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edenfallingI skimmed bits of this chapter, mostly for timing reasons, but also because I have serious reservations about what Duo and Sasuke are doing. For thousands of years, torture was an accepted part of human justice systems, and very few people ever questioned it. Today people tend to condemn torture, but the potential is still there, in all of us, and sometimes I wonder how on earth we ever came to the historically strange decision that it is wrong to hurt and humiliate humans in the name of justice and national security. It's one of the most noble ideals we have, and yet it's so easy to slip back down into moral ambiguity.
In a moment of personal synchronicity, I received the winter issue of UU World while I was writing this chapter. One of its main articles is What Torture Has Taught Me, by Rev. William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International USA. I think you should read it, and take a moment to reflect.
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Lemonade
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Part VIII: in which the plot thickens
Faith grabbed a perch on top of the big rock, and tried not to think about what Duo and Sasuke were doing behind her.
Okay, fine, they needed the info, but God... she hadn't let prison teach her patience just so she could dive right back into the dark when opportunity held out a nice shiny apple and reminded her how easy it was to turn off her conscience and just take. She felt like she was betraying Angel's memory.
"Hey stupid -- wake up!" Duo said, sounding altogether too cheerful.
The mojo demon -- Mr. Voodoo, to borrow Duo's nickname -- groaned and mumbled something in an unfamiliar language.
"That didn't sound very nice to me," Duo said. "Did that sound nice to you, Sasuke-kun? I think our friend here needs a lesson in basic courtesy."
Bone snapped.
Did that count as blunt torture if Sasuke did it with his bare hands instead of a poker or a chair leg? If the bone broke the skin, did it become sharp torture? No -- bad thoughts. Faith tapped the hilt of her knife against the rock, setting up a backbeat and then doing her best to drown her memories with the Ramones. Somehow, though, the song kept switching to AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." She skimmed her eyes over the horizon, half wishing for another giant centipede to appear.
"Okay. Now that we have your attention, let me lay out the ground rules." Shoes shifted against the pebbled ground; Duo was pacing back and forth. "One, I ask the questions. Two, you answer the questions. Three, if you don't answer, or if you lie, Sasuke-kun gives you another lesson."
"I'll die before I betray the Brotherhood," Mr. Voodoo said. His voice was raspy, thin with pain.
"Eh, maybe, maybe not. You may have noticed you're not the only guy here who can do magic. My bet? After we pull you back from the edge a couple times, you'll change your tune. So. Tell me about this Brotherhood."
Despite her best efforts, music slipped out of Faith's mind, and she found herself waiting for the demon's answer. Any demon organization with something like 'brotherhood' in its name was probably a cult, and fanatics were a shitload harder to deal with than professionals or idiots out for a simple rampage.
"We will find you, and we will obliterate you. Vengeance is eternal, human!"
"Bzzzt, wrong answer! Sasuke, try a finger."
Something popped and crunched with a liquid edge -- Faith's mind supplied a vivid image of a finger bent backwards, tendons ripping as the skin tore and bones cracked. Mr. Voodoo shrieked.
"I wanna hear you scream," she'd said to Wesley. The words echoed and reechoed in her head, blending with Mr. Voodoo's harsh, panting breaths.
"We know most of your plans already," Duo said, deceptively casual. "Snatch assassins from other worlds, do a mind wipe, rig us up like suicide bombers, and kill your Red Witch. We have your portal keys. What I want to know is why you didn't just hire us? I don't give a shit about your world -- it's no skin off my back to kill a witch. I'm sure Sasuke-kun agrees."
"Yes," said Sasuke. He had a good voice, Faith thought, a little wildly. Deep, for a teenager, and even if he kept it flat most of the time, he could project menace like nobody's business.
"You know, I'm still willing to cut a deal with you," Duo continued, still pacing. "Let bygones be bygones and all that. You work your voodoo and take us to your world, and we'll clean up your little witch infestation... for a reasonable fee, of course. What do you say?"
"You lie. Humans cannot be trusted! The last--" The demon broke off suddenly, and tried to cover with a cough.
"Shi-ne." Something whistled through the air, followed by a meaty sort of thwack. Sasuke, throwing a knife, Faith assumed.
"Hey, calm down, Sasuke-kun," Duo said, followed by something in Japanese. Sasuke grunted, and Duo switched back to English, his voice light and teasing. "It's not nice to hurt our friend, remember? -- especially not when he's starting to get interesting. We save that for when he forgets his manners."
