I met a woman, back home. Her name's Eulalia, she's — Lord, I don't know how old — thousands of years or so — or if that's her first name or something she chose later. She's an archivist, leastwise that's how she looks at it. She's like me, sees the dead. Uses them to prolong her life, which is how she's managed it, except it destroys them. Their soul, essence, what-have-you. She sees it as a necessary sacrifice.
（ he doesn't. he sees the dead as people, plain an' simple, for all that other folk may not feel so. ）
She asked me to join her. I turned her down, seeing as how I ain't all that interested in immortality, much less at someone else's expense. Reminds me a little of Henries, you know. The ends justifying the means.
[Now she understands the context. Immortality is inherently a selfish notion. Trying to survive. She thinks of the Primes, and decides to share about them.]
We met someone like that. After Earth was destroyed a final time, my friend Monty charted a course for a different world. It was called Sanctum. The people there worshipped the ruling class: the Primes. These Primes found a way to live for several generations longer than they should have, taking over someone's body and erasing their mind so that it would become their own.
They didn't have a reason for it other than the trauma of dying for the very first time, and what led to that death.
For them, it was the idea of survival taken to the extreme. No ends justifying the means. Just becoming absorbed with their lie.
I don't know where Henries falls between the two, but I know what I'd do for people I cared about. For my people. I don't think you'd like it.
（ he knows what humans are capable of. he's seen it — played out time an' again throughout history. ghosts tend to be honest — maybe it's somethin' about repentance, maybe they're just so desperate for someone to listen that it takes priority over the lies they told themselves while alive. gene has clear lines drawn in the sand of his morality, things he won't do and doesn't condone. sometimes the smell of wöbbelin still gets under his skin.
but folks are the sum of their environment. some are harsher than others. he ain't been in her shoes, so even if she's done something he'd find reprehensible, he can't guarantee he wouldn't have wound up there himself in the same circumstances. ）
But it ain't for you to assume how I'll come down on an issue, either.
（ it ain't censure or reprimand, just a gentle statement, because this ain't the first (or second, or third) time someone's said somethin' similar to him. hell, even clarke put him on somethin' of a pedestal at first, until he pointed out he'd been a soldier. sometimes folks make the mistake of assuming he's a good man because it comes easy to him, an' not because it's a willful choice he makes most days.
truth is gene knows plenty of good folks who've done hard things that would shake another human to their core. he can guess at what clarke is capable of. ）
[The full truth. The full depth of what it means to be Wanheda. The ease with which she's betrayed and killed and done it again and again, only coming out barely better than Josephine Lightbourne, whose humanity was stripped away through the many lives she had. Clarke knows that Josephine was like her once: tortured, trying to live her life, trying to make the right choices in a world that challenged her every step of the way. She knows that.]
I wanted to kill Henries once. When I first got here. Whoever brought me and my people here could keep doing it. Could keep putting them in harm's way. Now I wish he had control over it, after all, and I understand why he did the things he did.
When who you are is the people you care about, your people, it's hard to see past that. It's not superiority or hate or anything like that that makes you cut others down. It's desperation to do what's needed for who's yours.
[It's a mindset that Clarke doesn't think people get about her, not truly. Everything, everything she does is a means to an end. Gene says she shouldn't try to buy her place her, shouldn't try to earn it. He's right.
But she can't shake it. If she can do better for once, and protect her people in the trade? She'll do it. She'll do it a hundred times over. She grasps that hundreds have already died to bring them to this moment. And she doesn't like that. But she'll take the opportunity for what it is.]
（ it's easy agreement — she'll tell him or she won't. he doesn't need pieces of people in that way. he's content, generally, to take 'em how they are an' how they treat him. ）
It doesn't feel like it is. It just means that I've made up my mind on who I'd choose at the end of the day. That's because it's my responsibility to choose my people like that.
[Perhaps it's cold and callous, but she doesn't feel isolated. Not even here, where there are so many people to befriend and love. And she does do that, quite easily in fact.]
I could adapt people from this experience to that group. But my people back home will need to undergo a lot of change when they get here. As much as I'd love to look after my friends, my people will need time to adjust. To figure out how to go forward. To even have a system of living that doesn't depend on archaic systems.
As their leader, I'm expected to already be several steps ahead on that.
