Perhaps they loved you. The two are very nearly the same thing, for people like me. Like us. You cannot create something wonderful and terrible and destructive without hating and loving it in equal measure. Does a craftsman hate or love the blade he hones?
[A philosophical line of query, the sort of thing Alia would gently indulge in from her warm, sunlit bedroom upstairs. She looks at the door she cannot pass, recalls where she is and sobers.]
People will always attribute death and violence to those who are different. Who they cannot understand. Unless the power is their own. My accusers ride dragons and determine my guilt with their dreams, yet my gifts are evidence of murder. Strange.
Ah. "Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." Might makes right. You believe this, Homelander?
[ Perhaps they loved you. The hypothetical appeals to him — wouldn't it have been nice? To have been loved? They hadn't always been outright cruel. But then, the memory of being locked in an oven, set aflame, the room growing hotter and hotter and hotter as he screamed and cried in pain, and the possibility dispels itself. ]
maybe.
[ is all that he allows. They didn't, in so many words. ]
the strong survive, and the weak want to be strong. it doesn't matter whether i believe it or not. it's the truth. they can lock you up, here, because the house lets them. if we were in my world, or in yours, we could kill them all, and it'd hardly matter.
[Alia wonders, vaguely -- but she doesn't ask, doesn't pry further. It is his to share, if he wishes. The fact of his communication alone is strange, though not unwelcome. It's boring down here.
So she leaves it be, not wanting to drive him away.]
This is so. At home, I would not allow it a second thought. Yet I cannot act as I would, to protect those I care for, because this place does not allow me the same power. I have watered the sands with blood since I was a child. I am not afraid to shed it.
But I would have claimed it. I would have stood unflinching in my acts. And I would have done it for a reason, to avenge a slight or an injustice against my family. So if this house judges me guilty, it is for something I do not remember doing.
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no subject
Like us.
You cannot create something wonderful and terrible and destructive without hating and loving it in equal measure. Does a craftsman hate or love the blade he hones?
[A philosophical line of query, the sort of thing Alia would gently indulge in from her warm, sunlit bedroom upstairs. She looks at the door she cannot pass, recalls where she is and sobers.]
People will always attribute death and violence to those who are different. Who they cannot understand.
Unless the power is their own. My accusers ride dragons and determine my guilt with their dreams, yet my gifts are evidence of murder. Strange.
Ah. "Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Might makes right. You believe this, Homelander?
no subject
maybe.
[ is all that he allows. They didn't, in so many words. ]
the strong survive, and the weak want to be strong.
it doesn't matter whether i believe it or not. it's the truth.
they can lock you up, here, because the house lets them.
if we were in my world, or in yours, we could kill them all, and it'd hardly matter.
no subject
So she leaves it be, not wanting to drive him away.]
This is so. At home, I would not allow it a second thought.
Yet I cannot act as I would, to protect those I care for, because this place does not allow me the same power.
I have watered the sands with blood since I was a child.
I am not afraid to shed it.
But I would have claimed it. I would have stood unflinching in my acts.
And I would have done it for a reason, to avenge a slight or an injustice against my family.
So if this house judges me guilty, it is for something I do not remember doing.
no subject
the house’s crime is using you.
it’s using everyone.
they’ll figure that out, sooner or later.
no subject
This game is not over, Homelander.
You ought to protect your own, if you've any here.