[002.b. - spam/network]

[reformedsinner]

cw: eye & hand injury, likely some self-destructive thought processes in tags

[open/spam, the infirmary]

Gonou does not fight back when his punishment is given, nor when it is carried out. The Infirmary is busy, the cries of pain from the beds around him disorienting; he gets up, after a few minutes of rest have cleared his head enough that he doesn't think he'll fall, and tries to find his way to a seat away from the beds. He's slow and clumsy, his one good hand held out in front of him to avoid running into anything important. Eventually, he finds a wall, and turns to plant his back against it and sit down there.

He hopes he's out of the way. He'll just -- take a little time to rest, here, and hope that at some point someone will arrive who's able and willing to take him back to his room.

[open/spam, afterwards]

He's been assigned to hard labor at the oars, but even though he heals a little faster in this body than he had in a human one, the stump of a hand takes more than a few days to heal over enough for a prosthetic to be fitted on it. He's spending a fair amount of time in his room, practicing mapping the space, practicing listening. He's trying to keep his fresher socket cleaned and bandaged; he knows the routine, even if it's harder one-handed, and harder still blind.

He goes to meals. His ears flick with paranoid speed when he's in a crowded room, trying to track the multiplicity of sounds around him, trying to feel out the echoes of the space; sometimes he walks into something, and sometimes this means he drops the tray he has to balance in one hand. When he does, grimly determined, he'll drop to his knees and do his best to clean it up.

Once or twice, he's allowed into the yard, but he finds that space even more overwhelming than the mess hall, and lingers very close to the door, keeping his head down.

After the first week, he adds rotations on the oars. Wherever he's seated, quietly, he'll ask the name of the person beside him.

Network, audio, a few days after the mutiny

[Gonou's voice is soft, a little hoarse. He just has one thing to ask:]

Who's still alive?

... Please don't reply in text.

Comments

[reformedsinner]

"I know the blood on my hands is unjust. Even if it's sometimes hard to regret all my actions."

Gonou shakes his head, slightly; moving his head too quickly is disorienting without his eyesight.

"... And not even all the advocates here think that they're justified in any cruelty simply because we've done wrong. But the Judge seems to believe that."

[riseunparalleled]

"There are times you can do things that are unjust, that can lead to justice. There are times when it's simply - unjust. For some people, the regret weighs differently, depending. For myself... the Judge offered such a long list, and yet managed to leave out so many regrets."

He sighs.

"That's part of what I mean about this being a poor environment, even for the guards. I think that many of them wouldn't agree that any cruelty is justified, but when the person in charge is suggesting that..."

[reformedsinner]

"One's regrets and one's crimes can overlap, but I... would be surprised if they weren't more often different than they were the same.

"And it's not as if your suffering redeems anything, either, Xie Lian."

He turns his attention back to the food; if he leaves too much on his plate, he'll regret it when he's well enough to be put on the oar shifts. The relentless work had worn on him when he was uninjured.

"I'm sure the guards are as suggestible as anyone else."

[riseunparalleled]

"Of course it doesn't." Apart from in specific situations, but that's not about his 'suffering' helping anyone, that's just occasionally a side effect. "Which is too bad, in some ways, if I thought it did, at least I could have a good time feeling like I was contributing. Though the regrets I'm speaking of are the ones that were also definitely crimes, but the Judge is apparently strict about what was brought to court..."

Though not strict on agreeing that the court in question have the right to say when a sentence is finished. Admittedly, Xie Lian also doesn't entirely think the Heavenly Court has that right, but it has just as much, if not more, if he's only comparing it with the Judge.

"Yeah, for better or worse." He sighs, again. "My 'kindest' interpretation is, perhaps, that it's a matter of how the Judge has the power to act. But that leads directly into whether she should have that power."

[reformedsinner]

"Well," Gonou remarks, "I might have rebelled solely for my own sake, if it came to that. But that's the sort of question one does ask oneself before a rebellion against one's ruler.

"Tell me, do you think she has the Mandate of Heaven?"

[riseunparalleled]

"Hmm. I'd probably have to see her in person, before I'd want to venture a guess. I can usually tell, even with my spiritual powers bound to this extent. I hope not, that would make... certain things more difficult."

It might be more accurate to say that he can see the 'Mandate of Fate', but 'Heaven' does sound better and the difference can be thin to outside observers.