'Our friend.' 'Lessons.' 'Manners.' Doublespeak -- not exactly lies, but skating damn close to the edge. Faith didn't like this side of Duo, or Sasuke. Wesley's face, set and furious, swam in her mind. Angel's dark eyes gazed at her in disappointment.
She had to get the hell out of here before she lost it.
---------------------------------------------
Duo eyed Sasuke thoughtfully, tapping his scythe against the ground. Exactly how much of Sasuke's anger had been an act? If the answer was anything less than 100 percent, they might have trouble later on. Honor and trust. It was something to think about.
But he'd think later. Right now... He prodded the demon with the end of his scythe, touching Mr. Voodoo's shin a bare two inches away from blood and jagged bone.
"Yo, Duo." Faith's was perched sideways on the big rock, looking strained; her fingers shifted back and forth on the hilt of her knife. "I'm gonna do a wide patrol, check the horizon and stuff. You'll be okay without me here, right?"
Sasuke shifted, and Duo reached back to grab his wrist in warning. "Yeah, that's fine. I'm sure we'll have this wrapped up in no time." He smiled at Mr. Voodoo, wide and sharp, and then looked back up at Faith, hoping she could read that he didn't think any worse of her for not having the stomach for this. Hell, he wished he didn't have the stomach for it -- demon or no demon, it was sobering to realize that you could flip a mental switch and turn another thinking being into nothing more than a sack of meat that happened to still be breathing. Knowing that he had to work for that mindset wasn't reassuring.
Faith dredged up a smile up and jumped off the rock. "You boys have fun now. Don't move too fast on my account -- it's been a while since I've played this game, and it might be interesting to see how long it takes me to pick it up again." She leaned down and pinned Mr. Voodoo's eyes. "I don't think you want to play with me."
"She's right, you know," Duo told Mr. Voodoo as Faith strode away. "You're better off with me. So. Let's talk about untrustworthy humans." He let go of Sasuke's arm.
The demon was apparently serious about dying before he betrayed his Brotherhood -- Sasuke had to haul him back twice, once from internal bleeding and once from an attempt to bite through and swallow his own tongue -- but he had no ability to hold his temper, and very poor judgment as to what information was actually important.
An hour later, Duo stepped back and nodded to Sasuke; one quick spell sent Mr. Voodoo into a nice little coma. Duo dragged his sleeve across his face, checking for any spatters of turquoise blood, and reviewed what he'd learned.
1) The Sargul demons wanted revenge on Faith's friend Willow. He wasn't quite clear on what she'd done -- Mr. Voodoo had just babbled about blasphemy and curses -- but apparently it had been a doozy.
2) The Sarguls had tried attacking Willow themselves, and had tried hiring in-world assassins. No dice. Then they'd found a loophole in the witch's warding spells: they kept out Earthly creatures with harmful intent, and non-human extra-dimensional beings, but apparently she'd forgotten that humans also lived in alternate worlds. So they'd summoned an assassin and tried to hire her.
3) The assassin had taken their money and vanished without even trying to attack Willow. She'd also killed the wizard sent to help her, and stolen his portal-opening stone. (Duo wished he could've watched; it must have been beautiful.)
4) Therefore, the Sarguls were trying again, but this time they planned to wipe the assassins' minds, leaving only their skills and a desire to find Willow. The mind wipe would also help them pass the witch's wards -- they wouldn't have harmful intent -- and once they'd closed in, other spells would turn the area into the magical equivalent of a firebombing.
5) The Sarguls didn't know how their portal stones worked. But they needed at least three to open a controlled portal -- otherwise the opals just homed in on each other -- and they'd only had three left when the initial portal had gone wild and dumped Duo, Faith, Sasuke, and their chief wizard in this dimension. They weren't going to stop until they'd gotten their stones back.
6) The demons were too damn incompetent to have blocks up around a whole dimension. So if Faith's estimate of her organization was correct, they just had to wait a few days until someone called in the witch and she zapped them back to Faith's world.
Duo looked at the other Sargul, lying bound and unconscious in the shade. It was sick to think of waking the poor schmuck just to make him scream, especially since officers never told their grunts all the details. Sasuke, crouched by the demon's head, met his gaze impassively. No hint of distaste or conscience visible in those spinning red-and-black eyes -- either Sasuke was halfway to a sociopath, or he had some really good training in emotional compartmentalization, on par with Heero or Trowa.
Duo weighed the options, prodded his danger sense for any hints, and sighed. "We know enough for now -- there's no point questioning him too. Kill the poor bastard."
He flicked his scythe on and cut off Mr. Voodoo's head.
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke wiped turquoise blood off his kunai and scowled. "We could have learned more."
