[15strangers] [Private Conversation] [Week 3, Wednesday] [Charlotte]

[katzenpfote]

[Caleb had woken up with a headache. A headache and faint memories of what he'd said to Charlotte - because who else looks so much like her? He slowly moves through the train, trying to see where she is. She needs to know to stay quiet, though it feels like half the train knows now.]

[... Though some are dead now, so it doesn't matter.]

[He finally finds her in the lounge and gestures for her to follow him to his room, posture stiff and careful. Frumpkin trails behind his summoner, worriedly. Once they're inside, he closes the door and leans on it, looking like he wants to disappear into his coat.]

... I expect that you have questions...

Comments

[charmingheroine]

[When she followed, Charlotte was still holding a record - she'd been trying to find loud things to put on, for what she wants to make of Thursday night. Best to open his room's stereo console and set it on there, to minimize the risk of being heard. It's probably a strange ritual, settling the disc in place and dropping the rod with the needle carefully onto it, fussing with the speed and volume knobs for a moment, but if they're talking about that last conversation... cannons and churchbells and a brass section will provide cover.]

I do, yes. What were you before you found your something better?

[katzenpfote]

[He watches her curiously. At least she's more physically like Astrid than Jester was, and he'd confused her for Astrid before when severely drunk. At least no one else had been around, or this would be a much worse conversation.]

... A Vollstrecker. A Scourger, as it's called in Common. The secret assassins for the Dwendalian Empire. ... Or in training to be one, very close to completing the training...

[He rubs his arms, scratching at the wrappings a bit harder than usual.]

[charmingheroine]

Where I'm from, that's a word... very, very horrible people use it to mean "executioner". The linguistic overlap is strange, but I suppose it's not wholly impossible. Parallel evolution occurs in different types of animals, I don't see why human languages would be different, not like this...

[She's babbling to cover how taken aback she is, and that's not fair to him. She shakes her head, and looks down.]

What she did, what you did... it was some kind of messed up graduation, wasn't it?

[katzenpfote]

It's roughly the same.

[She's babbling and he knows it, but it doesn't matter. He knows how stress-babbling goes, given he does it all the time.]

It... we were allowed to go home for a time by our mentor, trained already in executing traitors to the Empire. And all three of us overheard our parents, who had spoken of their love for the Empire before... we heard them plotting revolution. Speaking of disgusting things like that -

[His face twists for a moment in anger and fury, before returning to a more generally depressed look.]

... And so they were traitors. So they had to go. Of course they did. Eodwulf's first... then Astrid poisoned hers... and then I set fire to my home with the doors blocked.

i'm leaning on headcanon for some of this sorry!

[charmingheroine]

I'm so sorry.

[It's an understatement. She knows it's an understatement, but she genuinely doesn't know what else to say. One hears stories of student mages forced to do terrible things, but... those are just stories, that's why the church has the training programs now, why the Scholomance was razed centuries ago. She wishes she had anything else to say, not those three trite words, but -

All she can do is repeat them.]

Caleb, I'm so sorry.

Totally fine with me!

[katzenpfote]

[He laughs a little brokenly, leaning against the wall.]

Sorry? You have nothing to be sorry about. It's me. I'm a monster. I broke after... after what I did.

... I was in an asylum for about eleven years, I think. While I was in the asylum, I was... mad. Quite mad. I don't remember... a great deal of what happened while I was in there, though I do remember... there was a woman. Another patient. She touched me and all of the madness... lifted away. ... Including the false memories of what my parents had said. I... I broke out after that. One of Ikithon's men was watching the place. I killed him and stole this off of him.

[He fishes an amulet out of his coat, shows it to her, and tucks it back in.]

It prevents detection via scrying or other means... though I do not know if it works here. ... But I know what you will say.

'You were brainwashed. It isn't your fault.' But I still had the choice to do it or not, and I chose a... an Empire over loyalty to the only people who loved me. That is what a monster does. Not a good son. Not a good person.

[charmingheroine]

[He couldn't have knocked the breath from her more soundly if he'd physically struck her. It takes a moment for Charlotte to compose herself, and then, as she's blinking frantically (she does not want to cry yet again) -]

They told you they cared for you more than your parents, didn't they. This... this "teacher", this Empire. It's how it works, Caleb, that's how it works where I'm from too. You're told that the people telling you to kill are your real family, and that those people whose blood you share have to earn the right to even talk to you. There've been so many books written about it, even just in the last few years.

[She looks very young, very earnest, and very angry - but not at him.]

Of all the things to carry through across worlds, I didn't think it'd be that. You broke because you knew what you'd been used to do, and the weight of it was too much, right? I've read - there are so many stories of men who were forced to do things like that, Caleb, in my own country, not even two grandmothers's lives ago just yet. There was a war over whether or not some people were people or things, and it ripped us apart... but that's not the point...

You may have done monstrous things, but you've chosen to run as far as you can from the people who told you they were noble, and as far as I'm concerned that means you're good. You're trying. You're choosing to turn away from that. You have a choice, and you're making one that isn't "well, it was easier to forget who I was and do terrible things".

