Billy nodded his assent wearily, folding his hands over his leg as he prepared to talk. He closed his eyes, deep in thought as he dove back into his memories of the past year. Really, being an ex-Ranger hadn't brought him this much pain. There was more---did Kaworu already know? Whatever the case, the words were already tumbling out of his mouth.
"I told you that it was a war, harsher than this one. We were all gathered together on a space station---at first we thought we were kidnapped and could go home if we seized control, but we learned later that we were the last refugees from our destroyed worlds. Only a handful of people from each world were saved. Everyone else was eaten alive by vicious oversized insect creatures, our worlds burning all around us. Our memories of the incident were forcibly repressed for a while because they were supposedly too horrific for a human mind to handle."
Billy scoffed lightly at that notion. Yes, it was painful. No, it somehow wasn't the worst thing he'd ever seen. What was worse was...
"I was on the front lines. I already knew how to fight, somewhat, but I knew I was weak compared to others. So I spent hour after hour in training to toughen up, to make myself better, to keep anyone else from dying. But that didn't work."
After a moment's flashback, a face still fresh in his mind, Billy lifted his hands. He held up the palms, lightly discolored. The skin on them was tougher than before, with perhaps visible callouses.
"This happened when a friend of mine was dying, short-circuiting. I tried everything I knew, rewired and reconnected his circuits the best I could, but I wasn't fast enough. They told me that I can't take the blame, and I don't, but it's impossible to forget a sight like that."
Billy pulled his legs up, loosely draping his arms around one knee for comfort. "But I had to grow up sometime, didn't I?" he asked, his eyes cast downward to evade the enormity of his confession. Not about the death, the one about who he was.
no subject
"I told you that it was a war, harsher than this one. We were all gathered together on a space station---at first we thought we were kidnapped and could go home if we seized control, but we learned later that we were the last refugees from our destroyed worlds. Only a handful of people from each world were saved. Everyone else was eaten alive by vicious oversized insect creatures, our worlds burning all around us. Our memories of the incident were forcibly repressed for a while because they were supposedly too horrific for a human mind to handle."
Billy scoffed lightly at that notion. Yes, it was painful. No, it somehow wasn't the worst thing he'd ever seen. What was worse was...
"I was on the front lines. I already knew how to fight, somewhat, but I knew I was weak compared to others. So I spent hour after hour in training to toughen up, to make myself better, to keep anyone else from dying. But that didn't work."
After a moment's flashback, a face still fresh in his mind, Billy lifted his hands. He held up the palms, lightly discolored. The skin on them was tougher than before, with perhaps visible callouses.
"This happened when a friend of mine was dying, short-circuiting. I tried everything I knew, rewired and reconnected his circuits the best I could, but I wasn't fast enough. They told me that I can't take the blame, and I don't, but it's impossible to forget a sight like that."
Billy pulled his legs up, loosely draping his arms around one knee for comfort. "But I had to grow up sometime, didn't I?" he asked, his eyes cast downward to evade the enormity of his confession. Not about the death, the one about who he was.