"Maybe," Duo said, touching something on his scythe and making the glowing blade vanish, "but then again, maybe not. In any case, it wasn't worth the time or the effort."
"Maybe that's true, but then again, maybe not," Sasuke quoted back at Duo. He still wanted to know the theory behind magical portals -- there must have been a reason why he'd never heard of portals before, and if conditions had changed so his world was suddenly accessible to them, he needed to know. He also wanted to know the witch's specific offense; after all, he might agree that it needed redressing. But Faith had left rather than face their captives, and now Duo had turned squeamish. "Why does questioning bother you so much?"
Duo glanced up, eyes sharp under his bangs. "Just because I know how to walk in the dark, and just because I have my eyes open about all the ways humans screw each other over, doesn't mean I can't have ideals and hope for something better. If I didn't care, I wouldn't bother with any cleaning jobs -- I'd probably be piloting experimental spacecraft, or still working at my friend Hilde's scrap yard. Basic rule: torture is wrong. I break the rules, but only so I can keep other people from breaking them worse."
Torture was wrong?
Sasuke couldn't imagine what sort of world led people to that conclusion. Yes, Leaf-nin avoided hard techniques when possible, but that was purely pragmatic -- it was easier to get along with civilians when they knew you would be polite first, and easier to cut deals if your enemies knew you would honor your word. But sometimes you needed information, and you couldn't afford to ask nicely and wait, or piece together the shape of a crime from indirect evidence. Besides, pain was a fact of life, and nobody was exempt just for being born human. There was nothing special about that. All people were tools of their clans, their villages, or their lords; ninja were just more open about acknowledging it.
Still... he wondered if Naruto might agree with Duo. The moron thought everybody deserved a second chance, thought that everyone meant well somewhere deep inside, thought everyone was worth defending...
Then Sasuke shook his head, dislodging that thought. He had to stop dwelling on the past. Konoha was behind him; he had to deal with the present, or he'd die. That much held true in any world.
He picked up Duo's jacket, still serving as a makeshift bag for their meat, and slung it over his shoulder. "Call Faith, and let's get out of here. We need to find water."
---------------------------------------------
End of Part VIII
Back to part VII
Continue to part IX
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------
In other news, I think I have gone officially insane.
I know this because I signed up to do![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thirtyforthree AGAIN, this time for Kira/Setsuna/Sara from Angel Sanctuary. There will be massive spoilers involved, because I am making full use of alternate identities and incarnations -- I want to explore what time and circumstances can change, and what remains the same.
I have already written 2 of the 30 themes.
In a moment of personal synchronicity, I received the winter issue of UU World while I was writing this chapter. One of its main articles is What Torture Has Taught Me, by Rev. William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International USA. I think you should read it, and take a moment to reflect.
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part VIII: in which the plot thickens
Faith grabbed a perch on top of the big rock, and tried not to think about what Duo and Sasuke were doing behind her.
Okay, fine, they needed the info, but God... she hadn't let prison teach her patience just so she could dive right back into the dark when opportunity held out a nice shiny apple and reminded her how easy it was to turn off her conscience and just take. She felt like she was betraying Angel's memory.
"Hey stupid -- wake up!" Duo said, sounding altogether too cheerful.
The mojo demon -- Mr. Voodoo, to borrow Duo's nickname -- groaned and mumbled something in an unfamiliar language.
"That didn't sound very nice to me," Duo said. "Did that sound nice to you, Sasuke-kun? I think our friend here needs a lesson in basic courtesy."
Bone snapped.
Did that count as blunt torture if Sasuke did it with his bare hands instead of a poker or a chair leg? If the bone broke the skin, did it become sharp torture? No -- bad thoughts. Faith tapped the hilt of her knife against the rock, setting up a backbeat and then doing her best to drown her memories with the Ramones. Somehow, though, the song kept switching to AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." She skimmed her eyes over the horizon, half wishing for another giant centipede to appear.
"Okay. Now that we have your attention, let me lay out the ground rules." Shoes shifted against the pebbled ground; Duo was pacing back and forth. "One, I ask the questions. Two, you answer the questions. Three, if you don't answer, or if you lie, Sasuke-kun gives you another lesson."
"I'll die before I betray the Brotherhood," Mr. Voodoo said. His voice was raspy, thin with pain.
"Eh, maybe, maybe not. You may have noticed you're not the only guy here who can do magic. My bet? After we pull you back from the edge a couple times, you'll change your tune. So. Tell me about this Brotherhood."
