[m3] hum hum hum...
Aug. 12th, 2003 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coronaviridaeOh, dear. I'm getting bitter again; that won't do at all.
You know, I would have been thirty-six this year. Back in June. The twenty-seventh, which makes--made?--me rather firmly a Cancer. Not that I believed in any of that.
I'm rather glad that mirrors don't work for me any longer. It'd be disconcerting, to know intellectually that it's been twelve years, but to see the same scarred, crazy man of twenty four staring back at me. Not, mind, that I hadn't seen enough of myself in life.
Some days, in the copious time I have that I don't spend prying in to people's affairs, I wonder what I might have made of myself if things had gone differently. Not that I feel true regret for most of those wasted years--what use would that be, at this juncture?--but it's a worthwhile thought exercise. A way to kill an hour, or a day, or a month that isn't merely worthless moping.
I wonder--at what point was I irrevocably committed to overthrowing the UN, to the path that led to my eventual death? Was it when I joined up with Procyon? Right after I first died? Before then?
Or perhaps it was more recent. Perhaps I truly bought into the idea that night in May, when Pavel came to visit. Not, of course, that I can bear to think on that much.
But if that were it--if that were the fatal moment when I decided to take my destiny in my own hands, and went charging off to tilt at windmills and die like a noble little fool--what would have happened if I'd chosen differently? Said, 'No, Pavel, I'm sorry. I have taken an oath to support and uphold the UN, after all, and I take my word very seriously.' Sorry, honey, I can't overthrow a world government tonight; I've got a headache. Take your lies and treachery and talk of shadows only we can see to somebody else, I've a job to do.
Such brave words to say to one's idol.
But say I played along--as I did in life--and later reconsidered? Indulged in a moment of doubt, perhaps. Actually thought if there might be a better, more just way than bringing my divided house crashing down around me.
What if I'd turned him in?
Then where would I be?
Alive, for one. Perhaps still directing Interpol, though as it was an appointed position, and I'm sure McLaren wouldn't've had enough of a run of luck to get re-elected, I'd be out of office. Maybe I'd have made the run for Secretary-General myself--that would be a sight! Though, granted, given the laws on age limits, I couldn't have tried that until last year. Have to be thirty-five, and all.
Or perhaps I could have worked my way back in as a senator. For Mother Russia, of course, replacing that corrupt bastard Rasputin. He was taking a considerable kickback from the Yakuza, as I later found out. And ended up as another faceless casualty when Seoul fell. Good riddance. May he burn in Hell for his treachery.
Speaking of which, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself when I assumed I might still be alive, if only I hadn't gone off and decided to destroy the UN. I did have these grand ideas, this crazy thought...Lord, it seems so silly now, but I'd always meant to...well, stand trial. For having betrayed the Earth by getting into Procyon's good graces. I was thoroughly convinced I deserved a traitor's death, but what I deserved and what I got at the end of that debacle were two very different things.
It always weighed on me, for that year and a half I was in office. I had committed one of the few unpardonable crimes listed in the UN charter; I was so certain that I'd find myself convicted on charges of treason somewhere down the line.
And yet, I didn't. Somehow--somehow--I'd inveigled McLaren to give me a position second only in power to her own. And for some totally unfathomable reason, she expected me to serve this position well--to mete out justice. Think of that! A traitor to his race, expected to police the world!
What the hell was she smoking?
Moreover, why the hell didn't I have the bloody courage to tell her I didn't think I deserved anything other than a bullet in the brain? Why didn't I simply renounce my position and go find a judge who'd be willing to sentence me to death?
Poor Adrian. Four years on the streets taught you to grasp for anything you could get with both hands, whether you felt you deserved it or not. It only got you into a hell of a lot of trouble later in life.
God help me, God listen to me just this once...
It's all very well and good to say analytically, 'yes, I've murdered and stolen and whored myself out and betrayed my people; I am an unjust man and should be punished.' It's another entirely to be able to lay aside one's power and pride of place, bend one's head low, and say, 'Punish me, for I've sinned.' Nearly impossible, in fact. I never managed to do it, no matter how the guilt ate at me, distracted me, made it difficult to do my job.
I must have caught some of that political self-preservation bug that all bureaucrats encounter sometime in their lives. I had to hide all my dirty little secrets away, I had to pretend that I was innocent and had done nothing wrong before stepping up as Director of Interpol. Otherwise, my political career was doomed--what a terrible idea, to a man who'd never cared much about such a thing as his 'political career'.
Before he was actually given a political career to care about.
You never realize how much you actually want something until you have it...
Why, why, why did anyone think I was at all responsible or capable? Why did they place their lives, sanity, health, happiness in my hands? Why was I given executive dominion over Interpol? What did anyone see in me that was valuable or good or worthwhile, that I should have this kind of trust bestowed upon me? I'm nothing--I was nothing--nobody of any consequence, until I managed to blunder onto the world stage. Even then I shouldn't have gotten anything more than my fifteen minutes of fame, before I was dragged off and shot. I'm not some mysterious man, not anyone bound for greatness, I have nothing! None of the qualities of a good leader, perishing little intelligence or good sense, and you can ask anyone I cussed out in life about my 'winning personality'. I'm neither dashing nor handsome, a rough-mannered effete bitch of a man, I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm no one, why, God? Why did anyone expect me to do anything other than screw up?
