tushanshu | [video]

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[The young girl had waited for some time. Watching. Listening. She noticed a certain trend among her fellow foreigners--one that she had yet to become a part of. And as the weeks past and she still had yet to join their ranks...]

[She didn't even bother attempting a smile as she turned the camera on.]

A lot of people have been talking about those letters.

But...what do you think it means if you didn't get one?

[It was almost a rhetorical question at this point; she might not have known for certain, but she could wager a guess.]

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And making you believe in things you would never have thought possible, either.

[Like magic. And now time travel.]

It's...a little scary sometimes. Realizing how much about the world you don't know.

There's a truth if I ever heard one.

Sentient turtles alone...

...It can be, yes. Wondering what might be next.

...frog princes?

[Somebody was vaguely familiar with certain childhood fairy tales. Not many, but enough for a weak attempt at a joke.]

Frog Princes?

[Not a story Arno knows personally, although, another comes to mind, and he smiles.]

I do know a story of a beast prince. My father used to tell it sometimes, when I was small. It was supposed to be about beautiful things not always being beautiful on the outside but I think there might be more to it than that now. Truth being below the surface, maybe? It'd be fitting.

Or, in the case of this, truth being something we have to be open to finding out?

[She knew exactly which story he spoke up the moment he uttered the words beast prince.]

You're talking about La Belle et la Bête.

I know that one too.

I am, yes. It's funny, how it seems to have so much more meaning than the surface, now. There's an irony in that, I'm sure.

Actually...I always thought that was the point.

Appearances are deceiving. Never judge by them alone.

[She would know.]

The physical level of it, yes, I understand that one enough. It just seems that there is...more to an appearance now. More layers of things that can be hidden, that sort of thing.

[Arno smiles there, shrugging a bit.]

Or appearances go deeper than I realized once, that sort of a thing.

[She mirrored his expression. Even chuckling a bit softly. It was...nice to talk about something familiar. Something from home.]

It's a good story, isn't it?

It is, yes.

[Arno smiles there, laughing himself.]

It's fascinating how we can use them to model the things in life that are not always so apparent before our eyes.

And tell them to children.

[Because that was one of her stronger memories. Not being the one she told the stories to...but telling them to her youngest brother, even when he was too little to remember.]

Also that. It's strange. At home, it was mostly the adults who the stories had reached so far. The rich in their salons. It doesn't seem right that way somehow, though they...could probably use the lessons too.

I did enjoy the bits that I was told, very much. It seems better that they're passed on, soon as they can be. And at the hands of someone who knows what he or she is doing too.

[Her brows rose ever so slightly at that. Surprised.]

[Midii knew what it was like to be amongst the poorest of the poor. She also knew that the spoken word was one of the few things in life that was free. Stories were all some people had. The best way to pass long information. Teach lessons.]

That wasn't what it was like back home.

Everybody had stories. Not always the same ones, maybe, but...it was something that even the rich couldn't keep from us.

That makes more sense, your way. Fairer, somehow, that everyone has the chance. It's...a part of what my brotherhood would have wanted. Not in name but that idea...that everyone had a chance at knowing what they needed.

[The brotherhood's taken a LOT from Arno, but he'll give it credit where it's due, it's tried to give everyone a lot more in return for the sacrifices of the Assassins who are willing. And he sees what the Revolution COULD have been, instead of a Templar ploy to establish their puppet order now and that bothers him a bit, that those in power can, and DO, restrict so much, starting out at what seems so basic a level.]

It's...truths isn't it? In stories? They give them value on their own.

Except not all stories are true.

[Sometimes, the truth wasn't the point. Even she would be the first to admit that entertainment value had some importance when it came to certain stories.]

Not in every detail, no.

[Arno's nod is rather uncharacteristically serious at this, thinking of home and what he's come from.]

In Paris, my Paris, they've been trying to establish a government based on too many stories. ...Or lies. Lies is probably the better term to use. Too many people got caught up in what became a mess because of those stories but I think.

There's something about all of us in the stories all the same, humanity, or... I guess I have to use it loosely now. But even if it comes to what we choose or don't choose to believe.

I think some stories, the good ones, help us find the truth, even when it's not what we're directly told.

[Huh. Speaking of those kinds of stories...]

It was the same in my time. I mean, not Paris--[She'd never actually been, despite having traveled all over the Western Eurasia continent with the soldier troops]--and their establishment isn't based on a lie. Not entirely.

[An age of technology where Hiro Yui's assassination was not only public knowledge, but irrefutable in and of itself.]