[katzenpfote]

And why didn't I break because of the other people I was taught to murder? Yes, my parents were very important to me, but if I had any sort of morality I should have shaken it off then. I did it because I was told to, because I thought 'my Empire' could do no wrong and was supposed to be protected from everything. And I was proud to do it. Yes, my father was a soldier and we were taught to love the Empire, but there are degrees of it.

And I went over the line, and other people paid the price for it. I made them pay the price for it. And that man is still out there, still training children your age or younger to do this. I was only a little bit older than you are now when I did it. And you know better - why didn't I? And now I'm cavorting with revolutionaries and even aiding the Empire's enemies and I'm...

[His knees shake, and he's almost unable to carry his own weight. He brings his hand up, a flame flickering in it. He stares at it, through it, towards her. He could do this... but no. He can't. He won't put someone through that again. He won't even get what he wants.]

... I am a tool with only one purpose now. A dagger with the point at the one who... who molded me. And if I do, I'll likely run into the other two again...

[His voice is faint, and he snuffs the flame out, still staring at the space where it was.]

... They'll kill me and anyone with me. And I do not know if I can kill them. Even if I had the power to kill Ikithon, I do not know if... I could...

[He's quiet for a few long moments.]

... I still see those flames, when I kill something that's humanoid. It is... shameful to have to take the time in battle when it is too intense...

[charmingheroine]

Would you tell someone with a bad leg that it's shameful not to be able to run as fast as everyone else? There's not much written on it in the new sciences' texts, but people have been describing this for centuries, Caleb. You're hurt. You were deliberately hurt, by someone who should have been protecting you. Just because it's a wound of the soul and not the body doesn't make it somehow shameful.

[A wound she knows she made worse, pretending to be his... well, whatever Astrid was to him, once.]

You aren't just laying down and letting what you did kill you. That you're uncertain if you could kill the person who wanted you to give up your humanity, well... that's pretty normal, I think. And you're doing your best to keep yourself from being found, and if your family is as determined to make the world better as you seem to be I know they wouldn't go down against people who have given up on being people.

[Making It Worse continues, very possibly, but this is the kind of conversation she privately feels way too young to have with anyone.]

I'm not a child, Caleb. I gave up on that years ago. Once you know what the world's like... hell, even when you haven't seen it yet, if you just read the papers and talk to adults who treat you like one of them without thinking about it... I only know better because I had people guiding me to use the power I used to have for aims that weren't ending the world. If someone... if someone important to me was killed, I might still end up like Brauner did, if I still had that power. He gave up on humanity, and became something horrible, but I've been lucky and I've never had to face the fact that no one I love is anything but fragile and easily ripped away until now. Maybe that does make me a child, I don't know anymore, I just don't want you to cut yourself off from everyone and just hurt by yourself, I couldn't stand it when he tried that and you sound just like him if he had an accent, and - and - !

[She's almost shouting at him, and while she stops speaking, it's less from the realization and more that she just can't talk around the horror and sadness and rage all balled up in her throat.]

[katzenpfote]

[She's just yelling at him now. Distantly, he feels like the proper thing to do would be to comfort her, but it's beneath a blanket of self-hatred and numbness right now.]

The last time someone hesitated in battle, a good friend was killed. That cannot happen again. I have the others of the Nein, which is why we must come up with a way to free all fo them.

I... am still a murderer many times over. We're all a band of misfits and strange people, but even the one who has a pact with a monstrous sea-serpent demigod is less a monster than I am. All I can hope for is to turn my monstrous skills against those who deserve it, and hope that I am right.

[charmingheroine]

[She's not the one who needs comfort here, thank you very much!]

Even "monsters" can be good people. A true monster just... gives up on ever trying to be good or do good. Dracula's own son, Cornell and his people from the legends, Rosa Schneider... there are those who have fought evil and the evil nature they were assumed to have been born with or forced into, and become legends of good in the fight.

[She's a little embarrassed by how poetic she's trying to sound, but for whatever reason, her feelings just seem to be taking that shape today.]

I'm not angry with you, you know. It's just... I hate that this is the way it is, for so many people like us. If your country thinks you're better off being taught by them and the people doing the teaching are wrong, or if you aren't taught at all and have to figure things out on your own while suffering so you start to hate people, it all leads to so much pain....

cw: body horror

[katzenpfote]

[He has no idea who any of these people are, and he's trying to focus rather than break down. It's hard. It's so hard...]

Only the King and a select few others even know they exist. I... I should have said no. I should have kept my nose down and studied evocation in the Academy. I would have been bored, held back from more advanced topics, but I was... I was too proud to not accept advanced learning. I wanted power, and I wanted to display my own ability. I was a child.

[That's the worst part, looking back. He unwraps one of his arms, staring at the scars and running his other hand across them.]

All I want is to make sure no one else goes through that. I need to kill Trent Ikithon, and if possible tear the Cerberus Assembly from power. They... are even more powerful than the King, in their way.

But no one should go through that pain. Mental... emotional... and physical.

[In better light than the garden where the trial took place, the scars are more visible. They're still faint, but they're pointed and look like something was stabbed into his arm all down along it.]