Why am I still here? What do I have left to ruin completely that I didn't already destroy in life? What do I have to do before I'm let go, back into the black oblivion that spawned me?
I don't want to be here. I don't, I can't bear to watch the shattered lives that I destroyed play out to their eventual ends. I don't want to see the last few things I love fade. Is this what Hell is? Knowing you've done wrong, and knowing God doesn't care enough for you anymore to at least wipe you completely out of existence? Being STUCK as some kind of immortal specter, out of contact with the world, to go slowly mad as every little sin haunts you and eats at you until you break down at last, screaming and sobbing and crying and demanding of the Creator that He let you go at last?
PLEASE GOD I'VE HAD ENOUGH LET ME OFF THIS DAMN RIDE LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO I WANT TO DIE but I can't die oh no I'm already dead, and not all the razors in the world will let a ghost cut his own wrists, and not all the poison in the world could stop a heart that no longer beats.
Please let me go I want out. I don't want to know anymore that this is why she cries herself to sleep and this is why he's let his life go to waste and this is why she's dead and this is why he's mute and this is why they can't seem to be happy anymore.
I don't want to know, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. Take away your cherubim your flaming sword let me back into the garden and I will be happy to obey you always.
Erase me.
Please. Erase me.
Let me go.
Three guesses as to which song I was listening to on repeat while writing Abby's little discourse on treason and the bits that followed.
It shouldn't be too hard to guess. I'm *such* a fangirl some days.
However--allow me a moment of arrogance--I like to think it fits the writing REALLY well. Certainly a whole lot better than simply cp'ing lyrics from some site and writing tastelessly angstful little bon mots in between the stanzas.
*thumbs her nose at fangirls, incl. the inner one*
I admit to cheating, too. There's a little more of it written, but I may run it by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
canemex before I do post it. Teehee, vengeful ghosts. Plus, I like the way it breaks up better this way. Cliffhanger, and all that. Mm, denouement.
muse
You know, I would have been thirty-six this year. Back in June. The twenty-seventh, which makes--made?--me rather firmly a Cancer. Not that I believed in any of that.
I'm rather glad that mirrors don't work for me any longer. It'd be disconcerting, to know intellectually that it's been twelve years, but to see the same scarred, crazy man of twenty four staring back at me. Not, mind, that I hadn't seen enough of myself in life.
Some days, in the copious time I have that I don't spend prying in to people's affairs, I wonder what I might have made of myself if things had gone differently. Not that I feel true regret for most of those wasted years--what use would that be, at this juncture?--but it's a worthwhile thought exercise. A way to kill an hour, or a day, or a month that isn't merely worthless moping.
I wonder--at what point was I irrevocably committed to overthrowing the UN, to the path that led to my eventual death? Was it when I joined up with Procyon? Right after I first died? Before then?
Or perhaps it was more recent. Perhaps I truly bought into the idea that night in May, when Pavel came to visit. Not, of course, that I can bear to think on that much.
But if that were it--if that were the fatal moment when I decided to take my destiny in my own hands, and went charging off to tilt at windmills and die like a noble little fool--what would have happened if I'd chosen differently? Said, 'No, Pavel, I'm sorry. I have taken an oath to support and uphold the UN, after all, and I take my word very seriously.' Sorry, honey, I can't overthrow a world government tonight; I've got a headache. Take your lies and treachery and talk of shadows only we can see to somebody else, I've a job to do.
Such brave words to say to one's idol.
But say I played along--as I did in life--and later reconsidered? Indulged in a moment of doubt, perhaps. Actually thought if there might be a better, more just way than bringing my divided house crashing down around me.
What if I'd turned him in?
Then where would I be?
Alive, for one. Perhaps still directing Interpol, though as it was an appointed position, and I'm sure McLaren wouldn't've had enough of a run of luck to get re-elected, I'd be out of office. Maybe I'd have made the run for Secretary-General myself--that would be a sight! Though, granted, given the laws on age limits, I couldn't have tried that until last year. Have to be thirty-five, and all.
Or perhaps I could have worked my way back in as a senator. For Mother Russia, of course, replacing that corrupt bastard Rasputin. He was taking a considerable kickback from the Yakuza, as I later found out. And ended up as another faceless casualty when Seoul fell. Good riddance. May he burn in Hell for his treachery.
Speaking of which, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself when I assumed I might still be alive, if only I hadn't gone off and decided to destroy the UN. I did have these grand ideas, this crazy thought...Lord, it seems so silly now, but I'd always meant to...well, stand trial. For having betrayed the Earth by getting into Procyon's good graces. I was thoroughly convinced I deserved a traitor's death, but what I deserved and what I got at the end of that debacle were two very different things.
It always weighed on me, for that year and a half I was in office. I had committed one of the few unpardonable crimes listed in the UN charter; I was so certain that I'd find myself convicted on charges of treason somewhere down the line.
