// I tried to scream but my head was underwater //
She searched his face for the dismissal she had come to expect from others when she spoke of her reservations. From Sunjata to Hadama and across most of the other Ancients, they had all been very calm about the concept of bloodlust and predatory instincts, like it wasn't anything worth working herself up about. For the first time she found something akin to sympathy in Liam's hazel, and the simple kindness in his reassurance nearly broke her.
Such a simple thing, to feel seen and heard - yet it made all the difference in the world. Like a flash cast over night-black surroundings, the light of his support allowed Maea to perceive truths she had blinded herself to for far too long. Certainly her moral reservations were real, but the true force behind her vehement rejection of what Asta stood for was based entirely on fear. Afraid of her own nature and the dark impulses lurking on her shadow side, afraid of persecution if she embraced it, afraid of losing track of who she was... and it was so ironic she couldn't even laugh, as Maea realized that avoiding all those things had turned her into everything she hated.
"... perhaps." Her voice sounded a bit thick, just shy of cracking. "They're... not wrong, though. I used to think I was tolerant, open to different views. But I'm really not. And I kind of hate that. Caring is fine, but not if it makes me into a bigot." What did it say about her that she cared more for the nameless stranger than the person right in front of her? That the faceless masses were granted more clemency than one who claimed to use his darkness to protect and serve the community?
Rubbing the spot between her eyebrows, Maea cast an inward glance at the many huddled reflections of herself, spread across the internal landscape like a garden of statues twisted into poses of defense and rejection. All cowering and caught up in their own twisted versions of truth, unable to perceive how ivy slowly threatened to choke every path until none remained.
"I want to do better..." she sighed, frustrated by the lack of a clear path to the end she wished to reach.
Such a simple thing, to feel seen and heard - yet it made all the difference in the world. Like a flash cast over night-black surroundings, the light of his support allowed Maea to perceive truths she had blinded herself to for far too long. Certainly her moral reservations were real, but the true force behind her vehement rejection of what Asta stood for was based entirely on fear. Afraid of her own nature and the dark impulses lurking on her shadow side, afraid of persecution if she embraced it, afraid of losing track of who she was... and it was so ironic she couldn't even laugh, as Maea realized that avoiding all those things had turned her into everything she hated.
"... perhaps." Her voice sounded a bit thick, just shy of cracking. "They're... not wrong, though. I used to think I was tolerant, open to different views. But I'm really not. And I kind of hate that. Caring is fine, but not if it makes me into a bigot." What did it say about her that she cared more for the nameless stranger than the person right in front of her? That the faceless masses were granted more clemency than one who claimed to use his darkness to protect and serve the community?
Rubbing the spot between her eyebrows, Maea cast an inward glance at the many huddled reflections of herself, spread across the internal landscape like a garden of statues twisted into poses of defense and rejection. All cowering and caught up in their own twisted versions of truth, unable to perceive how ivy slowly threatened to choke every path until none remained.
"I want to do better..." she sighed, frustrated by the lack of a clear path to the end she wished to reach.
Maea
// They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter //
