a_sin_for_him | IC Contact

'Up and ran off with' makes it sound sordid, Scar. We're taking a planned trip together.

You asked if I was thinking of going out because of him. I was answering you. I'm sorry it wasn't a simple answer, but there it is. It's about my own willingness to take chances and risks of my own choosing.

I don't care what that 'makes it sound' like.

All I'm hearing is the consideration of a stupid option in some desperate grab for what you're calling freedom.

[Which... he actually understands. But seriously. HURRICANE.]

I do. I get enough assumptions here just because of my name. I don't appreciate baseless implications of that kind.

Because I've earned the right to make stupid decisions! Simple, stupid decisions that won't effect anyone but myself! Even children are allowed to skin their knees to learn.

[A sigh.]

Do you honestly think people won't make assumptions regardless of what you call it? And there isn't anything you can do about your name unless you change it.

...You are comparing skinned knees to running around in a hurricane.

No one seems to assume anything, really, when it comes to Greed and I. And I'm not about to change my name. It's mine.

Touching a hot stove, then. It's the principle, not an exact scaled comparison.

Then you can't complain about it.

[It's hers? That's really the best she can do? It was given to her by a sadistic madwoman, why would she want it at all?]

But you're missing the point. You know what could happen. There is no need to test it like a child who needs to learn that getting injured hurts.

But I can express displeasure at the assumptions some people make. Why is the onus on me to change my name, rather than on other people to not make baseless assumptions?

We're missing each other's points.

[She almost sounds amused.]

But a fact is that I've been in the doorway while talking to you just now and I'm perfectly fine.

"Lust" is a ridiculous name. Of course people are going to assume when you give them no explanation.

[rrrrr]

That is like saying that you are standing in a shooting range, but it's fine because you haven't been shot, yet. How can you possibly accept that logic as being sound?

I don't think it's ridiculous. It was my name before I knew what it meant as a word.

[Lust is surprised at how much it seems to sting when Scar makes that comment about her name.]

I'm just keeping an eye on things, I'm not out in it.

Of course you don't, it's what you've been called for years. "Scar" is ridiculous, and people find it so, but it's to be expected. It's not a name, it's a.... thing.

You can keep an eye on things from a distance.

Then surely you can see why I get tired of assumptions being made because of it. No one ever made assumptions back home. Not just from my name. No one even found it odd. They certainly didn't assume I was some sex-motivated goodtime girl. I've never even en...

[She was about to say 'enjoyed the act' but remembers who she's talking to.]

Anyway, a thing can be a name. Anything can be a name, if it's used as one. And why not?

If I need to do more than watch, I'd prefer to be close by.

No, I don't, because I still made the choice to keep it. I accept the abnormalities that come with it.

...Are people saying that?

[He will beat them up.]

I meant the fact that you acknowledge it's my name to me before anything else. It's not something I'm called, it's not something that was adopted late in life, it's not a designation, it's my name.

The implications are clear. And I suppose I can't honestly be upset by the implications themselves, all things considered, but...

I've had to make a trade of sex my whole life. I never wanted to, I never liked it. I certainly don't have to now, but still the assumptions and recommendations that I would, just because of my name. I'm no one's mistress anymore and I'm not going to be again.

[THAT revelation comes with a change in Scar's tone. He's silent for a moment.

That's messed up. Like. Very, very wrong. Add it to the list of reasons for which Scar would be more than happy to blow Dante's skull open. Yeah, he's going to assume that was her fault, too.]

I... didn't know.

[As if that changes anything. Another pause. Now he's just getting angry for entirely different reasons. He pauses again. He doesn't know what else to say. He's sorry? That doesn't fit.]

How could you have? It's all in the past now. And it likely wasn't as horrible as you're thinking it was - it was like work, that's all. Not particularly pleasant, but what work is?

I'm only upset that none of it was even for my own benefit.

I just want to be me. For myself. Whoever I am.

No. Wait.

You can't even call it work of it wasn't for your benefit.

Was this going on... the entire time you were with her?

[He spits that last word like it's poison.]

But it was work. I expected to receive something in payment, but that was my own foolishness.

It's what I did. Just like any job, I suppose. I was trained, given instruction, an expected result, and then set to work. I don't feel ashamed or terrible about anything I did, and I don't want to be made to feel as though I should.

You expected reward, but it wasn't given!

[That's not even prostitution, it's slavery as far as he can tell. How can she simply be all right with that?]

I'm not... trying to make you feel terrible.

Something I realized too late. That was my own mistake. I believed false promises and was played for a fool. At least I realized eventually the mess I'd found myself in. And what did I do? Selfish, snobbish old men. Hardly the worst thing anyone's ever done to try and achieve a lofty goal. But it doesn't matter anymore. I have my own life now. Now I do for myself.

No, but I wanted to head off any...discussions of morality. That's all.

There wasn't anything else you could have done, I'm not so foolish as to discuss anything of that nature regarding this. Not toward you.

Oh, there's plenty I could have done, if I'd opened my eyes sooner.

I'm not trying to imply I think you'd try and tell me what I've done is wrong. I suppose it's simply that there's a prevalent idea that there's some graver evil in being taken advantage of bodily. I can't see it that way, though I've thought about it and tried to look at it that way.

Of course there is a prevalent idea! How can you be so apathetic?!

I don't know, I simply am.

[But the question does make her ponder it, and she gives it serious thought as she leans against the door frame. Her hand is on the handle of the door itself, to allow her to retreat back inside the moment she wants to. She maintains some control over the situation, even in the storm.

And maybe that's the answer.]

Maybe because despite the fact that I wasn't acting of my own desire, I was still always in control. I held the actual power, no matter what they thought.

Except that she held control over you.

Yes.

But she wasn't in the bedroom with my targets and I. And there I held the control. I don't consider myself physically taken advantage of because I was the one in a position of power during the act of sex itself. It was the tool that I wielded to make my targets desire me blindly and render them malleable to my suggestions.

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