Colors of War, Chapter 10a: Killing Me Softly
La Contresiera is dead, truly dead. It's been on the decline for years now, almost as long as I've been alive… it would have fallen eventually… Shinra just made it happen faster, that's all…
So why is my chest so tight? Why do my eyes burn and my throat squeeze up?
What… is this… in my eyes?
Is this… tears?
Is this feeling… sadness?
No… Uncle Iri… calls it 'regret'…
Regret for the soaring towers, regret for the yearning that stretched up into the sky, regret for the petty nobles who will never again play another round of their honor Game. Regret that I had a hand in silencing the city that never slept for fear of never waking up again.
'Regret'….huh…
I am… a Turk… my hand is raised on behalf of the one who commands my services… it's all I know… the fighting… I think if I ever stopped fighting, I would be indeed dead… But…
But…
Turks… are no one's pawns.
We accept contracts… and how we carry them out is our own choice… Did Frank Shinra tell Uncle Iri to extinguish every life in this burgeoning, overcrowded vista? Did they tell him that to his face…?
Because… this is a great… what do the Wutai people call it?
A great 'shame'… yeah, that's the word…
'Honor'… Most people don't think Turks have it… not even the Wutai, our closest cousins the ninja… maybe it's the way we do the things we have to? Or our ways of doing them? I… have my own 'honor'… the thing I absolutely swore I would not do… but haven't I done it here, now?
My shame is stamped all over this smoking, crushed ruin. Shinra's weapons crumbled the walls, but it was we who aimed them, we who pulled the triggers. We cut the throats of the people, we poured poison into their food and drink, we cut them down as they tried to fight for their lives… man… woman…and….
Those tiny hands… the hands reached up to me as I…
I…
This shame… Our shame… will not die…
Because I will carry its memory with me into the era that Shinra builds. I will remind them in word and deed… over and over… what we did. The Turks will be feared, as we have always been. And never again will we obliterate an entire people… never again will small reaching hands be bared to a naked blade.
This I swear.
Even if I have to kill Uncle Iri…
Even if I have to kill Shinra itself…
Even if the Turks depend on it.
Never, forever.
**
Author's note: I felt really sorry for the people Dia slaughtered in the last chapter, so this is my stand-in eulogy for them. The quote 'Never, forever' comes from Diane Duane's So You Want To Be A Wizard, a quote used to describe the 'Starsnuffer', the Death of Planets. (No, it's not a pun and it's not literary collusion- I just thought the things sounded really cool!)
No, I'm not going to write an explanation of Dia's actions. I'd rather analyse my work critically after I finish writing it, thanks.
Yawn,
Akishira
Sorry for ranting. I'm just tired, and Dia's wearing me out. Hrrrr.
(Thanks to SepSora! Again! Because Seppy reviews! Yay!)