You don’t always have to smack people in the face with how strong you are

Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined, I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me. But if I saw her, I wouldn't recognize her.

You were afraid of shooting people?" "No," I say. "I was afraid of my considerable capacity to kill." How many young men fear that there is a monster inside of them?

I see a kind of thirst in her expression, the same one I saw when she told me about her brother in the back room of the tattoo parlor. Before the attack simulation I might have called it a thirst for justice, or even revenge, but now I am able to identify it as a thirst for blood. And even as it frightens me, I understand it. Which should probably frighten me even more.

If they told us what to believe, and we didn't come to it on our own, is it still true?

It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known.

But now I know how large the world is... Well. I suppose I have grown to large out of my faction. As a consequence.