[psl] post-mortem; closed to @destinymaker

[eschatological]

[ This office has always been quiet, but now the silence is unnaturally absolute. The usual ambient sounds have all vanished — the muted rumble of feet and serious voices beyond the door, the hum and crackle of electronics, the omnipresent pulse of Aprilius’s environmental support systems. But, then again, there’s no reason for the environmental support systems when the familiar noises of breath and heartbeat have ceased as well.

Two armies of chess pieces lie toppled and abandoned on the floor, leaving the low table bare save for the empty board. Rau sits languidly on one of the two wide sofas with his chin in a gloved hand. Even though he’s corporeal now (or as corporeal as anything in this scene, which is to say, gentlemen of the jury, ambiguously), the dim light and the white of his mask and uniform combine to give him an uncanny, still-ghostly appearance. He shows no interest in the scattered chess pieces. Instead, he is waiting very patiently, intently, for.... ]

Comments

[eschatological]

Oh, it does get better. The Archangel rescued her, and used her as a hostage when the Vesalius had it cornered.

[ He leans back, looks up at the dark ceiling. ]

Patrick Zala's life would have been simpler if I had not drawn back. Yours as well, but not in any way that you would enjoy.

[ Either ZAFT without Lacus would have failed to stop the Peacemaker force, in which case death would make everything rather simple, or ZAFT would have used Genesis without meaningful opposition, in which case Patrick Zala would probably have maintained an iron grip on his position. Neither option would have given Gil a run at rewriting the world. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil runs through those same hypotheticals in his head, and they leave him frowning. Annihilation of the PLANTs is obviously not a preferable outcome, and working under Patrick Zala... Well. He can imagine a less frustrating life for a geneticist. Resolving the infertility crisis is certainly a priority that Gil has always held personal stakes in, but... the way Zala had been trying to brute force it with no real understanding of the scientific delicacy to the situation? That made for an unpleasant superior. ]

Patrick Zala doesn't deserve a simple life. I don't know how you endured working so closely with the man for so long.

[eschatological]

[ He was a conceited ass, but he did build good superweapons. Rau glances back down with a smile. ]

It helped that I was planning His Excellency's death.

[ Also, leaking Spitbreak's real target and Yuri Amalfi's N-Jammer Canceller data; it's the little things. The title is perfectly formal, but in context clearly contemptuous. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil laughs. If Patrick Zala is somewhere out there in this afterlife, he can come take his complaints about the callousness up with them personally. Hopefully he won't. ]

And thank god you were.

[ But thinking of Patrick Zala also makes Gil think about his son. Athrun had been so easy to move with just a little bit of compassion towards his family situation... Love is a destructive force, indeed. Even love that one seeks to bury. ]

Zala was a skilled war time propagandist, I'll give him that. I don't know that he'd have been able to maintain that momentum after a victory, however.

[eschatological]

"After victory"? His particular path to victory would have been short-lived. So long as a single person remained on Earth, they would rage against the heavens. There would never be peace for the PLANTs.

[ ... Rau is slightly wistful. So close. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil looks over at Rau and he can see that wistful longing for endless destruction. ... well, they're both incorrigible.









... it's time for Rau to get a headpat. He started this in the first place, it's his fault. There there. ]

[eschatological]

[ That gets an incredulous expression.

Kinda muted by the mask, but there is some serious skepticism in this frown. ]

[destinymaker]

[ They're dead and nothing matters. It is unfortunately entertaining.

Gil pulls his hand back as though nothing happened. ]

It's the disadvantage of living on artificial ground. The Earth will always contain room for population to hide away in, but space is not so forgiving. We fled this far, but it only put us into a new kind of peril.

[eschatological]

People who live in glass hourglasses shouldn't throw stones.

[ A lesson that Rau will not take to heart, but resorting to acerbic aphorisms is easier than processing thoughts on headpats. And then, a little more distantly: ]

With infinite time and infinite paths -- wouldn't it be extraordinary if, after everything, this was the only path that lead to something other than annihilation?

