I'm Just A Soul Whose Intentions Are Good | Video| OTA

[ushahin]

[The first thing is that the phone has been propped between two branches on a tree in the orchard. Ushahin needs both hands for the task at hand. He's trying to peel a piece of fruit that has a bright purple skin on it. The problem is that if he tries to use his good hand to peel, his bad one can't hold onto it firmly enough, so it falls. If he tries to use his bad hand to peel while his good hand holds, his crippled fingers don't have enough force to break the skin. He'll be trying both methods alternately as he speaks in his usual soft tone.]

I was thinking tonight. A dangerous pastime, to be certain, but what I was thinking was this. How many of us who have been brought here are good? [He pauses, trying to get his nails under the skin, and he fails.]

I would ask how many of you here think you are a good person but-- [And there goes the fruit again, falling out of his bad left hand. He sighs and picks it back up.] --I don't think many of us have that high of a opinion of ourselves. I know I don't. [He's shattered too many minds and killed far too many people to think he's still got a soul anywhere close to being pure.]

So I will ask this. How many of you think those who are here with you are good people? Your family and friends, how many of them are good souls? [The fruit slips from his grasp once again.]

Damn. [He's given up trying to do this the nice, neat way. He ends the video by using his good hand for support, then biting down into the peel, and using his teeth to tear it partially off. It's not the most dignified method of being able to peel the fruit, but at this point, he's too stubborn to give up.]

Comments

[ushahin]

Well, you certainly can't.

[Sorry, Sharon. He had to get that dig in considering how she treated him and Fetch last time they met.]

For me, it's when actions meet words and thoughts. So many people start off with good intentions and get lost along the way.

[unitas]

Oh, you fucking wound me. [ She mocks the dig, but it did sting. She used to be a good person; Sharon had been a good person, Alessa, too, so long ago. ]

To me, good and bad is all about your perspective. The villain of the story is the hero in another.

[ushahin]

And what do you consider yourself to be, hmm? Hero or villain? [His eyes glitter brightly, and for a moment, something leaves them with a lack of sanity coloring their gaze. He knows what lurks inside her mind far better than most her do. He sees a ring of people burning to death and a church filled with barbed wire filleting souls to pieces.]

[unitas]

I'm whatever it takes to save my father. [ Villain. Hero. It doesn't matter. She's just a girl who loves her dad more than she loves herself or the world. ]

[ushahin]

Ah, love.

[He nods wisely. Familial love is something he knows quite well. His family was all dead now, but Ushahin knew he would destroy everything around him if he had even the slightest chance of seeing their faces again. He'd also seen how love could poison a person, turning their thoughts wicked and cruel for the sake of one they cared about. His cousin Tanaros had loved his wife above all else. When she had betrayed him, his heart had turned to stone.]

It is a two-edged sword. It will either show the best in a person or make them sink to depths otherwise unimaginable.

[unitas]

Yeah, it kind of is. [ And she knows exactly what route it will take her down. She's already done some unspeakably terrible things, what's a few more for the sake of someone you care for? ]

[ushahin]

If you could have done anything differently, would you? Or would you stay the same course to save the one you love?

[The Ellyl are fond of asking the question of what-if, going so far as to have a power based around seeing the alternate paths a life might have taken. Ushahin always disdained such a power, having never looked back at his life wondering. Now, though, he wonders if he could have saved his family had he done something different.]

[unitas]

I wouldn't have created Sharon. [ That wouldn't fix the things Alessa's done, but it would have saved the people she's cared for—or would have cared for. The men and women of Silent Hill, of the Order, deserved their suffering, and she wouldn't take that back. Ever. Even if it meant she'd never suffer. Alessa had just been one girl, but these people did it on a regular basis; a joyous celebration to watch the innocent burn in the name of their god. ]

[ushahin]

How did that work exactly? Dividing one into two? [Just because he'd ransacked her mind didn't mean he understood everything he saw.] I have seen much in my time, but never anything quite like that. Or quite like you, for that matter.

[unitas]

Nobody has ever seen anything quite like me. [ It's not some proud statement, just a depressingly honest one. She's not even sure what she is or why she is or how she is or what it all means, if anything. ]

Sharon wasn't the first one, she was the second. I was three, not just two. [ A pause. She's not a big fan on discussing certain aspects of her abilities, if only because she knows and understands so little about them herself. ] And it took suffering. A great deal of suffering. A soul does not break apart easily.

[ And it does not come back together again easily, either. ]

[ushahin]

[Ushahin listens, his eyes growing wide, one of his pupils staying fixed in its shattered state. He's never heard of a soul being able to split itself before. But here she is, with immense power at her fingertips, so it must be true.]

