a_sin_for_him | IC Contact

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.

[Scar cringes just thinking about all of this, but he knows that that it his own issue, and this isn't about him.]

But you were still the one being used for it. Not by them, by Dante.

[His new least favorite person in the world.]

She used me. I used them. I have nothing but hate in my heart for that woman, but when it comes to my...field work, I can't muster up much indignation.

I took what I could from them and they all met bad ends when I was done. And I may have done it in her service, but only because I honestly believed one of those bumbling idiots would stumble onto the key to make me human. When they didn't, I was done with them. I'm not the victim there. In other arenas, yes, but not that one.

So it means nothing to you. The fact that you were treated like a thing for the pleasure of others means nothing more than if you were fooled any other way.

[He's just trying to figure out where this begins and ends.]

Edited 2014-08-01 01:26 (UTC)

It doesn't mean nothing. I did say I found it unpleasant. But no, I don't hold it somehow above the other ways in which I was used as a thing.

Why should I? Because it was sex? Sex doesn't mean anything much to me. It was something useful that I'm good at. It doesn't have any deeper meaning to me.

[Not yet, anyhow. She's aware that it's a matter of her experiences, and simply not engaging in sex for pleasure or intimacy. But she doubts Scar wants to hear that.]

That is so fundamentally wrong I do not even know what to say to it.

That's all I've known. I was only ever taught what I needed to know, how I needed to know it.

[This is what she was talking about when she said she didn't want to discuss the morality.]

This is why this life here is so important to me.

Just because it's all you have been forced to believe doesn't make it okay.

The way I heard it, she kept a choke hold on all of you, forced you to believe it was your only option. She selectively taught you and... blotted out what she didn't like.

Yes. And that's awful. I don't think it's alright, it's just what it is.

But it's over. I have a chance for my own life now. I can learn things for myself. Nothing can ever change the past, there's no sense in wallowing in self pity or playing a victim over it. What I think and believe now isn't etched in stone. That's why I want to experience new things and meet new people and try things I've never been able to before.

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