primrosella: (Fragile)
Princess Rosella of Daventry ([personal profile] primrosella) wrote2009-09-13 05:40 pm

Quest 120

[Private//Hackable by Friends]

They didn't come for me.

I killed a witch in her sleep and they didn't come for me. I stole from an ogre, I blinded a set of three hags, I robbed graves...and they didn't come for me. They left me alone. They took the others, they took my friends, but they never came for me.

Am I any less guilty for it?

Maybe I am. Maybe I am different. It'd fit, wouldn't it?

Don't go trying to rescue anyone. Don't come to the prison. Don't look. Don't become one more thing for your friends to worry about. Don't end up like the rest of them.

Is that it? Am I really so different after all?

I think I understand now, Megumi.

[/Private]

I see, now. How very clever. First make the animals attack us, then set the stuffed ones on us, and now treat us all like animals. That's terribly clever, isn't it? Three bad things, all in a row, just as we'd all been expecting, and all to do with animals.

But it begs questions, doesn't it? Why this? Why now? Why are some people taken and others left alone? And who could possibly deserve the things being done to the people in there? Prison, punishment, seeking repentance for sins--that's all well and good, but if you have to resort to torture to seek it, how are you any better than the ones you intend to punish? What does it solve? Where does it stop?

This isn't justice. It makes me sick-- This is suffering for the sake of suffering. Fuel for the clock again, is it?

And now it's said that the island is sinking. The deities have as good as confirmed it, in their roundabout ways--"rats drown with the ship", "tick-tock, get out quick", "time is not on your side". Is it so hard to guess what the "exciting conclusion" might be? And what does that mean for the people that haven't or won't or can't accept the parole that's been offered, I wonder? Or perhaps I don't have to wonder at all.

But perhaps the question that's most important of all is this: do the ends always justify the means? Is it worth it to become a monster to defeat a monster? To punish people with the same methods that they themselves are being punished for? Or does answering evil with evil only result in twice as much evil at the end of it all? When is it poetic justice, and when is it just plain cruelty?

Perhaps it's the reasons behind it, in the end, that make all the difference. And no matter what anyone might say, I have a difficult time believing that any of this is truly being done for our sakes.

[identity profile] banditfox.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
I do, but on the scale you're suggesting, it would require a great deal of power, more than I can spare at the moment.

[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
That's all right. I meant...something I could use myself, anyway.

[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
Because while I can think of a few ways to get at the cells in the prison, I'm still only human when it comes to a locked door.

[identity profile] banditfox.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
You shouldn't be going in there.

[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
I promised I wouldn't, and until I'm released from that promise, I don't intend to. But if I'm needed and I'm not ready for it and someone else suffers because of it...how can I forgive myself for that?

[identity profile] banditfox.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
Picking locks is not a skill I can teach you in the span of a few minutes or hours.

[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:26 am (UTC)(link)
Will you teach me afterward, then, when there's more time? It won't help anything now, but the future is a different story entirely.

[identity profile] banditfox.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:27 am (UTC)(link)
We can discuss it, when there's time.

[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2009-09-14 01:59 am (UTC)(link)
...Someone else...will intervene, anyway. Even if I can't.