Most of us don't really care about that story, though. We just...wanted to survive.

[Actually, as it comes to that, Arno can identify a bit. The templars and assassins represent worldviews, after all. It's more what happens when they get into practice.]

I can see why you would. It's the same a lot of places, that way. People just...wanting to get along with living, right? It makes sense.

[With the living.]

[A...strange way to phrase it, but true. For a long time, that's exactly what it had felt like. Putting her life on hold. Trying to "get along" just long enough to get the job done. Until she didn't have to get along anymore...because they were no longer living.]

More like a lot of times.

Most of which seem to take place somewhere in France. I don't like coincidences, but this one seems too common to ignore.

[Arno's life experiences had never really gotten to that point, at least. At his lowest, the assassins had been his family, his brothers, and his experience of all of this was as an outsider to that world, but he'd seen it written on faces. The women who marched for bread, the crowds responsible for getting him out of the Bastille were fighters, outside of the ordinary, but so many others had had to fight for so much less of the pie, and it was no less important that they'd done it, no less to be valued. Mostly.

He suspected Victor and Hugo hadn't much fought for anything like survival and sort of just ambled on through, but others...It was different, far different, beyond Versailles and the safety of the cafe-theatre. And it should be acknowledged, even if there wasn't much of a way to really fix it.

As far as coincidences...]

Wonder why that is, with us? Are we drawn to repeat tragedy? The democracy that wasn't?

Hmm...

Too many revolutions.

[Too many necessary revolutions, to be specific. She wasn't even joking.]

The only different is that they get bigger with time. With Eponine and Enjorlas, it sounded like it was just France. But, in my time...literally the whole world was fighting with the Space Colonies. It never ends.

Then there've been a lot more.

[Arno sighs, feeling...really tired and old, suddenly.]

I was assigned to deal with a merchant who was controlling the grain supply. She was in charge of making sure that some was lost, to drive up the price of bread and inspire the desire for a change...that would usher in the new realm of madness when the other side got to the top.

It's so...grotesque now.

[Arno's killed, he's seen heads rolling, but the idea of that job alone disturbs him more than a good deal many other things ever COULD. ]

...In time I suppose it would have to create a counter revolution, against what Robespierre's doing. And I know we go back to a king for years upon years...

It's not the damned king that's the problem is it? Or whoever happens to be in charge. It's the ones who benefit the most, and that's not ever anyone who needs it.

The entire world and whole colonies. Mon dieu...

What must it be like, to live with that? I thought MY life was full of uncertainties.

[Her entire expression went...dull. Not quite blank--in fact, in anything, there might have been a hint of shadow to it--but it was clear she was trying her hardest to put on a poker face.]

I...had to do a lot of bad things. A lot of kids did.

Mama was gone. Papa was sick. None of my brothers were old enough to fully understand what was happening. And I remember...I wasn't the only one in the same position.

[Arno thought, for a moment, of the letter from the future he had gotten. It had mentioned a boy, Leon, who could be a help to him if he let him. He'd not thought about that bit of information, really, until now, with the experience mirrored in Midii's face.

She looked older, more than older, weighed down by her experiences there, that it was crushing to look at. Another old before her time, like the girls marching on Versailles balancing siblings on their hips beside their mothers, faces pinched with hunger, and with something more than that wanting as well. He'd never put his finger on what that essential thing was.

And then, there was her story, that he'd asked to hear, and so he listened. Arno's look turned from simply serious to moved, even vague as she probably must keep her details. He had been so much older, an adult, properly, when he'd properly killed for the first time, not in the midst of chaos, but a carefully planned out assassination, and been sick after, while Bellec snorted at him in the background, muttering critique over the sound of his retching. And he had been an adult.

For someone so much younger... for children...]

It seems we always fail in the same way when we try fixing things, and the wrong people suffer.

War hurts more than the soldiers, doesn't it?

[If nothing else, though, there was always one Truth Midii could fall back on whenever attempting to justify her past actions: she had never killed anything.]

[...well, not directly. The blood on her hands was a direct result of her actions, yes, but she'd never pulled a single trigger in her life.]

Yes.

Although... [And she was remiss to admit it, no matter how true it was from her perspective.] ...soldiers are still usually the first ones to die. Especially the ones that don't know what they're really fighting for. Or whose side they should be on.

[All these years later, and she could still picture those moments shortly after Nanashii took out the troop traitors. Hear the explosions in the distance as their mobile suits exploded. See the blank look on his face, as if he hadn't just killed people who had helped raise him.]

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