saveyourserpent | LIQUID'S INBOX

Well, it's not as if I don't have time for a long story. Long trip, after all.

But yea. I get that.

Thankfully Afghanistan taught me a few things about resisting torture. Or else I might have ended up in a similar boat. [Namely, he can focus on the pain. It saves him. As much as he hates it, it's what keeps him in his own head. This is actually giving him a pretty good idea of what's wrong with Liquid. Probably things David never got to find out about. They don't seem the type to converse over the dinner table.]

I thought I knew a few things. I'd been trained for it, after all. Unfortunately, after a few months there just gets to be a point where you realise it's all pointless. Who was I fighting for? Not the people who'd given me up, that was certain.

But ugh giving up just isn't me. I can't bloody stand feeling that way.

[He hasn't really given this so much thought in a long time.]

[There's some empathy there. Being given up, even for the greater good... there's a certain amount of self-sacrifice that's required for a soldier's way of life and not many are willing to feel that devotion.]

Big Boss used to demand that sort of loyalty of his soldiers. But he seems to have forgotten it was that same loyalty that he struggled against, a society of being caught in the middle of cycles of revenge.

But look at his sons. At Zero. Revenge, anger. It's always surrounded him. A never-ending cycle of man pitted against man. In both you and your brother. And no doubt, in those countries that manipulated you. You're loyal to your own causes now. [Not exactly the best causes to be so loyal to, though. Not with what he's perpetuating.]

[At the MSF, at Diamond Dogs, he made those soldiers feel more content in their acceptance of Big Boss as a leader. A leader who they never truly set eyes on, one they died for because of an illusion.]

[That part? Will always make him angry.]

What you believed in betrayed you.

Alliances are complicated that way. Luckily, you don't have to stand by them. Had that prison reached you, there would have been no escape.

Revenge was all I ever wanted, in the end. What I lived for. What I died for. I wanted revenge on every little thing I could conceivably get it on. The idea felt powerful. When you grow up knowing you were tossed aside in favour of someone else, you try and grab on to little things like that.

[He got tired of other people telling him what to do really fast, even as a kid. All of that coming together had just led him to escape and try to make his way on his own. And he hadn't done a bad job of that at all.]

Ha. Don't know if I ever really believed in it. I should have just stayed with Tretij instead of heading back and getting into all of that convoluted SIS/SAS bullshit. God save the fucking queen.

[The two had gone their separate ways, and everything had gone to shit. And when they'd reunited years later, it had turned out Mantis hadn't exactly had the best time on his own either. That had not been one of their best decisions.]

I know. Every time I tried to get out it just brought me deeper. Until I started agreeing with it. If you hadn't come along I might've still been there. Either that, or I would've snapped out of it, found wherever they keep the AI's important bits, and smashed them to pieces, but probably not.

[A part of him wants to talk Liquid out of revenge. A really hopeless part that realizes it might take years, if it happens at all. He doesn't want his student to have to suffer. But it may be something he can't stop.]

I think you would have been happier with him, yes. [That much he can agree on.]

I'm glad to have confirmed it had no lasting effects.

[The desire for revenge is what keeps Liquid afloat half the time. At the very least, he doesn't plan to do anything on the ship. When they get home? All bets are off.]

I know I would have been. But you know what they say about hindsight.

Right. As far as I can tell, anyway. Nothing beyond an unpleasant sense of embarrassment. Guess I'm not going back for more material, hm?

[Hilarious.]

If anyone is in their right mind? They won't be, either.

Well, I hope other people will have better luck, anyway. Those things do seem to give up on dragging you around if you start agreeing with them.

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