MASK OR MENACE - contact.

[hostage]

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[hostage]

[He understands what she's saying, but it's difficult to swallow. Too easy to wave aside one's past crimes and call it a phase.]

He was my teacher

He was here for a while

Walter White

[rathercommon]

I know the name.

[ He seemed... she starts to write, and then thinks that there's no assessment of his character that she can give that will be remotely helpful. Sweet? (Because he did seem that at times.) Ineffectual? Frequently drunk? Awkward? Largely awkward. Old. ]

What did he do?

[hostage]

Make a list of every disgusting evil thing a person could do and he's done it

If you ask me who's worse between Walt and Lucifer I'd say Walt no question

[rathercommon]

I guess I meant more what did he do to you. That screwed you up. If it's OK if I put it that way.

[ A therapist this girl ain't. ]

[hostage]

Yeah

That's what I meant

That's what he did to me

[rathercommon]

[ That's dramatic, but completely unhelpful. ]

He was your teacher, you said. What did he teach you?

[hostage]

Literally I was his student in high school chemistry

[rathercommon]

OK. I do know enough about schools in most worlds to know that's not THAT close a relationship. Not enough to really hurt someone. What else was there?

[hostage]

He found me again years later when I was a drug dealer

Threatened to turn me over to the police unless I started working for him

So the short version is I did everything he wanted until the day he died

[rathercommon]

Working for him doing what? Teaching?

[hostage]

Selling meth

Or killing people

Or anything else he wanted

[rathercommon]

[ Oh. Kitty rubs her cheek and feels, for just a moment, rather naive. It's not exactly the most common thing in the world, her feeling naive. ]

And so he had a hold on you, I'm guessing. Since just fear of arrest alone probably wouldn't be enough to make you kill.

[hostage]

[He feels equally naive, confessing this:]

I thought he was the only person who could really care about me

[rathercommon]

[ She hesitates. ]

I've read a little about people like that. Charismatic types, who do things like become cult leaders and the like. Who play on your vulnerabilities and do their damnedest to create new vulnerabilities to use. I bet you thought that because he made you think it, didn't he?

[hostage]

Yes

[rathercommon]

And he made you think you were bad. So you would suffer for his benefit.

[hostage]

Lots of people get abused and don't end up killing anybody

He didn't make me what I am

[rathercommon]

Lots of people also don't fall into the hands of a madman who wants to make them into a tool for doing his homicidal will. But honestly, Jesse...There's no use in comparing your situation to others'. What happened to you is horrible in a way that's unique to you. Looking to others, saying, oh they're better, oh they're worse -- that's easy, it's tempting, but it's not right. At least I think so. Coming to peace with who you are is about you, not anyone else.

[hostage]

Saving people is where I find my peace

What I did will never be OK but every second I'm alive is a second I took from somebody else and I need to make it worth it, my being here

[rathercommon]

But that's not how it works. Not really. Morality isn't arithmetic. Good and evil aren't arithmetic. You don't just do a good thing and have it balance out the bad, just like doing a bad thing doesn't wipe the good from the face of the earth. You should help people from love, because people deserve help, because they're warm and wonderful and curious and marvelous, because it is a pleasure to help someone, because to bring a smile to their face makes your own day worthwhile. Not to try to compensate. Because you can never compensate. You can never balance it, because there is no balancing.

No: Jesse, you ought to think of yourself as what you ARE. Which isn't some guilt-ridden sinner shambling about seeking redemption, but as a force of good in the world. Because you ARE. You're not your past actions. You're not your mistakes. Those are all behind you, and they shape you but they are not you. You are who you are now: a hundred thousand moments of potential stretching into the future, every one of them a possibility for making the world better and brighter and kinder. You're not a hole desperately trying to fill yourself in. You're a beacon.

[hostage]

[There's a long pause before he replies:]

I'm gonna have to print this out

[rathercommon]

[ Oh, thank god. She half-thought he'd deleted that for being ridiculous. But a reply, at long last. ]

Oh, good. Though...Print it out in a 'this is good to read' way, right? Rather than a 'my god this girl is a nutter, look at this' way.

[hostage]

Like I should remember it

Get it tattooed or something

[rathercommon]

Then DEFINITELY good. I'm glad of it. Though, you know...Obviously THAT is a bit too long to get tattooed, but what if you did get something? Abstract or something like that. I have some tattoos, abstract symbols, that remind me of certain things when I look at them - Jaime suggested that, a while back, and it's been really nice. You could get some symbol to remind yourself of your potential. Maybe my face looking stern or something. (Please don't get my face looking stern.)

[hostage]

Definitely not THAT

I don't know

Hard to think of a symbol