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hadriel2017-08-19 11:08 pm
Dictation - 6 [Text]
[Rosen has now been in the cave going on 7 months. He's marked out the time on his laptop, little digits scribbled here and there between his thoughts and observations. 7 long months and as he scrolls through his records, inconsistent as they are due to the lapses in his mental capacity over the past few months, he finds certain reoccurring issues. Most are to be expected, issues of loneliness, fear, and an overwhelming sense of uselessness. However, there are others. Ones that keep him awake late into the night. One's that linger in the way he chews at the corner of his mouth or the way he uncomfortably flexes his fingers.
Prominent among those that he can't help but pick at like an annoying scab is the question of killing. A question that has always dogged him in his very specific line of work and now weighs heavily on his thoughts once again. It is not a coincidence that only a few days earlier a certain friend of his appeared in the clinic wounded and that this same friend subsequently posted to the network asking about the procurement of more bullets for his gun, a weapon that had been implicated as part of the problem in the events that lead to his injuries.
Lee also hasn't forgotten a certain conversation he had with this same friend weeks earlier, a conversation during which Lee had hoped to convince them to use an alternative and less deadly form of self-defense. Rosen's hopes had inevitably been dashed and though he's tried to let that go, the thoughts that had driven him then are still festering now.
So now he types out a question, having decided to pose it to the cave as a whole.]
no subject
I'm Abigail. Curiosity does make people do all kinds of things. So, you're being purely hypothetical?
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By 'am I being hypothetical' I assume you are trying to ask whether or not I have ever personally taken a life and is that why I am asking? In all honesty I am asking because the question of killing and whether it can ever be justified is one that has troubled me for the whole of my life. The reason why I am hesitant to give you my personal opinion is simply that I fear giving my personal opinion may skew the answers I get to my question.
If you are willing to give me your answer to my question, I will, in the spirit of fairness, return the favor should you still be interested in knowing my own views on the matter.
no subject
It's not an easy question to answer.
I was say that for most, it can be justified to kill to survive or for self-defense or to save someone else's life.
And then there are others, that aren't like most. People who kill when there isn't an immediate threat. Like someone killing the person who's abused them for a long time. Or people who might even be brainwashed into killing, made to believe they had no other choice. I don't know about justified, but it's understandable. They're victims too.
Then there are people with an entirely different way of thinking than everyone else. The ones that get labelled mentally ill. How do we know what's justified with someone we don't understand?
no subject
[Rosen says this ambiguously, as those he will not throw his lot in one way or the other. It is his professional pokerface]
Thank you for answering so thoroughly, Abigail. I do appreciate it.
no subject
[Private][Video]
My honest answer? I've never come across a situation where I feel taking a life is 100% justified.
[Private][Video]
Or you've never been in that situation?
no subject
no subject
no subject
[He smiles half-heartedly]
I assure you its nothing of that sort. Just something I still feel quite sick over, and I would appreciate it not becoming common knowledge.
[Lee swallows a bit awkwardly]
About a year ago I took a life. I had been kidnapped by a cult, a man, um, a priest more specifically, had a sort of ability to make people have visions, but this ability was also making these people very sick. They were dying one by one. He thought kidnapping me might save their lives but when I tried to tell him that these people needed medicine, medical intervention, he refused. He said it was better for them to die having glimpsed heaven, or what he convinced them was a glimpse of heaven when in reality it was more like a hallucination, than to be saved with medicine. It became very chaotic but somehow a fire broke out in the building. The priest refused to let anyone save themselves, once again arguing that it would be better to die in the pursuit of their faith than be spared. There was no time left to find an alternative option, so I took hold of a gun that had been dropped nearby and I shot. I killed him. It was not my aim to do so, I had hoped to get him in the leg, but I had no prior experience with firearms and I missed, getting him directly in the chest.
[He exhales]
To this day i cannot make peace with what I did. Even though many people assure me that it was the only option open to me at the time, I cannot make peace with that.
no subject
You can consider what the alternative would have been, if you hadn't acted. People trapped in the fire could have died. The fire could have spread.
[She pauses, thinking of what she can say without giving away too much of her past and the things she's done.]
My Dad was a bad man. He did horrible things. He killed many people, including my mother and then he cut my throat. Someone killed him to save my life. Afterwards the man who saved me said killing him was the ugliest thing in the world. But I didn't see it that way. He saved my life. He stopped my dad from killing anyone else.
Sometimes I wish my Dad had been killed sooner. So my mom wouldn't have died. So that my dad's other victims wouldn't have died. He was my dad and I loved him, but he was like a spreading fire, causing death and pain.
[She loved him and she wishes she had killed him, before he became the shrike. So she could remember her as her dad and nothing else. She can't expect anyone to understand that, other than Hannibal and maybe Will.]
Even with your priest dead and my dad dead, there will be other bad things. All we can do is survive.
no subject
Thank you, Abigail. For being so honest with me.
[His expression turns distant, thoughtful]
I wish I had something better to say in this moment than 'I am so very sorry for what you have gone through.' But I am sorry for it. No person, let alone someone so young, should have suffered in such a way.
no subject
I'm sorry for what you went through too.
no subject