sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] One-Man Show

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[MINGLE] One-Man Show

WHERE: Inari Shrine and elsewhere
WHEN: 25 January 2019 through ?
OPEN TO: All opted in characters
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At least there was someone there, at least there was Billy there, holding him, and it hurts to even breathe. He twists his face to just about bury it into Billy's neck. Which probably wasn't right, but there you go.

"All they wanted was our home to be free. All Timber ever wanted was to be free. And we only got it from Caraway's daughter. As if I should be thankful."

Nothing about this is right. Not being brought here, not being forced to watch this, not any of the trauma these Observers are forcing them to relive, not what happened to Nida's parents. Nida butying his face in Billy's neck, finding some small bit of comfort there? That's the only thing right about all of this. And Billy wants to be able to give that. Whatever else is going on between them, Nida is his friend, and he doesn't want Nida to hurt alone.

Billy lifts a hand, and now it's his turn to cradle Nida's head, to stroke the back of his neck. "There's no crime in wanting to be free. What your parents did--it wasn't wrong. I'm so sorry you lost them like that. I'm so sorry," he murmurs. "It isn't fair." He isn't sure why Nida says what he does about Caraway's daughter, but if the child of the man in charge of his parents' execution got credit for liberating his hometown, he can't even imagine what he'd feel.

Jason watches all of this, frozen to the spot; he knows what's going to happen before it unfolds, because he has seen enough tragedy in his life to recognize the signs. It's not the sound of the gunshots that makes him flinch, but the child's scream, echoed in stereo with the Nida in front of him.

"You were just a kid," he says, voice shaking, fingers curled tightly into fists at his sides, like he wants to punch something that will right the wrong, except that's not how it works, and there's nothing to punch anyway. Jason is no stranger to violence and has killed more scumbags than he can count, but children are always, always off-limits, and anyone who hurts a child, in his opinion, doesn't deserve to continue breathing.

"Forget about fair. What they did to you was inhuman."

What they did to him? What they did to him? No it wasn’t fair. Yes it was inhuman. But it had only gotten worse, hasn’t it? Hadn’t it?

“What my parents did was fight for something they believed in. You couldn’t even...”

Understand. They couldn’t even understand the half of it. Because Nida was only realizing it now. So much of it, clearly repressed and not consumed by his GFs over the years because he can taste the blood on his tongue. Smell the stink of gunpowder in the air, and feel how heavy that hand has been on his shoulder. How tacky the blood became after it cooled. How clouded their eyes would look ten minutes from the shots. Twenty. An hour. Three hours, until Mrs. Kyle finally got through to collect him because they let her.

“That was nothing. Basic tactics against a deeply entrenched opponent engaged in gorilla-style warefare. Especially one deeply tied to a local community. They were the first people killed that week. Not the last,” he says, and Nida isn’t shaking in Billy’s arms anymore. No, he has gone very still, and r pulls back from the warmth of that embrace now. Because... because he knows he doesn’t deserve it. That isn’t a place for him, somewhere warm and comforting. He doesn’t deserve that.

He pulls free from Billy and rises to his feet with far more grace than he fell. Billy might not get it, but Jason probably couldn’t miss the effortless ease and grace of a trained killer, could he?

“Honestly, not a bad way of dealing with the problem. Cut off the heat to kill the snake. Except Timber had a whole nest of vipers so that isn’t enough. No. You kill the viper that bites at your feet first. Take your problems and do them away, very publicly. Very messy. Have their son there and make him watch. Everyone knows the family, everyone can fear what it means for the boy. Leave him there for hours as his parents’ bodies go cold, knowing the one secret no one else does. That there were other reasons for the death. And you release him at last when the tension in the town has built up. When the whispers behind closed doors makes martyrs of heroes. Which is the perfect time to remind them of the pains that come with disobedience. How your loved ones suffer more. Because who would be able to forget his scream, the hours of begging and sobbing? Demoralizing.”

A cold and broken smile curves his lips. Like he’s got a joke no one else is in on.

Of course. Of course Nida would forget. Of course Nida would have to forget. Who could live with that? Who could live with the knowledge, the memory not only of having their parents executed right in front of them, but being forced to stay with the bodies, to watch, to scream and cry and know that no one would help you?

Nida pulls away, and Billy can see the light is gone from his eyes. Dissociation, his mind helpfully provides. Separate the self, divide events into facts and feelings, then tuck the feelings away so deeply they can't be found. He knows what it is. That doesn't help the feeling that a part of him is being torn out, a raw twisting in his heart as Nida starts to speak again, and Billy just...kneels at his feet. No. No, even if Nida does need to do this to cope, Billy can't say nothing.

"It is something." His voice is quiet, and while there are still tears on his face and in his eyes, it's surprisingly level as he looks up at Nida, not flinching from that smile. "It was. It was something terrible, and I don't care how much sense it made. Those were your parents, Nida, and that was you, and it will never be okay." No, he can't even. Couldn't even. But his grandfather could. And that sort of choice? Only monsters would make it. Whatever Nida might have been raised to be, however he sounds right now, Billy doesn't believe Nida would ever do something like that. Slowly, he climbs back to his feet, arms wrapped around his midsection, feeling cold even through his coat as he shakes his head, jaw set stubbornly.

"I'm sorry, Nida. I'm sorry no one was there to help you. Or them."