[ Could have fired on the Archangel despite Lacus, could have not baited Mwu and the Archangel into surviving JOSH-A, could have withheld the N-Jammer data, and PLANT would have stirred up more hatred from the Earth than anything Break The World managed.

He's going to be so annoyed if he accidentally saved the world if it would have destroyed itself without him. ]

[destinymaker]

[ That does make Gil fall quiet for a moment. It's a hypothetical that hits him as well, if he extends it just a little. What an idea it is. All other paths leading to destruction, his utopia forever out of reach.... and yet, through such failure the world can thrive. Or at least survive.

He doesn't know how to feel about that, so he suspects Rau doesn't either. ]

"Part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."

[ this quote is so much catchier in german... ]

You'd make a good Mephisto, if this were the case.

[eschatological]

And you, the striving scholar led astray? That's dramatically self-aggrandizing or dramatically self-deprecating.

[ Not complaining about being cast as a devil is also dramatic, but, well, Rau was semi-complaining about not frying the planet six comments up. To the broader topic: ]

Humans and devils alike, we move toward a future we cannot see.

[ Though even accounting for non-omniscience, it really is absurd to try for mutual annihilation and end with mutual relative forbearance, when there are so many ways humanity could have shot itself in the foot! ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil hardly sees himself as a Faustian figure, but he can't deny that he thought some surface level parallels were strangely appropriate. A scientist, a lost lady love... and a devil for a friend, brought to him by the unsatisfiable human thirst for knowledge and progress.

In the end, he just shrugs at Rau's accusation and decides to focus on the second half. ]

It was hard work to stabilize the PLANTs after all that happened. Without the Clynes, the Zalas, or even you... Well, it made switching into politics full time an easy task. Everyone was desperate for a calm voice and reassuring words.

Maybe I ought to apologize to you for stepping in instead of letting the post-war chaos run its course. Or maybe Lacus Clyne would have returned much earlier had I not done as much?

[ It is a little funny that Rau had been such a large motivator for Gil to take a position in the government and work towards a better future. Whatever Rau himself thinks and believes, he makes the world around him want to try harder. ]

[eschatological]

[ Tigers also make the world around them try harder ... at running away really fast. ]

I can't begrudge you picking up the pieces when I was done.

[ Rau waves a hand airily in the general direction of the ignored chess set. ]

But I doubt that the young lady would have returned home without provocation. The PLANTs killed her father, after all. And people can be so sentimental about those things, [ says a guy who burned down a mansion with the closest thing to his father inside, smiling benignly.

And whose genetic twin killed his father figure? Shoot, another accidental point for biological determinism. Sorry, Gil. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil's own parents are presumably alive somewhere, a little estranged but present... He now briefly thinks of them and the fact that they had to outlive him. Oops. ]

Zala killed her father. With him gone, she'd have had a perfect chance to change the country that made that tragedy occur in the first place.

[ Maybe that's why her absence has always frustrated him. A convenient power vacuum for him to take advantage of, yes, but also an entirely unrelatable course of action. Gilbert Durandal is a man incapable of stepping away. ]

The PLANTs are far from ideal, but letting that fester does nobody any good.

[ "My eugenicist government broke my heart? Clearly the eugenics weren't working good enough yet. We need more of them." ]

[eschatological]

But good and humble people like the young lady only ever rule by necessity, only ever to avoid being ruled by someone worse than themselves.

[ Yes, yes, he's being facetious. And after wrangling Athrun, Yzak, Dearka, and Nicol's very big feelings about everything, it's tempting to make a quip about teenagers not being particularly farsighted -- but Lacus Clyne ended up being more farsighted than most adults. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Rau had to live every day on the Vesalius inside a soap opera, huh... Tragic. (This is why Gil left the Minerva to Talia.) ]

Only ever standing against something without offering an alternative is not a sustainable position. Sooner or later, someone will ask more of her.

