[He doesn't look much happier than she does. More resigned, maybe, but the grim reality of the situation hasn't in any way left him. He still imagines an empty Rome sometimes, how everything might have looked if he had failed.]
I learned more about him later, things I could only guess at in the moment. He was a doctor who killed his patients, experimenting on them or driving them to suicide. A truly disgusting man. He tried very hard to kill Mista, and then he tried very hard to kill me.
[A beat.]
He was a fool. But I bring him up because every time I see Aunamee on the network, I think of that man. He was less a predator than a scavenger, although that seems sort of insulting to scavengers, too. There is a certain type of person who flourishes only when causing pain, who destroys with a touch or a word and who always targets the vulnerable first and foremost, because they are cowards at heart who don't want to take any chances with their own lives.
One thing I learned about this man is that he was never sorry about anything he'd done. Not the small things, like bullying a colleague, or the big things, like trying to kill the most important person in my life in front of me. He relied on others to be good and honorable and took advantage of their good intentions. When he won, he was smug, and when he lost, it was always someone else's fault and so unfair. But above all, he never, ever admitted he was wrong or felt any remorse.
I'm certain that's how Aunamee operates as well, regardless of the details I don't know. And that's what makes him and this man I'm talking about different from you, Riley. The depths of your unselfish feelings are bottomless. You grieve for what you've done every day. You feel other things, too, which is normal — but you are so deep in grief and guilt and recognition that what you've done is wrong . . .
If emotion was terrain, they're in an ocean trench and you're on a mountain. They can't even see you. They would see you as weak and manipulable because they have never been where you are. They've never seen the world from where you're standing. They never will. Because you are nothing at all alike.
cw suicide
[He doesn't look much happier than she does. More resigned, maybe, but the grim reality of the situation hasn't in any way left him. He still imagines an empty Rome sometimes, how everything might have looked if he had failed.]
I learned more about him later, things I could only guess at in the moment. He was a doctor who killed his patients, experimenting on them or driving them to suicide. A truly disgusting man. He tried very hard to kill Mista, and then he tried very hard to kill me.
[A beat.]
He was a fool. But I bring him up because every time I see Aunamee on the network, I think of that man. He was less a predator than a scavenger, although that seems sort of insulting to scavengers, too. There is a certain type of person who flourishes only when causing pain, who destroys with a touch or a word and who always targets the vulnerable first and foremost, because they are cowards at heart who don't want to take any chances with their own lives.
One thing I learned about this man is that he was never sorry about anything he'd done. Not the small things, like bullying a colleague, or the big things, like trying to kill the most important person in my life in front of me. He relied on others to be good and honorable and took advantage of their good intentions. When he won, he was smug, and when he lost, it was always someone else's fault and so unfair. But above all, he never, ever admitted he was wrong or felt any remorse.
I'm certain that's how Aunamee operates as well, regardless of the details I don't know. And that's what makes him and this man I'm talking about different from you, Riley. The depths of your unselfish feelings are bottomless. You grieve for what you've done every day. You feel other things, too, which is normal — but you are so deep in grief and guilt and recognition that what you've done is wrong . . .
If emotion was terrain, they're in an ocean trench and you're on a mountain. They can't even see you. They would see you as weak and manipulable because they have never been where you are. They've never seen the world from where you're standing. They never will. Because you are nothing at all alike.