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Sep. 15th, 2005 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
londo_mollariTalk about a time you realized that someone close to you wasn't the person you thought you knew.
That, my friends, is a harder question than is apparent at first glance. I certainly misjudged a number of people - Mr. Morden, for example, when I mistook him for a relatively harmless entrepeneur, though that particular illusion did not last beyond our third encounter - but then Mr. Morden was never what you could term "close", yes? Vir, on the other hand, most certainly is, but while he surprised me repeatedly, it never was in this particular fashion. Let me put it like this: when we first met, I was suffering from the aftermath of a tribute to the gods in our usual Centauri fashion and was not very pleasant - I believe our encounter included me shouting "will you stop apologizing, you dimunitive irritant of doom?" or something like that - but I also thought "Great Maker, they sent me an innocent, good hearted child!" Now over the years I saw Vir grew up. I also saw him display amounts of courage and loyalty I had, during those early days, not realized he possessed. But I never had reason to reverse my initial impression of "innocent and good-hearted", and thus I cannot say he was not "the person I thought I knew".
Perhaps the answer lies elsewhere. When Trakis, that foul excrement of dirt, tried to force Adira to betray me and deliver my purple files into his hands, he also tried to turn me against her after she had hid herself instead of handing over the files. He told me: "She was just using you, just as she has used every man in her life." Coming from a slave owner, this was hypocrisy worthy of the Royal Court itself.
I will not deny I was hurt when discovering Adira had stolen the files. Maybe there were moments when I doubted her. But once Trakis started to speak, he unwittingly made something very important clear to me. For aside from that heavy-handed insult quoted above, he told me she was a slave, which I had not known before, doubtlessly expecting me to assume this to besmirch her further in my eyes. Indeed I concluded that Adira was not who I had first thought her to be. I had believed her to be a free dancer, a beautiful and passionate woman who could have chosen any of her admirers but for some reason picked a tired old Republican dreaming of better days. But now, I knew she must have gone through hell, for a slave's lot is not an easy one in the best of circumstances, and if Trakis was her owner, then her circumstances were rather the worst. For Adira to have gone through this and still be able to feel joy in life, to make her own choices, as she clearly had done when turning against her owner, to risk her life making those choice... it meant she possessed amounts of courage and strength I had previously not seen. Indeed she was not the woman I thought I knew; she was far more. And once I realized this, I also understood any anger I had about her actions was gone.
(Any anger towards Adira, that is; naturally, I found it very satisfying to deliver that punch to Trakis. Not the most civilized form of sparring, to be sure, but then Trakis is not a civilized man, yes?)
I had loved the woman I believed Adira to be, enough not to care whether people thought I was making a fool out of myself, but then, most of them thought I was a fool anyway. The woman I learned she was, I loved enough to let go, for to insist on her staying on the station would have meant to be just another owner, not the man she gave her affection to. And thus, she was able to gave me a last present, one only the woman she really was could have made; she returned out of her own free will. Even from beyond the grave, she came back to me, for one precious night.
Sometimes, discovering who people really are can be a blessing.
That, my friends, is a harder question than is apparent at first glance. I certainly misjudged a number of people - Mr. Morden, for example, when I mistook him for a relatively harmless entrepeneur, though that particular illusion did not last beyond our third encounter - but then Mr. Morden was never what you could term "close", yes? Vir, on the other hand, most certainly is, but while he surprised me repeatedly, it never was in this particular fashion. Let me put it like this: when we first met, I was suffering from the aftermath of a tribute to the gods in our usual Centauri fashion and was not very pleasant - I believe our encounter included me shouting "will you stop apologizing, you dimunitive irritant of doom?" or something like that - but I also thought "Great Maker, they sent me an innocent, good hearted child!" Now over the years I saw Vir grew up. I also saw him display amounts of courage and loyalty I had, during those early days, not realized he possessed. But I never had reason to reverse my initial impression of "innocent and good-hearted", and thus I cannot say he was not "the person I thought I knew".
Perhaps the answer lies elsewhere. When Trakis, that foul excrement of dirt, tried to force Adira to betray me and deliver my purple files into his hands, he also tried to turn me against her after she had hid herself instead of handing over the files. He told me: "She was just using you, just as she has used every man in her life." Coming from a slave owner, this was hypocrisy worthy of the Royal Court itself.
I will not deny I was hurt when discovering Adira had stolen the files. Maybe there were moments when I doubted her. But once Trakis started to speak, he unwittingly made something very important clear to me. For aside from that heavy-handed insult quoted above, he told me she was a slave, which I had not known before, doubtlessly expecting me to assume this to besmirch her further in my eyes. Indeed I concluded that Adira was not who I had first thought her to be. I had believed her to be a free dancer, a beautiful and passionate woman who could have chosen any of her admirers but for some reason picked a tired old Republican dreaming of better days. But now, I knew she must have gone through hell, for a slave's lot is not an easy one in the best of circumstances, and if Trakis was her owner, then her circumstances were rather the worst. For Adira to have gone through this and still be able to feel joy in life, to make her own choices, as she clearly had done when turning against her owner, to risk her life making those choice... it meant she possessed amounts of courage and strength I had previously not seen. Indeed she was not the woman I thought I knew; she was far more. And once I realized this, I also understood any anger I had about her actions was gone.
(Any anger towards Adira, that is; naturally, I found it very satisfying to deliver that punch to Trakis. Not the most civilized form of sparring, to be sure, but then Trakis is not a civilized man, yes?)
I had loved the woman I believed Adira to be, enough not to care whether people thought I was making a fool out of myself, but then, most of them thought I was a fool anyway. The woman I learned she was, I loved enough to let go, for to insist on her staying on the station would have meant to be just another owner, not the man she gave her affection to. And thus, she was able to gave me a last present, one only the woman she really was could have made; she returned out of her own free will. Even from beyond the grave, she came back to me, for one precious night.
Sometimes, discovering who people really are can be a blessing.
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OOC: Speaking of Adira
Date: 2005-09-19 12:01 am (UTC)