'Course it don't. These things don't feel half so hard from the inside as they do to other folks with different experiences on the outside looking in. When hard is all you know, it's what you adapt for, and live with.
（ people treat him like that sometimes. like some species of spun glass for havin' the life he did, seein' an' doin' what came of war. for him, it was a goddamn tuesday. ）
You'd choose your people, I can think of a half a hundred times where I chose one of my soldiers over somebody else. You're justifying it to me like it's an alien thing — Clarke, it ain't. It's human. People who speak our language, know our customs, hold our beliefs. Who've shared our experiences. Those are the ones we feel most obligated to protect and hold dear.
I think it's noble to want to bring your people to this place. From everything you've told me, it's better than what they know and I can't fault you for wanting something beyond that. But I do think that doing what's good for someone and what's right by them ain't always the same thing.
Not everyone understands how I can spend a year here and still choose my people over them.
[It's been brought up a few times. Clarke knows how it sounds when she talks about her people. There's a hard line there. The fact that she doesn't hide it probably makes her different from other Displaced. There are those with the drive to go home, and then there are the ones who are here, wanting to stay. The middleground is rarely broached, the murky understanding that going one way or another leaves some permanent absences.
Ones that come with a bit more choice than what they currently have available.]
Do you think bringing them here isn't doing right by them?
[As it is, she does need to ask. Clarke hasn't always done right by her people. It's why she focuses on that. Good for them? Keeping them alive? She's done it. But they've had to live with the consequences of her actions, even if she's attempted denial at that very fact.]
A year ain't much, in the grand scheme of our lives. Your loyalties stay with your home. Saw that first hand plenty myself.
（ he loved the boys in his company, don't get him wrong. but he'd still choose his brothers over them, every time. there are times that might be selfish, and there are times it's just human nature. ）
I can't speak to that, as I don't know them. But any time anyone makes choices for a larger group, I think there's the possibility that the folks on whose behalf you're making that choice won't see the how or why of its necessity. It's a hard line to walk and I surely don't envy you the choice.
（ he understands her position, certainly. but he wouldn't want another person making the choice for him sight unseen, neither. which, ultimately, is why he ain't one of her people. ）
We haven't always had the room for us to discuss a choice like that. Too many apocalyptic situations.
[The thought of being able to is nice, however. As much as she wants to free her people from the Primes, free her people from whatever doom was waiting for them there, she knows it's unlikely to come with a long conversation.]
It's something I'd be hoping to give them by letting them come here. I'd understand if they'd decide not to stand by me anymore once they got here. I just want them to have that right.
[It sounds like a pipe dream. But putting it that way? It makes Clarke want it all the more for her people.]
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（ he doesn't. he sees the dead as people, plain an' simple, for all that other folk may not feel so. ）
She asked me to join her. I turned her down, seeing as how I ain't all that interested in immortality, much less at someone else's expense. Reminds me a little of Henries, you know. The ends justifying the means.
no subject
We met someone like that. After Earth was destroyed a final time, my friend Monty charted a course for a different world. It was called Sanctum. The people there worshipped the ruling class: the Primes. These Primes found a way to live for several generations longer than they should have, taking over someone's body and erasing their mind so that it would become their own.
They didn't have a reason for it other than the trauma of dying for the very first time, and what led to that death.
For them, it was the idea of survival taken to the extreme. No ends justifying the means. Just becoming absorbed with their lie.
I don't know where Henries falls between the two, but I know what I'd do for people I cared about. For my people. I don't think you'd like it.
no subject
（ he knows what humans are capable of. he's seen it — played out time an' again throughout history. ghosts tend to be honest — maybe it's somethin' about repentance, maybe they're just so desperate for someone to listen that it takes priority over the lies they told themselves while alive. gene has clear lines drawn in the sand of his morality, things he won't do and doesn't condone. sometimes the smell of wöbbelin still gets under his skin.
but folks are the sum of their environment. some are harsher than others. he ain't been in her shoes, so even if she's done something he'd find reprehensible, he can't guarantee he wouldn't have wound up there himself in the same circumstances. ）
But it ain't for you to assume how I'll come down on an issue, either.