[ cue ominous movie teasers ]

[eschatological]

[ Minerva group chat must have been on fiiiiiiiiiire. ]

A gadfly's wings can't bear the weight of responsibility, the inertia of bureaucracy, the strain of compromise.

[ He glances over the fallen chess pieces, leans to pick up the white queen, and tosses it to Gil. ]

What a shame that you want her to succeed. Or, at least, that you want her world rather than mine.

[ But there's no rancor in the words or gesture. Not toward Gil, anyway. ]

[destinymaker]

[ Gil catches the queen piece with ease, momentarily pleased to note that the general collapse of the chess set doesn't seem to have damaged it.... until he remembers that he's dead and none of these are real items. Ah, well.

It still reflects the light from the equally fake fluorescents quite nicely as he turns it in his hands. ]

Your world would be quite spectacular... for a moment, at least.

[ He'd like to watch Rau's smile as he beholds the nuclear explosions. Which is an awful thought to have, and he's not saying it out loud. ]

But you're right, I just can't warm up to the idea. Malicious glee does not delight me often.

[eschatological]

[ Explosions are warm though. And it only takes a tiiiiiiiny spark of malice to for a fire to catch. ]

How magnanimous that you're merely smug [ ... he said, smugly. ]

[destinymaker]

I prefer the term 'self-assured'.

[ Said with his brightest and kindest politician smile. ]

[eschatological]

[ Amusing. Rau rests his chin in a gloved hand again. ]

With all that self-assurance and magnanimity -- if you could advise Lacus Clyne, now, what would you tell her about the world she has inherited?

[destinymaker]

Mhm... I'd tell her that there are reasons to obscure the truth that go beyond pure greed and malice.

[ Not that Gil thinks anything he did was done out of malice either - he just expects the pink princess would disagree with that assessment. ]

Pointing out every detail and grey area does not make for productive policy. It just ensures that the government will be holed up in meetings day after day while there is no material change that the populace can notice.

The world is complicated... no, let's say 'convoluted' instead. Leaders are elected to break it down and simplify it for those with different talents. This makes it necessary to omit details from time to time.

The more she tries to imbue nuance into the public conversation, the more she will divide the public's opinion on herself and her ideals. Unless she is willing to bend her principles, her dreams will grind to a halt over these issues.

[eschatological]

Smugness is simply self-assurance, lies are simply obfuscation. My, a soldier's life is so simple by comparison.

[ He pinches his fingers around the queen's head, as though holding a hand over a person's eyes or mouth or ears. ]

And how many times can a person lie to the world before that person starts to believe the lie?

[destinymaker]

That will depend on the person.

[ It's hard not to think of Meer Campbell here, who so readily threw away all that she used to be in order to step into the skin of Lacus Clyne. Had Gil's assassination attempt not failed, he expects Meer would have abandoned her old name completely sooner rather than later.

It's also easier to think of Meer, than to think of himself. Rau's gaze is the only that Gil always threatens to crumble under. Helplessly bound by him just as the queen piece they're holding onto.]

I'd like to think I'm quite adept at basing my 'lies' in true circumstance.

[eschatological]

[ Feel better, Gil, you're talking to a guy who wears a mask and goes by Awesome McFakename; Rau really has no basis to be talking shit on this subject. ]

That makes it harder to detect, certainly. If a person takes "I sharpen the sword because an attack is conceivable" and says instead "I sharpen the sword because an attack is possible," no one will really call him a liar -- not even himself. And no one will argue the next day when "possible" becomes "probable," or the day after that when "probable" becomes "likely," or the day after that when "likely" becomes "imminent." And by the time he has struck the first blow in "self-defense," who wants to remember that conflict was not always inevitable?

I would, because it's fascinating. [ A smile here, people are just the best at being the worst. ] Perhaps you would, to be self-assured about creating a new and useful truth.

[ Rau withdraws his fingers from the chess piece. ]

I suspect Lacus Clyne would remember; she spent a rather long time playing at being ornamental without forgetting the power she held. But for the rest... [ Another small wave of the hand at the various chess pieces. ] It's very tempting to believe a comfortable lie.