driftfleet | Do pigeons have feelings?

Entry tags:

Do pigeons have feelings?

Who: Adalwolfe Hawke
Broadcast: Yes, video
Action: Yes, Malum or Tourist.
When: In the wee hours of the morning, during drift week

Stop me if you've heard this one.

[Hello fleet, it's a very drunk Adalwolfe Hawke on your feed tonight. Which is weird because usually he doesn't make drunk posts, but hey it's been a hard wee- no, mont-... year? No, not long enough.

Life. It's been a hard life. And sometimes that catches up with him, so hooray alcohol and existential 2am thoughts.]

But, right, so, some people in the fleet are from earlier that other people in the fleet from the same versh.. version of the same world, right? So then would them changing someone when they get back - or if I guess 'cause who knows - would them changing a big thing then change that thing for the people here from later there? If say... Idunno, I was from before all the stuff and decided not to go to Kirkwall, would other stuff have happened instead of my stuff? Would that change all the... the stuff?

[Maker he needs Varric or Carver to translate his drunkspeech. He's not so far gone that he can't tell he's making the least amount of sense.]

Or if-if... I dunno if I should say that nevermind, but you all get my point, right? Is it set in stone? Or is it like... all these different Thedaseses that everyone is from, they just get made when something else changed so it still happened but the other thing happened too, somehow? Uh.

[He frowns into his mug. These are very murky, complicated thoughts. Clearly he needs to wash them off with more alcohol.]

Were we meant to do things or do things just happen even if we don't do anything? You get what I'm trying to say, right?

[Someone? Anyone?]

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[The acknowledgement of his thought might embarrass Adalwolfe if he wasn't drunk, but considering he is all he does is level an annoyed gaze to Justice that he read his mind and lets it go at that.]

I think he's entitled to have a generous view because you saved his life. That was a kind thing to do, you didn't have to.

[He sighs and leans back, ending up laying on his back and staring at the florescent lights in the ceiling.]

There's nothing for what was 'meant' to be. Who decides that, anyway? Even as a spirit, that's up to you, what you're meant for, and even things you think of as failures other people don't. It's point of view. You don't see value in your life because you're not what you thought you should be, maybe, but Anders sees value in you because of what you are and none of that is corruption. It's just... life. Influence and changing thoughts are part of that outside the Fade.

[He twists in order to look at Justice again.]

Like I said, you'd a lot more mortal than maybe you even want to believe. And justice is a.... I mean, it's a weird concept, right? Justice as a concept is only what's fair, but life isn't fair all the time. Life just happens and that's not to say you can't try to be just but I don't think it's something that can be ultimately fulfilled, just something to try and live by.

[He mulls that over for a moment.]

I guess what I'm trying to say is it wouldn't really be fair to anyone for you to give up and off yourself. That's not a just thing, that's you being scared of your part in all this. We don't even really know whose idea it was but it doesn't matter. Pain or not, it freed a lot of mages, it saved a lot more people than it hurt in the long run. At least, that's what I believe. And where's justice for those people without you?

[This conversation is making his head hurt. Or maybe that’s the wine. He drinks another mouthful and offers it to Wolfe.]

If a creature springs fully formed into existence with one goal in mind, is that not its purpose? Is that not what it is meant for? Mortals choose their purposes, but spirits always have them. To betray them in any way would mean becoming something else entirely.

It is natural for mortals to change. You are born and you grow and you become who you are through your choices. It is not natural for a spirit to change so much. Change is a harbinger of corruption.

[He should have seen this coming. He noticed how much he was changing, but he’d dismissed it as harmless, even beneficial for learning how to live in this world, and let it stand. He became careless and paid dearly for it.]

This world has changed me. My friends have changed me. I have picked up new mannerisms, new desires, new ways of relating to others... but none of that changes what I am. I am still a spirit of justice, and I do not know how long I can survive without corruption in a world where justice may not always be attainable.

[And that’s a horrifying thought. That maybe he’s doomed no matter what he does. He puts down the bottle in favor of rubbing his temples.]

I have read about decisions like this. A train is about to hit three people stuck to the track. You can divert the train and save the three people, but there is one person on the new track who would die due to your intervention. Which is the right decision? Is it better to actively kill one innocent person to save three others, or to passively allow three innocents to die so that you do not directly kill someone?

What would you do?