And yet, I didn't. Somehow--somehow--I'd inveigled McLaren to give me a position second only in power to her own. And for some totally unfathomable reason, she expected me to serve this position well--to mete out justice. Think of that! A traitor to his race, expected to police the world!
What the hell was she smoking?
Moreover, why the hell didn't I have the bloody courage to tell her I didn't think I deserved anything other than a bullet in the brain? Why didn't I simply renounce my position and go find a judge who'd be willing to sentence me to death?
Poor Adrian. Four years on the streets taught you to grasp for anything you could get with both hands, whether you felt you deserved it or not. It only got you into a hell of a lot of trouble later in life.
God help me, God listen to me just this once...
It's all very well and good to say analytically, 'yes, I've murdered and stolen and whored myself out and betrayed my people; I am an unjust man and should be punished.' It's another entirely to be able to lay aside one's power and pride of place, bend one's head low, and say, 'Punish me, for I've sinned.' Nearly impossible, in fact. I never managed to do it, no matter how the guilt ate at me, distracted me, made it difficult to do my job.
I must have caught some of that political self-preservation bug that all bureaucrats encounter sometime in their lives. I had to hide all my dirty little secrets away, I had to pretend that I was innocent and had done nothing wrong before stepping up as Director of Interpol. Otherwise, my political career was doomed--what a terrible idea, to a man who'd never cared much about such a thing as his 'political career'.
Before he was actually given a political career to care about.
You never realize how much you actually want something until you have it...
Why, why, why did anyone think I was at all responsible or capable? Why did they place their lives, sanity, health, happiness in my hands? Why was I given executive dominion over Interpol? What did anyone see in me that was valuable or good or worthwhile, that I should have this kind of trust bestowed upon me? I'm nothing--I was nothing--nobody of any consequence, until I managed to blunder onto the world stage. Even then I shouldn't have gotten anything more than my fifteen minutes of fame, before I was dragged off and shot. I'm not some mysterious man, not anyone bound for greatness, I have nothing! None of the qualities of a good leader, perishing little intelligence or good sense, and you can ask anyone I cussed out in life about my 'winning personality'. I'm neither dashing nor handsome, a rough-mannered effete bitch of a man, I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm no one, why, God? Why did anyone expect me to do anything other than screw up?
Why am I still here? What do I have left to ruin completely that I didn't already destroy in life? What do I have to do before I'm let go, back into the black oblivion that spawned me?
I don't want to be here. I don't, I can't bear to watch the shattered lives that I destroyed play out to their eventual ends. I don't want to see the last few things I love fade. Is this what Hell is? Knowing you've done wrong, and knowing God doesn't care enough for you anymore to at least wipe you completely out of existence? Being STUCK as some kind of immortal specter, out of contact with the world, to go slowly mad as every little sin haunts you and eats at you until you break down at last, screaming and sobbing and crying and demanding of the Creator that He let you go at last?
PLEASE GOD I'VE HAD ENOUGH LET ME OFF THIS DAMN RIDE LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO I WANT TO DIE but I can't die oh no I'm already dead, and not all the razors in the world will let a ghost cut his own wrists, and not all the poison in the world could stop a heart that no longer beats.
Please let me go I want out. I don't want to know anymore that this is why she cries herself to sleep and this is why he's let his life go to waste and this is why she's dead and this is why he's mute and this is why they can't seem to be happy anymore.
I don't want to know, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. Take away your cherubim your flaming sword let me back into the garden and I will be happy to obey you always.
Erase me.
Please. Erase me.
Let me go.
Three guesses as to which song I was listening to on repeat while writing Abby's little discourse on treason and the bits that followed.
It shouldn't be too hard to guess. I'm *such* a fangirl some days.
However--allow me a moment of arrogance--I like to think it fits the writing REALLY well. Certainly a whole lot better than simply cp'ing lyrics from some site and writing tastelessly angstful little bon mots in between the stanzas.
*thumbs her nose at fangirls, incl. the inner one*
I admit to cheating, too. There's a little more of it written, but I may run it by
canemex before I do post it. Teehee, vengeful ghosts. Plus, I like the way it breaks up better this way. Cliffhanger, and all that. Mm, denouement.muse
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
!
Date: 2003-08-13 08:35 am (UTC)I haven't the foggiest idea what song it is, but: !
I love it! :D
I've got some stuff I'd like to talk to you about, about AFF -- both what's going to happen next and some nitpicky writer's stuff. (bleh) So, yeah. :D Grab me if you get the chance! Perhaps we can weave them together a bit more now. :>
CEM
Re: !
Date: 2003-08-13 12:38 pm (UTC)Re: !
Date: 2003-08-13 01:31 pm (UTC)Though if it *does* turn out to be a song I know very well, I'm going to kick myself. (because I can. >_<)
Re: !
Date: 2003-08-13 02:20 pm (UTC)...well, hmm. You *do* have the CD. I dunno how well you know the song, though. XD
muse
Re: !
Date: 2003-08-13 04:05 pm (UTC)And yes. I've unintentionally given myself fat lips by kneeing myself in the face before. ._.; It's quite a trick. u.u