[BBS] Thoughts on Betrayal

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

[Between the article about Seifer, and his short chat with Rinoa, Espio's been doing some thinking about betrayal, and the effects of it. So, he's gonna just leave a message about his own experience with traitors on the BBS...]

Is it so easy to forgive a traitor?

I've been sold out by a member of my own team - someone I thought of as a friend. Codes to our advanced technology were stolen and sold, and then he deliberately lead us to the dragon's nest with the express intention of having us all killed. This was purely for the sake of money, and did it despite knowing that the enemy probably wouldn't pay him - he took a gamble, and it was with our lives against an extremely powerful army.

However, because our technology had been pirated, it opened a gateway for that army. Without him, they wouldn't have been able to accomplish what they did - they wiped out practically the whole population of an entire planet.

I'll just reiterate that: almost everyone on an entire planet was killed, because this traitor sold us out.

Despite our efforts to lock him away - we don't kill, that's just not our policy - he wriggled free. And he did not learn his lesson - again, he made an agreement with someone known as a villain and, knowing we had something that could easily destroy worlds on its own, attacked us in order to take and sell it. Thankfully, this time nothing worked out in his favour.

I could never forgive someone who gambles so many lives so freely, just for something as trivial as a bit of cash. I don't even know why I bothered to save this guy's life. Probably should have just left him on the floor after he got shot, and let the robots finish him off.

[Unsigned. Just Espio's cadet number, today - if you know it, you know it.]

Comments

[BBS]

[shops-a-lot.livejournal.com]

[Bulla knows Espio's cadet number. She'll be replying with her own.]

It's not easy to forgive a traitor and it shouldn't be. But that doesn't mean forgiveness should be out of the question, either. My dad wasn't always a good person. If the man who became his best friend years later didn't give him a second chance because he saw some good in him, I wouldn't have been born.

Re: [BBS]

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

Everyone has potential. It's against my personal code to take that potential away - no killing, unless there is absolutely no other choice.

But if someone takes my trust and breaks it, I am not going to trust them again just because they want me to. No - they have to work hard and well-and-truly earn it back.

[BBS]

[shops-a-lot.livejournal.com]

Which makes sense. And it does take time to do that, but someone who wants to be forgiven and trusted will make the effort.

I don't know if my dad even wanted forgiveness so much as he gradually earned it when he found his own reasons to change.

[fierybluebird]

Hah. Money.

No. Somethings are wholly unforgivable. Your group went easy on your traitor. When I find mine, he'll be killed summarily. Fuck that, I'll gladly hunt him down with my dying breath. And the only thing that might slow me down is that the rest of the world wants a piece of him, but I call dibs.

As for the traitor here, maybe he did something forgivable.

[Likewise unsigned.]

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

Maybe. But as I understand it, he attacked his own home.

Yeah, we went easy on that guy. I'll never kill unless there's no other option, and I'm not changing how I work for the likes of him.

[fierybluebird]

I'm sorry, but that's nothing. In my world, that could describe most of the people.

That's your choice.

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It is. It's one I'm pretty happy with, at that, even if I do sometimes wish I could just let them rot.

Betrayal isn't something you can call "nothing." For the people in Garden, the ones who've grown up hearing about the Sorceress Wars, what they have is someone who fully supported someone bombing them, destroying Trabia Garden, leading a whole army into their school, then coming back and asking to live here. No justification for his actions - at least not that they get to hear. It's too much to expect everyone to forgive him all of a sudden.

He only gets some points from me because nobody knows if he was in his own state of mind, and I only know that by listening to someone with half a clue - not a whole clue, but a half is better than nothing.

But really. The whole situation just got me thinking about that guy, and the full impact of what he did to us.

[fierybluebird]

Fuck off mate.

I had someone I trusted as a brother murder my best friend, hand over another best friend to enemies for execution and got the pleasure of watching him then murder my father in front of me. And I wish it was for money. Just power. Pure and simple.

Do you see this place in ruins? Or hundreds of thousands dead? If a sorceress can do anything, getting fucking info from someone isn't going to make her suddenly that much stronger when she can already bend the entire space-time continuum. And the people who were directly affected here are the ones who gave him the second chance, so it isn't anyone else's place to express irrelevant concerns.

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

[]

Alright. I'm backing down. Gonna have to tell you to back off and calm downm too. Leave the BBS alone for now, and come rant at me in person if you want - the subject you're on deserves more than text.

[fierybluebird]

[At reading that, Marco will just sigh. He rarely gets angry and even when he does.]

Fine. We'll meet and talk. Civilly. [Though really, he hadn't much meant to reveal that it was him either.]

Time and place?

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

[]

Dunno. Your choice.

[fierybluebird]

Pick one.

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

If I have to. Fine. I'll be in the parking lot later, drop by whenever.

[Action]

[fierybluebird]

[Sitting there cross-legged, looking at the picture of his Pops that Tobias made him ages back.]

Re: [Action]

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

[]

I give up! The thing's dead!

[]

You're here already?

[redcinemareel]

Forgive a traitor?

Speaking from experience, I'd think it depends on the traitor.

[Been down that road, actually, of being a traitor. Or being a bad girl~. The latter title suits him best.]

[That part of his past still leaves him with a smile, because it was his shining moment, but it's like an open wound still, so he'll leave the comment unsigned this time.]

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

[]

I suppose for minor betrayals, that could be the case. But when lives are lost as a result, it's not so easy.

[redcinemareel]

[Impressive! Amusing how he thinks the account is compromised.]

[Yeah...that's the road he went down. One half of Jack the Ripper. He doesn't really regret it, but he knows not to do it again.]

...no, not easy at all. Yet what if the traitor sincerely seeks redemption? Truly seeks to change their ways? And if they don't, they should get all the hate and loathe they can get.

[Grell isn't one to seek redemption, but rather seeking to not be looked upon as trash. Close enough to redemption as he'll get.]

[haha-steelguard.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the story is.

When I was on Cocoon, we were taught practically from the moment we could understand that Pulse, the world below Cocoon, was evil, our enemy. Things from Pulse, we feared.

When remnants of Pulse were found near my home town in Cocoon, people panicked. Maybe with good cause. A -- you don't have them here, but they're called Fal'cie, marked people with a brand, turned them into its servants, l'cie.

I was one of the people who was marked. From that moment on, I was a Pulse l'cie, enemy of Cocoon -- except I wanted to save it. Not destroy it.

Nobody ever listened to that part of the story, though.

Let's hear the whole thing before we make any conclusions.

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

I just told you the story, and there's no conclusion to jump to. That's just what happened.

[]

[haha-steelguard.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean your story...

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

I don't see any other story for you to be talking about.

[haha-steelguard.livejournal.com]

Well, there was this thing in the paper that might possibly have something to do with this coming up.

[turnip-rage.livejournal.com]

Now, that got me thinking, but the world doesn't revolve around Chessy Delacreux's exclamation marks. This is more to do with a conversation I had earlier.

[haha-steelguard.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking generally, I think some people can earn second chances. For your story, though, hindsight definitely says your guy didn't.