Making different choices wouldn't change what I am either. I'm a human, I'm a son, I'm a brother. Those are just labels, and I think there's labels for you too. Spirit of Justice. Fine. But you get changed, just like everyone, not at the core but the rest of it too. It's like...

[He sways a little, looking at the bottle for a moment.]

It's like the bottle. Or no, that's stupid. It's like a peach. You've got the fruit on the outside that'll change and be eaten or get moldy or whatever, but the pit is always the same. And the pit is where new peaches come from. All the other stuff, it may change the peach, but it's still a peach at its core and it'll always be what it is. It doesn't think about what it has to do to stay a peach, it just always is.

[He runs a hand back through his hair, feeling sweaty and unpleasant from all the alcohol and uncomfortable that he can't seem to get through to Justice, that he can't just bend his words to fit in the spaces where they need to go. Maybe it's the alcohol ruining his ability to talk or maybe it's just that spirits are different, but that second part feels wrong. Spirits and mortals are so similar, especially spirits who've been made to walk the world. Cole was confused too, but in the way of a child learning how the world works. This feels the same, and Justice's moral question proves it.]

I would probably get myself killed trying to save everyone.

[He laughs helplessly for a moment, running his hands down his face.]

The right decision is always the decision you can live with. It's the decision that comes from knowing you tried your best to do what you thought was right, and if it comes out wrong then the right thing then is to fix what you can and apologize for the rest. Nothing ultimately good comes from death. Even... even people who abuse their power, maybe they need to be put down, but that's just an end. It's not the best case. The best case is that they see the error of their ways and turn it around to do good. The best case is you manage to get the train to stop or all the people off the tracks. Best and Right don't always get to go hand in hand.

[He watches the lights in the ceiling, halos forming around them and pulsing with his budding headache.]

It's more personal than general. It always is. Even spirits can't help but be guided by a personal morality.

What do you call demons, then?

The minor ones were always as they are, but the more intelligent ones, the more powerful ones by and large are corrupted spirits. They used to be just as dedicated to their virtue as I am, but they lost their way and became a different creature in the process. If a peach rots away, the pit will still become a tree, but if a spirit becomes a demon, then everything it ever does is poison.

[Justice considers Wolfe's answer, frowning. Honestly, he would probably get himself killed trying to save both too, but that's not exactly an option here. Either he dies and possibly saves Anders and all the people in the Chantry, or he lives and possibly saves the mages of Thedas. He's not sure if he can live with either decision.

But maybe he doesn't. Maybe that's why he's not in Anders anymore--they put him down before he did more damage. He considers asking Wolfe to confirm, but he doesn't want to hear it from Wolfe. He wants to hear it from Anders.

The thought of Anders makes him feel sick.]

I do not like that answer. If there is no objective truth, how am I meant to strive for a virtue? How can I know that I am doing it correctly?

If I try to be just without knowing what justice is, how can I ever be sure I am who I am? [He's scared of slipping. He's scared of this keystone of his identity cracking. He doesn't know what to do when this fundamental truth of his has crumbled in his hands.]

Demons are the same as spirits, aren't they? I mean, I know they're not, but demons were spirits once and so what if demons can turn back into spirits? Nothing is ever permanent but death, that's all I'm saying. People change, spirits change too, just in your case it's more... literal. But a bad person doesn't always have to be a bad person, maybe a demon doesn't have to be a demon.

[He waves his arms, maybe a bit excited to have someone to bounce this theory off of even if some small sober part of his mind is screaming that Justice is the literal actual worst person to express this too. Shut up brain, drunk Hawke is talking.]

There's so many lies the Chantry tells about magic, what it can't do or shouldn't do or whatever and people influence spirits so much that in my understanding, we make you what you are, or at least define your virtues. But nothing is subjective. Everything is objective. An apple to me is a pomme to Orlais and a potato is an apple too but in the ground and justice is different for everyone. Someone being killed for murdering someone else is just under the law in one country, but in another imprisonment is better, or being put to work until whenever the law dictates, but those things are all just to those groups of people.

[He's babbling, and sort of getting away from the point he's trying to make. If he was ever trying to make a point.]

We've all been a lot of different things, sometimes things we're not happy with, and even maybe lose sight of who we are, but what matters is that you believe you're doing what's right. Even if it wasn't right in hindsight, you still know you did what you thought was right at the time, and if you're still alive then you make up for it. You work to correct it, and that's staying true to yourself and your virtue.