（ it ain't censure or reprimand, just a gentle statement, because this ain't the first (or second, or third) time someone's said somethin' similar to him. hell, even clarke put him on somethin' of a pedestal at first, until he pointed out he'd been a soldier. sometimes folks make the mistake of assuming he's a good man because it comes easy to him, an' not because it's a willful choice he makes most days.
truth is gene knows plenty of good folks who've done hard things that would shake another human to their core. he can guess at what clarke is capable of. ）
no subject
[The full truth. The full depth of what it means to be Wanheda. The ease with which she's betrayed and killed and done it again and again, only coming out barely better than Josephine Lightbourne, whose humanity was stripped away through the many lives she had. Clarke knows that Josephine was like her once: tortured, trying to live her life, trying to make the right choices in a world that challenged her every step of the way. She knows that.]
I wanted to kill Henries once. When I first got here. Whoever brought me and my people here could keep doing it. Could keep putting them in harm's way. Now I wish he had control over it, after all, and I understand why he did the things he did.
When who you are is the people you care about, your people, it's hard to see past that. It's not superiority or hate or anything like that that makes you cut others down. It's desperation to do what's needed for who's yours.
[It's a mindset that Clarke doesn't think people get about her, not truly. Everything, everything she does is a means to an end. Gene says she shouldn't try to buy her place her, shouldn't try to earn it. He's right.
But she can't shake it. If she can do better for once, and protect her people in the trade? She'll do it. She'll do it a hundred times over. She grasps that hundreds have already died to bring them to this moment. And she doesn't like that. But she'll take the opportunity for what it is.]
no subject
（ it's easy agreement — she'll tell him or she won't. he doesn't need pieces of people in that way. he's content, generally, to take 'em how they are an' how they treat him. ）
I get the gist. Hard way to live, though.
（ isolating. ）
no subject
[Perhaps it's cold and callous, but she doesn't feel isolated. Not even here, where there are so many people to befriend and love. And she does do that, quite easily in fact.]
I could adapt people from this experience to that group. But my people back home will need to undergo a lot of change when they get here. As much as I'd love to look after my friends, my people will need time to adjust. To figure out how to go forward. To even have a system of living that doesn't depend on archaic systems.
As their leader, I'm expected to already be several steps ahead on that.
no subject
（ people treat him like that sometimes. like some species of spun glass for havin' the life he did, seein' an' doin' what came of war. for him, it was a goddamn tuesday. ）
You'd choose your people, I can think of a half a hundred times where I chose one of my soldiers over somebody else. You're justifying it to me like it's an alien thing — Clarke, it ain't. It's human. People who speak our language, know our customs, hold our beliefs. Who've shared our experiences. Those are the ones we feel most obligated to protect and hold dear.
I think it's noble to want to bring your people to this place. From everything you've told me, it's better than what they know and I can't fault you for wanting something beyond that. But I do think that doing what's good for someone and what's right by them ain't always the same thing.
no subject
[It's been brought up a few times. Clarke knows how it sounds when she talks about her people. There's a hard line there. The fact that she doesn't hide it probably makes her different from other Displaced. There are those with the drive to go home, and then there are the ones who are here, wanting to stay. The middleground is rarely broached, the murky understanding that going one way or another leaves some permanent absences.
Ones that come with a bit more choice than what they currently have available.]
Do you think bringing them here isn't doing right by them?
[As it is, she does need to ask. Clarke hasn't always done right by her people. It's why she focuses on that. Good for them? Keeping them alive? She's done it. But they've had to live with the consequences of her actions, even if she's attempted denial at that very fact.]
no subject
（ he loved the boys in his company, don't get him wrong. but he'd still choose his brothers over them, every time. there are times that might be selfish, and there are times it's just human nature. ）
I can't speak to that, as I don't know them. But any time anyone makes choices for a larger group, I think there's the possibility that the folks on whose behalf you're making that choice won't see the how or why of its necessity. It's a hard line to walk and I surely don't envy you the choice.
（ he understands her position, certainly. but he wouldn't want another person making the choice for him sight unseen, neither. which, ultimately, is why he ain't one of her people. ）
no subject
[The thought of being able to is nice, however. As much as she wants to free her people from the Primes, free her people from whatever doom was waiting for them there, she knows it's unlikely to come with a long conversation.]
It's something I'd be hoping to give them by letting them come here. I'd understand if they'd decide not to stand by me anymore once they got here. I just want them to have that right.
[It sounds like a pipe dream. But putting it that way? It makes Clarke want it all the more for her people.]