my heart out there's all this blood on the floor spelling out that I'm contradictory and twisted and just - poisoned is a good word. I told myself I was driven to do what I did and I was, the circumstances were everything, but I'm still the shape I had to be to get shoved through that mold. I can't pretend that I wasn't made for it, by it, and I don't know how to unmake myself.
You - [she actually laughs, just a little, half a breath] - you sound like you used to be kind of like me. Not, I mean, not as bad, obviously, but willing to hurt people who were close to get to him. I'm kind of glad you were. It doesn't give me hope, exactly, but it makes me more impressed that you've escaped that mindset as much as you have. And you know, it was okay. Or, no, it wasn't, it was wrong and it was callous, but it makes sense. The world scrapes over your soul and you get calluses, that's what happens, they're a reaction and a defense and, and you can decide that you need to not have them to be good but you can't hate yourself fighting back when you had every right to just because you fought the wrong way. Jus in bello is hard as hell when you don't have the most tanks. And hating yourself is part of the poison too, I think.
I don't know what happens in that world, or whether you'd do it or not. I'd depower every mutant on every earth if I could, and I wouldn't even do it out of malice. I don't think people are really capable of maintaining a moral or stable civilization at all, and then you add in powers that abruptly escalate anything and can't neutralized or remotely prepared for without scaring everyone that has them into a paranoid and reactionary froth - I think mutants are going to tear the earth apart, eventually, inevitably.
But hatred will do it faster, and worse. I have to - I want to and I have to stop being this person, but I hate that in order to live with myself I have to metaphorically lay down arms, and none of you are even capable of not being dangerous. It's not even fear. It's just so fucking unfair. And that's pathetic, that's a child's objection and I know it, but there it is.
You don't have to forgive him. You shouldn't, not if you don't want to, forgiveness is grace, is a gift by definition undeserved. But you deserve to care more about your own joy than his punishment. You deserve for your life and your mind to just - just not be about him or the poison or any of it.
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Part of me hates that it's more important for you to be sane and healthy than me. I thought I was basically sane, you know, before this started happening. I thought I was in control of myself, and even if I was a terrible person I was at least a deliberate one. But now that I'm pouring my heart out there's all this blood on the floor spelling out that I'm contradictory and twisted and just - poisoned is a good word. I told myself I was driven to do what I did and I was, the circumstances were everything, but I'm still the shape I had to be to get shoved through that mold. I can't pretend that I wasn't made for it, by it, and I don't know how to unmake myself.
You - [she actually laughs, just a little, half a breath] - you sound like you used to be kind of like me. Not, I mean, not as bad, obviously, but willing to hurt people who were close to get to him. I'm kind of glad you were. It doesn't give me hope, exactly, but it makes me more impressed that you've escaped that mindset as much as you have. And you know, it was okay. Or, no, it wasn't, it was wrong and it was callous, but it makes sense. The world scrapes over your soul and you get calluses, that's what happens, they're a reaction and a defense and, and you can decide that you need to not have them to be good but you can't hate yourself fighting back when you had every right to just because you fought the wrong way. Jus in bello is hard as hell when you don't have the most tanks. And hating yourself is part of the poison too, I think.
I don't know what happens in that world, or whether you'd do it or not. I'd depower every mutant on every earth if I could, and I wouldn't even do it out of malice. I don't think people are really capable of maintaining a moral or stable civilization at all, and then you add in powers that abruptly escalate anything and can't neutralized or remotely prepared for without scaring everyone that has them into a paranoid and reactionary froth - I think mutants are going to tear the earth apart, eventually, inevitably.
But hatred will do it faster, and worse. I have to - I want to and I have to stop being this person, but I hate that in order to live with myself I have to metaphorically lay down arms, and none of you are even capable of not being dangerous. It's not even fear. It's just so fucking unfair. And that's pathetic, that's a child's objection and I know it, but there it is.
You don't have to forgive him. You shouldn't, not if you don't want to, forgiveness is grace, is a gift by definition undeserved. But you deserve to care more about your own joy than his punishment. You deserve for your life and your mind to just - just not be about him or the poison or any of it.