AmaLIa
shield of safrin
Remember that Amalia has grown in a bubble. Life is hard here, to be certain, with its own opponents and trials to face. There are countless deaths and fewer killings, but the Shield has never known war.
So when she says she can love a soldier, that soldier is an idea. A combatant, yes, but ideological, fighting for something intangible and moral, not for blood and sweat and land. The reality of a soldiers life is something she has no concept of, no way to reconcile.
She knows he has killed, has slaughtered in the name of others. She has always known, but the knowledge stayed tucked beneath the good that he has done: for her, for this place, for their friends. It isn't the words, then, that surprise her, but the things he doesn't say. The satisfaction, the pleasure, the lack of remorse or guilt. It sends a shiver down her spine, distracting her wholly from the horror of Adam and focusing her on the horror of him.
There is a mounting tension in Amalia's body as Deimos shares his sins. Her eyes, so recently unfocused, lock back upon his form. They slip to scars she once admired, now tinted red with truth. She wonders: which dying soldier left that upon him? Whose life did he trade for, to gain this other?
Did he enjoy it, watching them die?
She tells herself it doesn't matter, that it was then and now is now. That the man he was and the man he is are not one of the same. She might have believed it, too, might have overcome the horror of enlightenment, had it not been for his final statement: I would do them all again. Amalia's mouth dries at this, her throat clenching in disbelief.
There is no attempt to hide the shock and unhappiness from her face, the utter inability to reconcile this information with the man she has come to love. The man she has promised to marry-
"What circumstances?" she whispers, croaks, desperate to find something that makes sense, a lifeline to cling to in the drowning sea of truth.
So when she says she can love a soldier, that soldier is an idea. A combatant, yes, but ideological, fighting for something intangible and moral, not for blood and sweat and land. The reality of a soldiers life is something she has no concept of, no way to reconcile.
She knows he has killed, has slaughtered in the name of others. She has always known, but the knowledge stayed tucked beneath the good that he has done: for her, for this place, for their friends. It isn't the words, then, that surprise her, but the things he doesn't say. The satisfaction, the pleasure, the lack of remorse or guilt. It sends a shiver down her spine, distracting her wholly from the horror of Adam and focusing her on the horror of him.
There is a mounting tension in Amalia's body as Deimos shares his sins. Her eyes, so recently unfocused, lock back upon his form. They slip to scars she once admired, now tinted red with truth. She wonders: which dying soldier left that upon him? Whose life did he trade for, to gain this other?
Did he enjoy it, watching them die?
She tells herself it doesn't matter, that it was then and now is now. That the man he was and the man he is are not one of the same. She might have believed it, too, might have overcome the horror of enlightenment, had it not been for his final statement: I would do them all again. Amalia's mouth dries at this, her throat clenching in disbelief.
There is no attempt to hide the shock and unhappiness from her face, the utter inability to reconcile this information with the man she has come to love. The man she has promised to marry-
"What circumstances?" she whispers, croaks, desperate to find something that makes sense, a lifeline to cling to in the drowning sea of truth.
you can't choose what stays
and what fades away
and what fades away
