A Terrible Loneliness Reflection
Betrayal is a tough pill to swallow. Even after we’ve been hurt, there’s a part of us that wants to believe that the person just made a mistake or that we’re missing a key piece of information that will make all the senselessness of the moment finally make sense. There’s just no way this person, who said how much they loved us or respected us or wanted to protect us… would hurt us… right?
It’s just too much shock to the system that our brains will do whatever it takes to protect us from the severe hurt we’re feeling. It’s the reason why so many people, despite being betrayed over and over and over again, keep making excuses for their abusers. We see this from domestic cases all the way up to the cult-like following of political figures whose followers will excuse any kind of behavior, no matter the level of pretzel they need to twist themselves into to excuse it.
Grey utilizes that mentality in this chapter, manipulating Callie and essentially using her as bait. He hypes her up at the end, making her feel like only she could defeat Marcus, but by doing so he needed Marcus to try to kill her. Of course he throws himself into harm's way to protect her, but that’s not exactly as redeeming as one may think considering he put her there in the first place. The only reason he’s not called out more for it is because it worked and Callie is too focused on watching the man who used, abused, and threatened her decaying before her eyes to really comprehend everything that just happened to her.
It makes me wonder, though, if given the opportunity to face our abusers from a position of power, what should we do? There are a few schools of thought here, whether we should punish them for their misdeeds, or forgive the situation and move on without them in our lives anymore. This is very much the moment that Callie is having. Grey has left her to deal with Marcus as he deals with Natalia. She has no oversight right now, and is well within her rights to kill Marcus or leave him suspended in eternal torpor, suffering the inability to affect change on the world he thought he was destined to rule. Trapped in a prison, a hell, of his own making.
I have said, on many occasions, that I am not a good person. I try to be. I act with kindness when I can, I seek to help others, and I never cause harm to those around me. However, much like the kindred, there is a beast in a cage rattling around in my skull, desperate to strike out at those who cause harm to others. I hear of bad things happening to bad people, and smile. I wish terrible things upon those I deem terrible, and if I currently had the power Callie has over her abuser over my own, there’s no question in my mind that I would choose to inflict as much pain and suffering on them as possible. Maybe even sprinkle in a little humiliation for good measure.
The urge to cave his skull in would be too great, but then, the idea of eternal loneliness, that terrible loneliness, being trapped forever in a broken body that will not die, but will continue to decay, leaving him trapped, impotent, and forgotten, but still fully conscious… that is a fate worse than death. And that is the choice that Callie is faced with. Will she be kind and kill him, or cruel and let him live?
I always find this question to be an amusing one. So many people think that death is the worst thing you can do to someone. A terrible fate. I suggest anyone who feels that way go play Dishonored and avoid killing as much as possible, even the bosses. See what happens to them if you take the non-violent approach. Usually it is far, far worse than if you were kind enough to kill them.
When writing this, I couldn’t have told you what was going on in Callie’s mind. Which way she would have leaned. I think that’s why I left it the way I did. As I type this, I’d written this chapter about eight months ago. I didn’t know where her mind was because I didn’t know where mine was. Lost, frustrated, and finding it difficult to have kind thoughts, perhaps I wanted her to leave Marcus like that, suspended in his eternal hell. Maybe I needed her to be kind, killing him and ending his suffering in a way that he, and other abusers, refused to end the suffering of others through their own inaction rather than action. Honestly, I don’t remember what I did. I haven’t read and edited chapters 29 through 31 yet. I don’t remember what happens next, but I do know that Marcus and Natalia are only just the beginning for the coterie.