There is power in the number three. Immense power, yes. [Six gods in his world, a division of three. Three created to oppose the dark god Satoris and three he had summoned for his own, one of them being Ushahin.] Suffering will always cause something great and terrible to happen, especially when it is done to the innocent. How do you think I came upon these powers of mine?

[Scared, alone, and hurting, his mother had been the first to show him the way. He knew he would live, if for no other reasons than to grow and spite those that wished him dead. When the time came to take revenge, he showed no mercy.]

[unitas]

Numbers had nothing to do with it. [ The first time had been an accident—no, not an accident, but rather an unconscious response to severe trauma; an entity born from desperation, despair, and fury. The second time had been much more deliberate, after years of consideration and exploration of her abilities; she'd wanted to be a little girl again, to be innocent, and loved, and free.

Freedom, though, has, and probably always will, elude her.

But he mentions his powers, and she frowns. ] So, you weren't born with them?

[ushahin]

[He has to disagree with her there. Numbers form a pattern and Ushahin seeks to see the pattern in everything. It all means something here in this strange place, even if he can't tell what that is just yet.]

No. The potential was always there, but they were unlocked, like yours, through trauma and madness and rage. No Man or Ellyl was ever meant to wield them, for they were the gifts of the Were alone. They would have driven a lesser being insane, but I already was, so it didn't matter. I learned, so that no one could hurt me ever again.

[And indeed, he'd never allowed anyone to ever hurt him again, at least in the physical sense. He'd chosen to be an outcast, to serve his god Satoris, rather than seek to belong to races that had chosen to cast him out for an accident of birth that was beyond his control.]

[unitas]

[ Sharon can see the similarities between the two of them, but she does not like them, and very nearly refuses to accept them. She bites back a retort, a not like mine, and goes another route. ]

But you're here, Ushahin, where the only thing that can ever be certain is that you will get hurt.

[ She says the words gently as if revealing to him a horrible truth. This is the lesson she's learned in her time here. ] Again, and again.

[ushahin]

[Ushahin shakes his head, blonde hair falling into his eyes. He knows what she speaks is the truth. It doesn't make it any easier to bear.]

Child, the worst that could possibly happen to me has already come and gone. I lost everything and everyone that I ever cared about. No matter what happens to me here, it is merely another drop in the bucket of my pain.

[unitas]

[ His response garners a quiet, dark chuckle. He may be centuries older than her but it seems there are some lessons she's learned that he has yet to. ]

No matter how much you've suffered, pain is still pain. Every little bit hurts and adds to the weight of the pain before it. You can never escape it, no matter how powerful you are.

[ushahin]

Then enjoy your misery, for we are both bound to experience much while we are here. Speaking to you, sometimes I think you enjoy holding onto it.

[Ushahin had feared nothing when he had first come here, but now after growing close to people, he fears their loss greatly. Someday, they will all leave him, through getting out of this place or just dying of old age.]

[unitas]

Don't we all cling to the familiar? [ It's far more familiar to her than anything else she's experienced in life. Pain is power and the more power she has, the more likely she can have her vengeance, get home, save her dad. ]

[ushahin]

Indeed we do. For you, it is misery and anger. For me, it is pain and madness.

[He clung to his insanity like a shield, using it to deflect what encroached around his mind, threatening to tear him to pieces and leave him ruined. He'd never give it up, for his powers could only be wielded at their full potential by a madman. They had shaped and warped him into who he was, leaving behind the man that he could've been otherwise.]

[unitas]

What a bleak future we have, then. [ Sadly, bitterly. There are no happy endings, and the world is shit, and she will never amount to more than what was done to her. ]

[ushahin]

[She sounds so sad and it makes his heart hurt. Despite how antagonistic his relationship with Sharon can be, he doesn't honestly approach the girl with malice when he usually talks to her. Ushahin never means to hurt those around him, but so often, he does.]

Cheer up, dear child. We have one thing that still remains to us.

[unitas]

And what would that be? [ She asks, tone even now and empty. ]

[ushahin]

Hope, Sharon. There is always hope.

[Coming from anyone else, the words might seem trite and cliché, but Ushahin means them sincerely.]

[unitas]

[ She laughs, sudden, a gasping sound of disbelief. Oh, hope. ]

Yeah, yeah, sure, we have hope. [ which is to say that she has none. or if she does have any, she's buried it away. there is no hope in this place. ]

[ushahin]

[He frowns and shakes his head at her. Such cynicism. Not that it's entirely unwarranted in her case, but still, it doesn't make for a good mindset.]

Believe me or not. But I do think there is a time when you will be glad to have it.