Jason feels positively sick with anger. He recognizes in Nida his own coping techniques: repression; sarcasm; aggressively shining a light on the wrongs done to him, like if he's the first to point them out, they won't be able to hurt him. And how often does that actually work? Not very. He stays alive, he keeps the pieces of himself together with toothpaste and bubblegum, but in every moment until the pain finally begins to recede, it's agonizing to even breathe.

"Bullshit," he finally spits, "that's bullshit, and you know it. 'The boy' was you. And I don't care what kind of war you're fighting - you don't drag kids into it. Not like that."

A nagging whisper in the back of his mind reminds him that he too became tangled up in a war when he was a child, and he brushes it aside. It's not the same. Jason chose to become one of Batman's broken toy soldiers. Nida didn't ask for any of this.

"The boy was a tool, a weapon turned against the village," Nida counters, just about shouting as he turns on Jason. He can't help it. It... it's easier to just not feel this, to distance himself from it. Why must they insist on him actually feeling all of this?

"They made use of the fear that came with all of this. You don't get to see the part where people actually LOOK at the crimes listed on those postings. How they were horrified when they got to the end because it listed my parent's names and full titles as part of the Galbadian military. How I went from the son of martyrs to the son of possible spies."

And now he's shaking. They've broken that thin veneer of calm, that control and poise that belongs to the SeeD and left the boy exposed and raw and hurting. His arms wrap around his own chest, as if seeking the comfort of arms wrapped around him. They don't get it because they weren't there. They didn't understand...

"No one would take me in. All those people who supposedly loved my family, respected what they did, fought beside them? Not one of them wanted the son of Galbadians. Not one of them wanted the child of two people whose service to that army had them fighting against Timber in the war. It didn't matter that my parents had abandoned the military in their disgust. I got to hear the whispers. Mrs. Kyle tried to protect me from them, but I got to hear the whispers and feel their eyes on me. What if my Momma was the one who shot this woman's husband? What if my Poppa was the one who carried a torch to burn the forests with. It didn't matter that they lived in that forest and loved it. It didn't matter that they helped the Jackson family reroof after a storm, or Poppa helped when people got hurt but the doctor was busy. They were Galbadians, and so was I even though I'd never set foot in Galbadia. So they sent me away. They sent me to Balamb Garden. And Balamb turned me into the very thing they whispered that my parents might be. A spy. An assassin. Someone with no home and no value and only the purposes of other men and women as his own."

And worst of all? He'd been turned into the kind of man who saw the absolute brilliance in the plan. The only thing that would have made it a greater coup would have been if he'd ended up in Galbadia Garden instead. Been fed into their system, been in place to remember enough to hate Timber for how he'd been cast out. Because Galbadia Garden served very heavily as a feeder program for officers of the Galbadian army. He could have become that which his parents had been feared to be.

"That boy should have been given the mercy of a quick death instead of living through everything I have. Instead of having to become the sort of monster I am."

All those words. All those memories, and he doesn't know if Nida's aware of any of them, doesn't know if Nida realizes what he's saying and how much of what's been repressed all these years has finally sprung loose. It's big, and it's important, but it's the end of it all that gets him.

"You are not a monster."

There's a firm conviction in his voice, a certainty he feels in his bones that reflects in the rest. He knows this, is more sure than he is about anything else right now. "You're a lot of things, Nida. A survivor, a soldier, a spy, and yeah--you've been through more than anyone should ever have to. But you are not a monster. I don't care how you have to look at what happened to deal with it, you can talk about this like it's normal, but you aren't that."

“He’s right,” Jason adds, calmly - more calmly than he actually feels - as he nods toward Billy. He knows the impulse to view yourself as a monster, dissociate what you’ve done from who you are. I’m just something you helped make, he’d said to Joker once he’d captured him to take his revenge, calling himself a thing instead of a person.

But it’s not correct. Nida’s no more a monster than Jason is. They’re both traumatized children who had to grow up too fast, boys who had to construct a shell of armor to protect themselves from a world that wished them harm.

“There’s nothing wrong with doing what’s necessary to survive,” he continues, arms folded over his chest. “I grew up in a city full of monsters - I know what they look like. And like I just told him - “ again he nods in Billy’s direction - “I’m a good judge of character. You’re not like them. You’re not one of them.”

"I've killed people," Nida counters, pain in his voice. Why can't they see it? There's almost... almost more desperation now for them to understand what he already understands. To see him for what he is. "I've killed people who didn't have a chance to protect themselves. I've ruined lives, I'm no better than them. I'm no better than..."

He's no better than they are. He's no better than those people who destroyed his life. Why won't they see that? Why can't they see what he's been hiding himself from for years? This was always what he'd been, what he would always be. Why are they doing this?

"I was made to be like them. That's all the value I had at Garden."

"Yeah, maybe you did. You did those things. But you did those things because that's what they made you to be, and the sheer fact that you're questioning that now?? Nida, that's already proof that you aren't just that. Not anymore, if you ever were," Billy answers, just as low, just as insistent. "I don't care what you've done. You aren't a monster. You aren't them. You aren't just what they made you to be. And you've got so much more value than that here. This isn't Garden. You don't have to be that person anymore. It's part of you, but it isn't all of you." He knows it. He knows deep down that no matter what he's done in the past, that here and now and in the future, he's going to choose to be better. And he isn't going to let Nida convince himself otherwise. Because it's just not true.

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[MINGLE] One-Man Show

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