Despite her best efforts, music slipped out of Faith's mind, and she found herself waiting for the demon's answer. Any demon organization with something like 'brotherhood' in its name was probably a cult, and fanatics were a shitload harder to deal with than professionals or idiots out for a simple rampage.
"We will find you, and we will obliterate you. Vengeance is eternal, human!"
"Bzzzt, wrong answer! Sasuke, try a finger."
Something popped and crunched with a liquid edge -- Faith's mind supplied a vivid image of a finger bent backwards, tendons ripping as the skin tore and bones cracked. Mr. Voodoo shrieked.
"I wanna hear you scream," she'd said to Wesley. The words echoed and reechoed in her head, blending with Mr. Voodoo's harsh, panting breaths.
"We know most of your plans already," Duo said, deceptively casual. "Snatch assassins from other worlds, do a mind wipe, rig us up like suicide bombers, and kill your Red Witch. We have your portal keys. What I want to know is why you didn't just hire us? I don't give a shit about your world -- it's no skin off my back to kill a witch. I'm sure Sasuke-kun agrees."
"Yes," said Sasuke. He had a good voice, Faith thought, a little wildly. Deep, for a teenager, and even if he kept it flat most of the time, he could project menace like nobody's business.
"You know, I'm still willing to cut a deal with you," Duo continued, still pacing. "Let bygones be bygones and all that. You work your voodoo and take us to your world, and we'll clean up your little witch infestation... for a reasonable fee, of course. What do you say?"
"You lie. Humans cannot be trusted! The last--" The demon broke off suddenly, and tried to cover with a cough.
"Shi-ne." Something whistled through the air, followed by a meaty sort of thwack. Sasuke, throwing a knife, Faith assumed.
"Hey, calm down, Sasuke-kun," Duo said, followed by something in Japanese. Sasuke grunted, and Duo switched back to English, his voice light and teasing. "It's not nice to hurt our friend, remember? -- especially not when he's starting to get interesting. We save that for when he forgets his manners."
'Our friend.' 'Lessons.' 'Manners.' Doublespeak -- not exactly lies, but skating damn close to the edge. Faith didn't like this side of Duo, or Sasuke. Wesley's face, set and furious, swam in her mind. Angel's dark eyes gazed at her in disappointment.
She had to get the hell out of here before she lost it.
---------------------------------------------
Duo eyed Sasuke thoughtfully, tapping his scythe against the ground. Exactly how much of Sasuke's anger had been an act? If the answer was anything less than 100 percent, they might have trouble later on. Honor and trust. It was something to think about.
But he'd think later. Right now... He prodded the demon with the end of his scythe, touching Mr. Voodoo's shin a bare two inches away from blood and jagged bone.
"Yo, Duo." Faith's was perched sideways on the big rock, looking strained; her fingers shifted back and forth on the hilt of her knife. "I'm gonna do a wide patrol, check the horizon and stuff. You'll be okay without me here, right?"
Sasuke shifted, and Duo reached back to grab his wrist in warning. "Yeah, that's fine. I'm sure we'll have this wrapped up in no time." He smiled at Mr. Voodoo, wide and sharp, and then looked back up at Faith, hoping she could read that he didn't think any worse of her for not having the stomach for this. Hell, he wished he didn't have the stomach for it -- demon or no demon, it was sobering to realize that you could flip a mental switch and turn another thinking being into nothing more than a sack of meat that happened to still be breathing. Knowing that he had to work for that mindset wasn't reassuring.
Faith dredged up a smile up and jumped off the rock. "You boys have fun now. Don't move too fast on my account -- it's been a while since I've played this game, and it might be interesting to see how long it takes me to pick it up again." She leaned down and pinned Mr. Voodoo's eyes. "I don't think you want to play with me."
"She's right, you know," Duo told Mr. Voodoo as Faith strode away. "You're better off with me. So. Let's talk about untrustworthy humans." He let go of Sasuke's arm.
The demon was apparently serious about dying before he betrayed his Brotherhood -- Sasuke had to haul him back twice, once from internal bleeding and once from an attempt to bite through and swallow his own tongue -- but he had no ability to hold his temper, and very poor judgment as to what information was actually important.
An hour later, Duo stepped back and nodded to Sasuke; one quick spell sent Mr. Voodoo into a nice little coma. Duo dragged his sleeve across his face, checking for any spatters of turquoise blood, and reviewed what he'd learned.
1) The Sargul demons wanted revenge on Faith's friend Willow. He wasn't quite clear on what she'd done -- Mr. Voodoo had just babbled about blasphemy and curses -- but apparently it had been a doozy.
