What's before she can remember? She remembers hiding under her parents' bed when she was six and they couldn't make the bomb shelter before the fighting hit their neighborhood. She remembers taking apart and putting together her father's handgun while they hid, over and over like a prayer.
What's before she can remember? Is there a time that wasn't blood and fire and Insurrectionists murdering her family and her friends? Maybe Cygnus, but that really is too far back for her to recall. She was one when they moved to Mamore. She was ten when the Innies took her cousin, thirteen when they took her parents, fourteen when they took her brother.
Training, that stability, that order, it sounds like a delirium dream. ]
I was only at Corbulo a year. [ There again, watering eyes, constricted throat. She clears it. ] I was on Mamore before that.
[ She realizes, suddenly, he won't know what that means. He won't hear Mamore and think battleground. ] There's. A lot of violence there, Innie--Insurrectionist violence. My parents were Marines, KIA. The Innies....
[ She glances down and away, trying to pin down feelings that have become more complicated than she would have thought possible. (She doesn't see it, doesn't notice, but she's already more relaxed around him; it's almost like he's a fellow cadet, with his honesty and his invitation to call him by name.) ] I thought they didn't care who they killed as long as they made their point doing it. I do--they're monsters, they've always been monsters.
[ Except now she's seen real monsters. Seven-foot-tall beasts wielding glowing weapons and projectiles that don't just rip through armor, they explode inside their targets. ] We were training to fight them. Who were you...?
no subject
What's before she can remember? She remembers hiding under her parents' bed when she was six and they couldn't make the bomb shelter before the fighting hit their neighborhood. She remembers taking apart and putting together her father's handgun while they hid, over and over like a prayer.
What's before she can remember? Is there a time that wasn't blood and fire and Insurrectionists murdering her family and her friends? Maybe Cygnus, but that really is too far back for her to recall. She was one when they moved to Mamore. She was ten when the Innies took her cousin, thirteen when they took her parents, fourteen when they took her brother.
Training, that stability, that order, it sounds like a delirium dream. ]
I was only at Corbulo a year. [ There again, watering eyes, constricted throat. She clears it. ] I was on Mamore before that.
[ She realizes, suddenly, he won't know what that means. He won't hear Mamore and think battleground. ] There's. A lot of violence there, Innie--Insurrectionist violence. My parents were Marines, KIA. The Innies....
[ She glances down and away, trying to pin down feelings that have become more complicated than she would have thought possible. (She doesn't see it, doesn't notice, but she's already more relaxed around him; it's almost like he's a fellow cadet, with his honesty and his invitation to call him by name.) ] I thought they didn't care who they killed as long as they made their point doing it. I do--they're monsters, they've always been monsters.
[ Except now she's seen real monsters. Seven-foot-tall beasts wielding glowing weapons and projectiles that don't just rip through armor, they explode inside their targets. ] We were training to fight them. Who were you...?