007. Text // shoot here and the world gets smaller

[manufactured]

This month certainly has been interesting so far, hasn't it. Joanne - I know you're not going to reply, dear heart, but you might want to place a moratorium on calling things "exciting" for the next short while, seeing as apparently it just curses the entire situation.

Though perhaps I'm biased in some way; after all, my body doesn't exactly play nicely with fire anymore.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one for bolstering one's spirit; either you'll find your own fortitude in times like this or you won't, and bluntly put the direction you choose to take is of very little consequence to me. However, that isn't to say that it doesn't hold my interest; whether you've run screaming into the flames or avoided them, my question is one of progress. Not physical, as I have no doubt that we'll receive updates on whether what we're doing is truly enough or not – but rather internal.

Consider it a question of morale, I suppose. How we're holding up, how things are looking for the days to come. Whether we all hate ourselves a little less, if that's the sort of thing you have to report.

If nothing else, it seems an acceptable concern to have at the moment.

[...That is literally the most stilted "how is everyone doing, hope you're all having a happy crisis and not literally dying in a fire" that has ever been written, but you know what, it's going to have to work for now.]

Comments

[frostythehitman]

a reason i died or a reason dying didn't stick?

[manufactured]

The latter.

[frostythehitman]

i don't know the specifics because i was kind of dead at the time
but apparently after i died i got picked up by the soviets
and they managed to bring me back from death or something
or mostly, anyway
my arm was gone and my brain was all messed up but aside from that i was alive again

[manufactured]

People can live through some interesting things, I suppose, for a given degree of living through them. And the possibility for resuscitation borders on ridiculous at times. After all, there's a reason people say that you're not properly dead until you're warm and dead.

[frostythehitman]

that sounds like the exact motto they must've operated on
because they also kept putting me in deep freeze storage for years at a time and then defrosting me whenever they needed me again
you'd think that'd kill someone too but hey
like you said
cold and dead =/= warm and dead

[ He almost says "are you sure you didn't work for them" as part of this but HA HA that seems a little too on the nose considering the dream he still remembers of being strapped to a lab table at Albert's mercy!! C8 ]

[manufactured]

If you hadn't explicitly said it was the Soviets, I would honestly wonder if you'd come across my former employers. They were somewhat like that on the human rights front.

[...So, I mean. Just saying.]

[frostythehitman]

[ oh well that explains that dream then. Also: COOL. THAT'S COOL. YUP. ]

what kind of stuff did they do

[manufactured]

The politest way to put it is "unorthodox weapons development."

[frostythehitman]

yeah that sounds about right
why did you work for them

[manufactured]

Because I was one of the people they experimented on.

[frostythehitman]

[ The same reason Bucky did, then. It makes James wonder about everyone else in Department X. Were the scientists who froze and brainwashed him guinea pigs themselves? How deep does it go? ]

is that why you couldn't die except from a combo of lava and a bunch of rockets

[manufactured]

Technically. They didn't do that directly to me; they just made me believe it was a splendid idea to do it to myself.

[frostythehitman]

ugh
of course they did
it's so much easier to keep someone on a leash if they think they chose to put it on themselves
it really does sound like our "employers" knew each other

[manufactured]

I wasn't a terribly pleasant person myself, mind. After a while I saw fit to take up their mantle of my own accord.

But not before I destroyed them, both personally and completely.

[frostythehitman]

[ now this gives James pause. On the one hand, 'taking up their mantle of his own accord' sounds like doing horrible things without even needing to be coerced. On the other hand, destroying the people who manipulated him sounds very good in James's book. In fact, he hopes someday he'll remember doing the same. ]

so what do you think about him/other-yourself then

[manufactured]

In several ways, he disgusts me. There's no forgiving what he did, as well there shouldn't be; there's no excuse for it, and any good he may have done in destroying those who harmed him is invalidated by everything he spent his life doing.

Ultimately, however, I think I pity him for the lack of choice he had in the matter, seeing as it informed everything he did. He deserved to die and I hesitate to sympathize, but I can't hate him. So pity it is, I suppose.

[frostythehitman]

that's pretty forgiving

[manufactured]

I have to be able to live with myself somehow.

[frostythehitman]

[ God, if that ain't the fucking truth. They just go about it in different ways, he supposes. ]

is that all it takes to be able to live with yourself

[ It sounds judgey, but he means it genuinely--James can't fathom doing something like this himself. Just...thinking about it and deciding to pity the guy and call that enough to assuage his guilt. He asks partly because he's curious if that's as far as it goes for Albert, and partly because if it does go further, maybe it's something that can help James better too. ]

[manufactured]

If you want the nice answer, it works well enough. I haven't forgiven him but I've tried to make peace with the situation; I've found things worth living for in this life, and it isn't fair to myself to deny myself of the opportunity or the ability to live fully in this life because of what I did in my past life.

If you want the honest answer, however - I still haven't found a way to make the constant awareness that I deserve to die for what I've done subside. The fact that it was in my past life and not this one honestly matters very little to me; countless lives were destroyed because of what I've done, and no matter how I've changed or what has happened in the time since then, I don't deserve to forget that. I don't believe I deserve the second chance I've been given, and I've told Retrospec in exactly as many words that once they're done restoring my world they're welcome to destroy me if they so choose, because I'll have no further purpose and perhaps the act of restoring the world in this life can serve as at least partial atonement for everything I did to it in my past life.

I think the reality of the situation is that I know that if I were to die, or remain guilt-laden and self-flagellating for the rest of my life here, however long that life may be - it isn't going to change anything that happened in my past life. It won't bring anyone back, it won't fix anyone's lives, and it won't make anything better. The most that may happen is that I'll die on behalf of a world that will neither know nor care that I died in the first place. For now, I just settle with the knowledge that if that world can be restored, I'll do so. If certain people from my world turn up alive here, I believe they have a right to decide what happens to me beyond that point, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, I have people that would apparently be very upset with me if I died, and I see no need to cause them pain for no reason other than I decided I couldn't handle living with the memories of things I technically didn't do.

[frostythehitman]

huh
i didn't think about the part where we're technically restoring our worlds
i guess that is one way to make up for the crap we pulled when we were actually part of them

you're real open about all this

[ He says, as if James didn't ask for it, or isn't pretty open about his own BS too. ]

[manufactured]

I see no reason to not be, at this point.

[frostythehitman]

i guess not
not much point in hiding it when all the reasons worth doing that are on some other dead world

[manufactured]

Of course.

In my own case, I also believe it to be only fair to allow people to know, given how objectionable my past deeds tend to run.

[frostythehitman]

even though you're not actually him and didn't actually do those things?

[ Which is a bit of a devil's advocate question--James doesn't fully believe it himself but he wants to hear how Albert would respond. ]