rebells | night 435, or thereabouts

He's dead.

It was prudent not to assume, of course, but--I remember checking the body. He's dead. We killed him. This whole time, there was never any reason to obsess over whether he'd escaped, and what I--we--were going to do, and how to counteract any schemes he might try--the matter was resolved the day I arrived in Aather. When I still didn't know anything about the past.

I said, back then, that I wanted my memories back no matter what kind of revelations they contained. I did. I do. I had no idea--but I needed to know how much of a coward I'd been, in the past. You have to acknowledge your own weaknesses before you can move past them. That's what I've been trying to do, both at home and in Aather.

I'm starting to sound like Shirley. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

The person who arrived here was a coward and a fool. He prided himself on knowing and seeing when he didn't even know himself, or what he wanted. Not from his team, and not from the people around him. Not from his past, either. I--honestly, it's distasteful to admit that I've grown and changed during my time here, when the only reason I am here is someone else's bad decisions. But I have. (I wonder what the others will say about it, when we finally break out of this ridiculous spell and can go home.)

I wanted--my team to be a structure I could depend on in service of a common goal, and I had that, for a time. (What it becomes--well, we'll see. The loud one has some promise.) I wanted people to reach out to, and who could reach out to me in turn, and I have those, in two separate worlds. ~~I wish~~ No one has to tell me that in some respects I've been very fortunate.

I suppose--in the other respects, I'm not exactly unique, either. Across thousands of worlds, how could I be?

I want to move on from the past. I want to move forward. I want to--go into the future, to become the person I'm becoming, whatever that is. A happier person, a more honest person, a braver person. Perhaps even--a better person. I want to keep growing and changing, and keep coming to meet other people, as much as I can. I want to be as close to--to normal, to human, as I can.

Lately I've started to wonder about that. ~~In my memories, I always thought I couldn't possibly be~~ I--I'm not going to be so much of a coward that I refuse to admit it--~~I let~~ I wanted a place with him, so I made myself into what he wanted from me. A killer. ~~A mindless, pathetic, sniveling~~ Something that had willingly given up its right to decide for itself, that I believed--that I still believe--was less than human. But

What impulse causes a person to make such a choice? Isn't it the same impulse that leads you to burn down a village for someone else's approval? To--although who on earth even knows what went on there--destroy a world in exchange for one life, perhaps? I'd be a fool not to consider . . . that maybe desperation of that sort was always a human condition. That the things I was afraid for anyone to know about me, because I thought they separated me from the people I cared about, made me more like them than anything else about me, in the end.

I've met people here who've done terrible things, or who aren't good people, or don't care about being good people. I've even come to care about some of them, despite my best intentions. Would I exclude them from the class of humanity? From the "children of man" we put our lives on the line to protect?

"People can change" . . . am I a person, in that sense? Have I always been one? Or was it something I recovered, between being discarded and now . . . is it even something that can be recovered?

I think I've answered that last question to my own satisfaction, at least. And if that's the case, there's no excuse not to make the attempt.

Damnit. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what to do with that.