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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[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.]

[Probably better, that way, in the long run. Deaths, the kind that weren't accidental, and were direct, tended to change your relationship with the world, and yourself, and everything. Not all of those ways benefited you, really.]

The ones who don't know what they're fighting for...[Slowly, Arno nods.] And probably the largest number of those to die still come from there. It can be hard to find the right side, can't it?

If there is one.

I suppose that it depends, no?

I suppose, yeah.

I used to think there was no such thing. I picked a side because they were the ones willing to give me money, and my family needed to eat. But when I came here, I think I started to learn what War could really be like.

[Still awful. Still full of unimaginable suffering and loss. But also that faint, dim glimmer of hope. Those fleeting times in between battle where you're reminded of what you're fighting for. War was War, and yet...it was actually better here, if that were possible.]

Oh? What's that?

[Arno's eyebrow is a little quizzical as he peers at her, curious as to her definition of what that is. If he'd been here, he'd think, maybe, that it was war in a place that had some hope to it, but even Arno's not going to be cynical enough to SUGGEST it, straightaway. It's a thought, though.]

Something...not completely pointless.

[So, in a way, his suspicion was right.]

I barely remember what everybody back home was fighting for any longer. Here...it was important. There were genuinely bad people trying to take everything away. Even the kedan's freedom of thought. They had to be stopped.

Not completely pointless. I think that's as good a goal as any.

[Arno knows the feeling himself, that idea of searching for meaning. Important indeed, and he counts himself lucky ,again, to have missed the war, though his gaze sparks at the last bit.]

Taking away their... My God, that is repulsive. Free thought must never be suppressed, or manipulated. Humanity HAS to make their own decisions. Err...Kedanity? Either way, it's the lowest form of low, to take that from someone. I am rather glad you won.

[She could only nod in agreement to that.]

Yeah.

So am I.

So, what DO those of you who lived through that do here now?

Aside the obvious, but it seems like it must be...

[He's frowning, since the root of the question is really about something else anyway, and he knows that.]

How does one come back to their life after so much has changed?

That depends on the person, I suppose.

[She glanced back, even though there was nobody there. Seeing outward, past the walls of the room, to the groups of people no doubt wandering the streets. Some familiar, some not so much. All of them different in their own way.]

I'm used to change. Before I came to Keelai, I was with a traveling group of soldiers. We never stayed in one place for too long because it was dangerous. [Because of people like her.] And...even after that, things never stayed the same for too long. Some people lost part of their houses in attacks. Some people simply moved to join with new people they recognized from home. Others moved because their friends had left....

Change is inevitable, really. All you can do is try to keep up.

[Arno didn't question the glance. He had his own version of it after all, though most of what he looked at was beyond this particular place and world, where he himself had been someone else. Someone different. Here...whatever he's becoming, it feels different too.]

A lot changed at home, for me, too, very quickly. I suppose I had my constants until here, or some sort of constant anyway. And we never had to leave so far as to not lay down some roots.

[Those had helped, Arno realized now, even as he thought about the cringeworthy things he had seen grace the stage at the Cafe Theatre. It had still been HIS place, and the patrons and workers there HIS people in a sense.

The Assassins had been another of those constants for him. There had always been something to be done, or someone to practice with, or catch an off the job drink, even if you weren't close friends. Here, well, he had SHAY, obviously, weird as that situation was to him, but Arno had just come to realize how on his own he was.

The letter had emphasized that.]

Someone told me lately that all that we are, all that we have been, is within ourselves. I suppose, that we are meant to be the only constants in our own lives. Maybe that's true, but I don't much like it. I don't do well when the chance puts me alone.

Maybe that's what bothers me, the idea I can't.

[She gave a somewhat amused, ironic smile, subtly motioning towards the necklace resting against her collarbone. Specifically, the gem within.]

Maybe they used to be...but I'm not so sure that's true anymore.

[If one didn't know better, they'd think she was making a joke.]

...I've also found it's incredibly hard to be truly alone here. And, believe me, I've tried.

No? [He's following the gaze, then looking down for a moment at the blood red stone on his finger, slipping it off to look at the branded insignia underneath it, before he slides it back on all the way.]

Maybe you have a point. Shay, my friend, had his stolen a while back, and seemed to fade away before my eyes before it was located and returned to him. He was becoming something like a shell.

[Arno had been disturbed then, before Shay had been more than Someone To Watch. Carefully. The thought of it now, now that he knows Shay, and has started to understand a little more about how the man works, is even worse, somehow.]

So, not entirely alone, if we count these things. I'm not sure I'm fond of that idea.

[Midii visibly frowned at the mentioning of the gem thefts. They had gone on for a while. Months, even, from the very first public announcement of one missing up until relatively recently. It was perhaps a rare stroke of luck on her part that she had never been a target.]

There is that, too, but...

That's not what I meant. I was talking about the people. The other Foreigners.

[Arno considers himself really lucky that he hadn't been involved in those as a victim,as well. He's also still a little ashamed he was kind of an ass (kind of? More like a major one) to Shay then, even if they still had been close to enemies at that point.

He blinks at what she has to say at that though, a teasing smile darting across his lips.]

Really? So hard to get away from others, then?

Some of them have a way about them.

[She might be thinking of a few in particular.]

I'll have to keep that in mind.

[What he'll use it for is anyone's guess.]

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