In all my considerable life, I have never seen a demon become a spirit again. [That he remembers. To be fair, he doesn't actually know how much of his life that he's forgotten. Usually that doesn't bother him, but all the uncertainty of this moment makes him wish that he knew some things for sure.] If you truly believe that demons can be redeemed, have you ever attempted to talk one down?

[All this speculation about the nature of justice is giving him a headache. He's spent his life considering justice and what it is, but he's never wondered whether there was an objective standard.]

Just because a person, or even a people, believe that they are right does not mean that they are. Most Templars and Chantry officials truly and sincerely believe in the justice of the Circles, as do many non-mages across Thedas. Most magisters and citizens of Tevinter truly and sincerely believe in the justice of slavery, and most Qunari truly and sincerely believe in the justice of forcing others into their way of life. Find any random wrongdoer in the world, and chances are better than not that they will think themselves just. Just because they believe they are just does not make it so.

[Justice takes the bottle so he can have a drink. He really needs another for this conversation.]

Your kind does create mine. You have more effect on us than I believe you will ever know. [How can a mortal understand what it is like for the mere expectation of someone else to change his shape and behavior?] I can try to correct the things that I do wrong, but if I know that I will do wrong again, is it service to my virtue to carry on regardless?

N...ot as such. This only occurred to me recently though. It's not as if I've had a chance to test it.

[He waves it off, making a grab for the bottle and tossing it back. There's only a few swallows left now.]

But that's what I mean, is if there's so many concepts of justice, how can you be just one? You can't. No one is just one virtue or flaw or what have you, you've got to have both, even spirits. I think especially spirits or you just can't cope with the mortal world. That's the thing isn't it? The world doesn't change and people change too much and the Fade is the entire opposite.

[He points at Justice triumphantly, as if everything makes sense now.]

What you need to know is that you still can change the world around you, even if it's not like you did in the Fade, right? Even if it doesn't look like anything's changing, it absolutely does. Absolutely. All the time. So you're always going to be correcting, everyone's always got to be correcting because you never know if what you know is really right or if there's other things you don't know that later make your right wrong and you have to work on the new right like people stealing books or or or going too far with mirrors. You have to come to terms with the things before to keep going, and know that you did what you thought was best even if it turned out wrong or right or just complicated.

[Justice isn't sure if it's him or Wolfe who's drank too much, but he's losing track of whatever Wolfe is trying to say.]

What is this about books and mirrors?

[Justice waves it off before Wolfe has a chance to respond, taking a drink from the nearly empty bottle before offering it back.] Never mind. There are situations where context does matter in the rendering of justice. True justice should have room for mercy and atonement as well as punishment.

But there are some things that are wrong no matter what the context is, no matter what culture or motivation a person has. You say that you create my kind--you do, and all mortals have a part in creating us, including the mortals who are harmed by what others deem necessary evils. To question the wrongness in things that harm innocents is an invitation for corruption and sloth in the face of injustice.

Examples. It doesn't matter.

[He waves his hand dismissively, reaching to finish the bottle and realizing that would be rude so he hands it back over despite the beginnings of a pounding headache.]

And you're right, atonement, you're very right. So atone for it though, don't try and preempt it. Some things are meant to happen so other things can happen. Anders had to be freed by the Warden and end up in Kirkwall before I could ever meet him, things like that, but he didn't know that. He didn't do it to do that. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't and in this case the Chantry had to go so the mages could be free. He tried for ten years and then, and then-- and it's not just him either! Or you. Fiona too, I heard, in Orlais. Leader of the rebel mages later. Naive woman from what I understood but she had to do what she did too, even if the vote made the Seekers crazy. Or demons did. Whatever, it's all too much to go through for one person. What matters is, what matters is, is atonement for the necessary wrongs. I'm not saying innocent people dying isn't wrong, I'm just saying it was... necessary. Regrettable and terrible but...

[He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, seeing Kirkwall burning behind them, seeing the Templars cutting down mages in the streets, mages just trying to survive. Seeing those who turned to blood magic tearing through the streets, tearing through guardsmen just trying to do their jobs. He sees Meredith, drunk with the power of raw red lyrium, tainted beyond coherent thought.]

She'd already called for the annulment, you know. Before Anders and you made no room for compromise, there was already a request to the Divine to sanction the murder of every mage in the gallows in their beds. Every mage. Children as young as six.