[reformedsinner]

"Assuming she has a person," Gonou notes. "But really, we mortals tend to think this level of chaos is a sign she doesn't."

He tilts his head in a sketch of a shrug. "Not a direct observation, but I'm comfortable with estimates, myself."

[riseunparalleled]

“Chaos can be a sign that it is there. A personal Mandate of Heaven doesn’t help anyone else on the battlefield.”

As a the longest section on his rap sheet can attest to.

“Really, it could just mean that it would be difficult for other, hm, ‘captains’, maybe, to kill her. Which could be a positive if it’s also linked to the ship.” And could possibly be usurped.

[reformedsinner]

"Well," Gonou says, a little wryly. "I meant in the philosophical sense, myself. Does she have the right to hold the power she holds? -- Where to maintain that right, she needs to preserve order and avoid calamity."

And should calamity and chaos descend, it's a sign she's lost that right.

[riseunparalleled]

"If we're talking philosophically, then there's no reason to pull heaven into it. Well, I suppose you could argue that we have the Mandate of Heaven, which would be an amusing first." He'd never been that sort of prince.

"I generally agree there can be hard proof that someone has lost the 'right' to their power, though I think it's rather dangerous, if you look at it from the position of being in power."

[reformedsinner]

"I don't," Gonou remarks, "think it's a bad thing for someone in power to feel that they can lose their position for wrongdoing."

He gestures blindly with his spoon.

"When someone thinks their power can't be challenged, you see what can happen."

[riseunparalleled]

"That's not the problem. The problem is when the people with power think that since they have that power, they're not doing anything wrong. Which could also be said to have been what happened with the Judge."

[reformedsinner]

"It's a thin line between 'There are no consequences for wrongdoing' and 'I can do no wrong,'" Gonou remarks. "I don't think it would be hard for the Judge to slip from one into the other.

"Although, I suppose, the Authority does stop the ones who do wrong by its standards. By giving us too much freedom, say."

[riseunparalleled]

"Yeah, and 'if I follow the commands of someone stronger, I'm not doing anything wrong' can fit in there too. Especially having something like the Authority around. Who can say if the Authority had any problem with what the Admiral did to us, when instead it could just be because the Admiral disobeyed them."

[reformedsinner]

"From what I heard, the Admiral disobeyed them because he was in trouble over the way he was running the old Barge. But, yes, I suspect the disobedience was a bigger problem from their perspective."

[riseunparalleled]

"The compounding sin. The Authority appears to also have an extra petty streak, if, as the Admiral said, part of his trouble was picking 'tough cases'. Sending people here with sentences that stretch for thousands of years..."

[reformedsinner]

"It's really just throwing us away," Gonou comments. "With plausible deniability."

[riseunparalleled]

"Yeah. It makes me wonder about the other two ships."

[reformedsinner]

"This one can't have gotten all the hard cases," Gonou remarks. "Some of us even came here as Advocates."

Admittedly, some of those Advocates were immediately demoted after violent rampages, but that's beside the point.

[riseunparalleled]

"Envy isn't here," talking about hard cases, and people Xie Lian is glad aren't here but wishes he could know how they are."

[reformedsinner]

"...That's true. Neither is Sephiroth," Gonou notes.

[riseunparalleled]

He nods. "If it was split by difficulty, you'd expect at least one of them. I don't think the other ships can be exactly the same as this one, because the Admiral would've been able to tell us if his was the only one that was different, and people mentioned having stopped somewhere with lots of ships... I wonder if there's some kind of scale."

[reformedsinner]

"Or if they're all wildly different in their own way," Gonou murmurs. "The Admiral did say, once, that he couldn't just graduate people who hadn't met the standard; it's something about the process that gives him the power to do what he does.

"So I suppose they must all have some standard. Here, it's just time and pain."

[riseunparalleled]

He tries to think what standard might fit a number of the people from the Barge who aren't here, but there are too many options. "Perhaps it's better not to have an answer. I can think of a lot of pleasant standards."

[reformedsinner]

"And easier ones. We... can certainly hope, yes."

His spoon jars against an empty bowl; he sets it down and quickly checks the rest of his tray for other food. There's the cardboard juice carton, which is extremely challenging to open one-handed, but Gonou has developed a workaround; he punches a neat hole through the top with one claw and picks it up to drink.