The dark of the light...
One asked how I could forgive, after so many years of ridicule.
The light of the darkness...
The other asked how I could forgive him, when I could've told the world of his darkest hour. How I could forgive the boy-man who tortured me.
Neither...
They don't understand how much time I've had to think it over.
The pain is gone and the scars it left have no meaning, other than to remind me that life is precious even at its worst.
Both...
I tell them that it's probably because I learned to forgive him a long time ago.
But...
Everyone accepts that, but him. He knows what he did to me. He calls my explanation bullshit.
We...
I tell him that I've reminisced on our years.
They...
In first year, when he so rudely suggested that some people are better than others, I was appalled.
Others...
I still am, but not with the confused, eleven year old boy. No. I am appalled with those who would teach him, gullible child, to base his life on such nonsense.
Him...
Rejected by a hero, who all admired though through no feat of his own. Despised for his House. With such glaring prejudice, I'm more impressed than ever that he even came up with the idea of defecting.
Rebel and leader...
He left it all behind, you know.
Humanity itself...
We all fight for what is Good and Right, but the real reason we fight is for friends and family.
Home, loved ones...
I must admit that, faced with an upbringing that emphasized the importance of wealth, power and ancestry, I would have most likely reached out in the same way.
Her-him, him-her...
Shunned and outcast by my peers I would not have had such strength as he showed, in leaving home, family and friends. All the things he had been brought up to believe in.
He rejected the very foundation of hisreality.
The light of the light...
And you wonder why I would forgive him for something as trivial as sprinkling insults at us?
I forgive, because I can't be sure that I would have had the strength to follow such new ideals for such ungrateful people, were I in his stead.
He looks at me sceptically, as if I've hit some sensitive nail on the head. Perhaps not the Nail, but at least it's something.