[He'd heard it in harsh whispers in the gallows, seen it in the strain on every mage and templar's face.]

Not doing something would have been sloth. Not doing something would have been wrong. You can tell me that at least, can't you?

Not doing something would have been wrong, yes. We agree on that. But I cannot believe that murdering all those people was the only thing that could be done. If the Grand Cleric deserved to die, why did we not only kill her? If the spectacle of her death was necessary, why did we not kill only her while the Templars were watching?

[Justice shakes his head, nose wrinkling as he drinks the last of the bottle. These are all painful questions, but they have to be asked.]

And if those deaths were necessary for what happened next—and that is if—it does not change the injustice inherent in killing them. I am not a spirit of duty or necessity. If means to a righteous end never mattered, then the Fade would open and spirits would simply force mortals to behave virtuously. I am a spirit of justice. I cannot abide by committing such injustice, even if it is to right another.

[Justice rests his hand on his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. All of this philosophizing is getting to him.] At least I thought I could not abide by it.

[And there’s another issue, one much more personal and harder to articulate. To live would submit himself to his eventual complete destruction of self. He is dedicated to his virtue above all else, but his identity and free will are important to him too, and he’s seeing a future where both are withered away until he’s just the destructive extension of a mage’s anger, such that people who meet him don’t see him as anything with more individuality or personality than a parasite. Issues of justice will always be his priority, and he will sacrifice everything for it, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a terrible sacrifice.]

Because Anders isn't wrong, he did change you.

[Wolfe exhales, frost curling in his breath but less because of his emotional turmoil and more because his drunk-brain just wants to watch it coil and fall in the air.]

He's angry. I'm angry. All the mages are angry and any that aren't are either too scared or aren't paying attention. It makes sense to want revenge for that, for wrongs done to you for no other reason than the circumstances of your birth. I was angry too, as a boy. I didn't want this.

[He waves his hand through the frost hanging in the air, making whirls and eddies.]

I wanted to be normal, not have to hide from Templars all my life. But it's wrong to make people feel that way, and it's still wrong even if the way you go about dealing with it is... vengeance.

[He sighs again.]

It's complicated. I don't know what he was thinking exactly either. Maybe he did want vengeance hand in hand with wanting freedom not just for himself but for all mages. Maybe it was a very clinical decision; that he couldn't warn anyone for fear of them finding and undermining his efforts. Maybe everything is true at once. What I do know is what happened, and the change that followed.

Vengeance does not have to be unjust. Killing a man who wantonly killed someone you loved is vengeance, but it is still justice. But the Chantry...

It is wrong, what is done to the mages. And it is wrong to see that injustice and do nothing. But it is also wrong to kill innocent people. I was truly changed, if I was able to do it regardless.

[Justice doesn't think that Wolfe will ever be able to appreciate just how horrifying this future is to him. Knowing that he will lose his free will, his independent mind, his sense of self, and then betray the very core of his being... it is the very worst nightmare any spirit could imagine.

He doesn't blame Anders for this fate, but that doesn't mean it's not still utterly mind-numbingly horrifying. Justice has never been the sort to fear the future, but he is afraid now. He is afraid of what he will lose. He is afraid of what he will become. He is afraid of what he will do.]

It is not Anders' fault he was angry. His anger is natural, and its effect on me was not something he could have predicted. But I do not relish my fate.

[The justice of destroying the Chantry and hurting Anders will always be his primary concern and everything that happens to him in the meantime is a distant second, but still. The thought of being absorbed into another person, twisted by their anger, unable to know his own thoughts any longer, unable to even speak save through their mouth, utterly consumed by their rage and the injustices they suffered until he is unrecognizable even to himself... it's not something he'd look forward to even if everything else about it were just.]

No, I guess you wouldn't.

[None of them do. Adalwolfe doesn't enjoy being the Champion of Kirkwall and everything that everyone around him thinks that entails. He doesn't like being responsible for unleashing one of the worst evils Thedas has seen as a secondary Blight upon the world and then leaving the Inquisition to clean it up. Anders feels the weight of being the most wanted man in Thedas like a stone pressing on his chest, far lighter than imprisonment in the Circles of all mages, but still making it hard to breathe. But at least they still have their faculties. They still know who they are, what they are.

Justice turns to Vengeance, Vengeance can turn to Rage...

He goes for the bottle again and frowns to find it empty.]

I should get more. Do you want more?

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