[Kanaya listens to Peko's words with the intensity typically reserved for comprehending a foreign language, aggressively piecing together the puzzle inside her head. The picture is heterogenous: One of those "happy human families"... and on the outskirts, Peko? How many times did she have this drilled into her head if it's taken her almost half an hour to show the slightest doubt? Even if her toolhood is only due to a social contract, her mindset is completely real - and the enthusiasm of a few dozen near-strangers directed towards a hardened young adult is much less than an entire childhood presented as simple fact. That emotion in Peko's voice is so faint, impossible for Kanaya to distinguish more subtly as grief or despair, resentment or anger - the slightest flicker in the distance of a fire that might burn down a house.]
I guess, then, there isn't a way you could be one of those people--who possessed tools and did what they could to procure more. Because they took you into that way of life. If that's how it works, if personhood isn't inevitable - if what you are is instead a function of your circumstances, that raises some interesting questions.
What if the producers drew you back into the Iron Maiden, and every member of the Kuzuryuu family were assassinated, and you were kept alive on that stage, and invisible strings were bound to your joints, and you were made to wave your swords around for their entertainment indefinitely, no release forthcoming - would you at some point cease to be a tool, and become a puppet?
What if you tried your best to carry out the wishes of a boy everyone else had left for dead: Would you become the executioner of his will? What if you bestowed gifts upon people who would never share your views or interact with your organization: Does that make you a sympathizer with the law? What if you were the guidance of a boy who approached death with less finesse: Would that make you a friend?
What if... even though you knew there was nothing you could do for your friends from before, as death threatened them, and serving the purpose you had been hatched to was more complicated than it had ever seemed... [The incorrect verb choice suggests as heavily as anything else that Kanaya is speaking from experience.] There were still people who cared about you now, and valued your talents, and wanted to share the pain of your past, and thought you could do the right thing together? [Kanaya's hands rest in her own lap, palms up, open.] Would it make you a comrade? Maybe that's not the most important thing you could be. I think that's still something.
[Her gaze with Peko falters, and she mutters at herself, though audibly, in that same gruff diction reserved for her own kind:] Jegus, that whole elaborate pupa metaphor probably sounded really stupid. Forgive me. Jadebloods shouldn't try to understand variations on already bizarre mammalian family structures.
no subject
[Kanaya listens to Peko's words with the intensity typically reserved for comprehending a foreign language, aggressively piecing together the puzzle inside her head. The picture is heterogenous: One of those "happy human families"... and on the outskirts, Peko? How many times did she have this drilled into her head if it's taken her almost half an hour to show the slightest doubt? Even if her toolhood is only due to a social contract, her mindset is completely real - and the enthusiasm of a few dozen near-strangers directed towards a hardened young adult is much less than an entire childhood presented as simple fact. That emotion in Peko's voice is so faint, impossible for Kanaya to distinguish more subtly as grief or despair, resentment or anger - the slightest flicker in the distance of a fire that might burn down a house.]
I guess, then, there isn't a way you could be one of those people--who possessed tools and did what they could to procure more. Because they took you into that way of life. If that's how it works, if personhood isn't inevitable - if what you are is instead a function of your circumstances, that raises some interesting questions.
What if the producers drew you back into the Iron Maiden, and every member of the Kuzuryuu family were assassinated, and you were kept alive on that stage, and invisible strings were bound to your joints, and you were made to wave your swords around for their entertainment indefinitely, no release forthcoming - would you at some point cease to be a tool, and become a puppet?
What if you tried your best to carry out the wishes of a boy everyone else had left for dead: Would you become the executioner of his will? What if you bestowed gifts upon people who would never share your views or interact with your organization: Does that make you a sympathizer with the law? What if you were the guidance of a boy who approached death with less finesse: Would that make you a friend?
What if... even though you knew there was nothing you could do for your friends from before, as death threatened them, and serving the purpose you had been hatched to was more complicated than it had ever seemed... [The incorrect verb choice suggests as heavily as anything else that Kanaya is speaking from experience.] There were still people who cared about you now, and valued your talents, and wanted to share the pain of your past, and thought you could do the right thing together? [Kanaya's hands rest in her own lap, palms up, open.] Would it make you a comrade? Maybe that's not the most important thing you could be. I think that's still something.
[Her gaze with Peko falters, and she mutters at herself, though audibly, in that same gruff diction reserved for her own kind:] Jegus, that whole elaborate pupa metaphor probably sounded really stupid. Forgive me. Jadebloods shouldn't try to understand variations on already bizarre mammalian family structures.