2) The Sarguls had tried attacking Willow themselves, and had tried hiring in-world assassins. No dice. Then they'd found a loophole in the witch's warding spells: they kept out Earthly creatures with harmful intent, and non-human extra-dimensional beings, but apparently she'd forgotten that humans also lived in alternate worlds. So they'd summoned an assassin and tried to hire her.
3) The assassin had taken their money and vanished without even trying to attack Willow. She'd also killed the wizard sent to help her, and stolen his portal-opening stone. (Duo wished he could've watched; it must have been beautiful.)
4) Therefore, the Sarguls were trying again, but this time they planned to wipe the assassins' minds, leaving only their skills and a desire to find Willow. The mind wipe would also help them pass the witch's wards -- they wouldn't have harmful intent -- and once they'd closed in, other spells would turn the area into the magical equivalent of a firebombing.
5) The Sarguls didn't know how their portal stones worked. But they needed at least three to open a controlled portal -- otherwise the opals just homed in on each other -- and they'd only had three left when the initial portal had gone wild and dumped Duo, Faith, Sasuke, and their chief wizard in this dimension. They weren't going to stop until they'd gotten their stones back.
6) The demons were too damn incompetent to have blocks up around a whole dimension. So if Faith's estimate of her organization was correct, they just had to wait a few days until someone called in the witch and she zapped them back to Faith's world.
Duo looked at the other Sargul, lying bound and unconscious in the shade. It was sick to think of waking the poor schmuck just to make him scream, especially since officers never told their grunts all the details. Sasuke, crouched by the demon's head, met his gaze impassively. No hint of distaste or conscience visible in those spinning red-and-black eyes -- either Sasuke was halfway to a sociopath, or he had some really good training in emotional compartmentalization, on par with Heero or Trowa.
Duo weighed the options, prodded his danger sense for any hints, and sighed. "We know enough for now -- there's no point questioning him too. Kill the poor bastard."
He flicked his scythe on and cut off Mr. Voodoo's head.
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke wiped turquoise blood off his kunai and scowled. "We could have learned more."
"Maybe," Duo said, touching something on his scythe and making the glowing blade vanish, "but then again, maybe not. In any case, it wasn't worth the time or the effort."
"Maybe that's true, but then again, maybe not," Sasuke quoted back at Duo. He still wanted to know the theory behind magical portals -- there must have been a reason why he'd never heard of portals before, and if conditions had changed so his world was suddenly accessible to them, he needed to know. He also wanted to know the witch's specific offense; after all, he might agree that it needed redressing. But Faith had left rather than face their captives, and now Duo had turned squeamish. "Why does questioning bother you so much?"
Duo glanced up, eyes sharp under his bangs. "Just because I know how to walk in the dark, and just because I have my eyes open about all the ways humans screw each other over, doesn't mean I can't have ideals and hope for something better. If I didn't care, I wouldn't bother with any cleaning jobs -- I'd probably be piloting experimental spacecraft, or still working at my friend Hilde's scrap yard. Basic rule: torture is wrong. I break the rules, but only so I can keep other people from breaking them worse."
Torture was wrong?
Sasuke couldn't imagine what sort of world led people to that conclusion. Yes, Leaf-nin avoided hard techniques when possible, but that was purely pragmatic -- it was easier to get along with civilians when they knew you would be polite first, and easier to cut deals if your enemies knew you would honor your word. But sometimes you needed information, and you couldn't afford to ask nicely and wait, or piece together the shape of a crime from indirect evidence. Besides, pain was a fact of life, and nobody was exempt just for being born human. There was nothing special about that. All people were tools of their clans, their villages, or their lords; ninja were just more open about acknowledging it.
Still... he wondered if Naruto might agree with Duo. The moron thought everybody deserved a second chance, thought that everyone meant well somewhere deep inside, thought everyone was worth defending...
Then Sasuke shook his head, dislodging that thought. He had to stop dwelling on the past. Konoha was behind him; he had to deal with the present, or he'd die. That much held true in any world.
He picked up Duo's jacket, still serving as a makeshift bag for their meat, and slung it over his shoulder. "Call Faith, and let's get out of here. We need to find water."
---------------------------------------------
End of Part VIII
Back to part VII
Continue to part IX
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------
In other news, I think I have gone officially insane.
I know this because I signed up to do
thirtyforthree AGAIN, this time for Kira/Setsuna/Sara from Angel Sanctuary. There will be massive spoilers involved, because I am making full use of alternate identities and incarnations -- I want to explore what time and circumstances can change, and what remains the same.I have already written 2 of the 30 themes.
