006 ♍ voice

[glowsferatu]

[ kanaya knows she has to make this confession, not that she's particularly looking forward to it. but now that they've put her in solitary, nothing about this punishment has been satisfying. she needs something better.

everyone needs to know, but she doesn't want their pity, and doesn't deserve their sympathy. so. she kind of goes a little too far in the other direction, there. ]

I've been quiet the past few days. I say this not as an apology, because I don't particularly give a shit, but as an explanation. For those who don't know me, my name is Kanaya Maryam, an for the past few months I've been moonlighting as a costumed thug. One might even go so far as to say I was a supervillain.

Shocking, isn't it? I was a bit surprised, myself. [ not that she's going to explain that one. ]

As Hobgoblin, I committed numerous crimes, whether disrupting traffic, harassing the costumed set, playing ghost in a haunted house, other, more serious infractions. Kidnapping. Stalking. And...worse than that. [ her flippant tone cracks, her voice falling low and shaky. ] I've-- I've hurt people. People who didn't deserve it. Innocents.

[ there's a fury brimming in that last word, a self-loathing and shame. she can feel her hands shaking, her knuckles going white as she balls her fists. but they won't see that, it's important that they don't. if they recognize any remorse, it will defeat the whole purpose.

she takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she collects herself again. ]

For all of these things, the most the local authorities have seen fit to do is stick me in a room alone without my powers. Which is really great, I must say. Wonderful to know that we feed and house our criminals when law-abiding residents have no such amenities, especially when they aren't registered! I must say this world's punitive measures are deeply impressive, it truly overwhelms me with compunction, how much softer-handed it is than I expected when I turned myself in. I suppose I shouldn't be really surprised, when the approach to everything is such a joke, such a limp attitude toward justice is at least consistent.

But it isn't real justice. It's a mockery. [ she thinks of terezi, and wonders if she'd be more embarrassed by the meagerness of it, or that kanaya submitted herself willingly. terezi would know what to do here. ]

I'm sure many of you could do better, someone who really believes in the subject, unless you're too stuck in all the nonsense moralizing humans too often preoccupy themselves with. You're heroes. I'm a villain. That seems simple enough to me.

If you want to see real justice done, I'm not going anywhere.

Comments

[selfequipped]

No, but that's just a tidy story, Kanaya. You wouldn't let yourself get to that point.

[glowsferatu]

It isn't tidy at all, it's been a mess at every turn. I've been a mess, and a well-contained one.

But contents, when under pressure, tend to be terribly volatile. This wouldn't be the first time they've blown up on me. I'm not any good at managing myself.

[selfequipped]

No, I'd buy that if you snapped and had one instance of all that you mentioned. But you've been at it for months. Months.

[glowsferatu]

The problem doesn't go away after just one incident, Kate. It's still there, every moment, hanging on your shoulders.

Spreading it out over time is the only responsible approach to it. It's the same way I've come to have more control over my transformations lately.

[selfequipped]

I didn't say you only had one incident, or that it was limited to one incident. I said I'd buy this if you bottled it up and it exploded, but it didn't.

See, this is where you don't respect my intelligence enough for me to not see that your story is inconsistent.

[glowsferatu]

It isn't inconsistent, you just don't know how managing this sort of thing works. You stretch it, let out a little at a time to keep it from exploding.

I've done that too many times before. I thought I could do it smarter.

More the fool me.

[selfequipped]

No, Kanaya. Your story doesn't make any sense. Because you're not saying something.

[glowsferatu]

I've said it all already. The only thing missing is your inability to recognize when you've gotten something wrong!

But I don't see why that should surprise us at this point.

[selfequipped]

Hey, everyone, Kanaya is being a broken record! Like that's anything new. But that's what you just said about me, right?

You aren't making any sense. No one believes you. It must really suck.

[glowsferatu]

To have no one understand or believe my experiences, but still needle and interrogate them at every turn? That isn't anything new, either. It's something I've always had to deal with.

[selfequipped]

No one believes you because they have some level of faith in you.

[glowsferatu]

And that makes their faith no less misplaced.

[selfequipped]

Or you're a good person capable of doing bad things. You're on a very long list of people.

[glowsferatu]

And how can you be so confident that it isn't the reverse? What quantity of one over the other makes the difference?

[selfequipped]

Because most bad people don't publicly hang themselves on the cross.

[glowsferatu]

That's too simple a delineation. No amount of guilt felt counterbalances the actions it was inspired by.

You can't cross over from being a bad person to good just because you're really sorry about it.

[selfequipped]

No, but that's only a technicality in this situation. In this situation, if you were really so awful, you wouldn't be telling us about it.

[glowsferatu]

It isn't just a technicality, it's exactly what you're doing. You're using the fact that I've confessed or somehow regret my actions as proof that I can't really be so evil as to have done them.

It's all fallacious and circular reasoning.

[selfequipped]

I can think of a lot of people who would only be doing this to convince someone that they were really better when they weren't.

Their "regret" is a lot faker.

[glowsferatu]

Regret is still not innocence, Kate. Even if you've seen less sincere regret in the past.

[selfequipped]

No, but it could definitely be the road to it.

[glowsferatu]

Well, I still have a long way to travel, if that is the case.

[selfequipped]

Yeah, I'm kind of leaning on "unreliable narrator" with you.

[glowsferatu]

Unreliable narrator to an unreliable audience. I suppose that makes us quite the pair.

[selfequipped]

Believe it or not, there is no such thing as an "unreliable audience." I know, shocking, even when it's me.