[On the whole, Maria is at peace with her past. The terrible things she did, generally speaking, don't trouble her, although she suspects that they should. But they're in the past, and while it's not really accurate to say she is no longer that person, it's fair to say that she's a more mature, less cruel, more principled version of her. Especially since Ben came into the picture.
Still, the past is the past. For the most part she doesn't speak of it and she doesn't think overmuch on it.
Sometimes, though, even the past you avoid contemplating will come back to haunt your nightmares and wrap you up in terrors so vivid they send you bolting upright in the middle of the darkest hour of the night, screaming.]
[And it's no longer strange at all to sleep with her in human form. It's all they do, after all, sleep and cuddle, and Ben missed the contact, fiercely, more than he realized until he got it back.
So when Maria screams awake like that, Ben is right there with sheltering arms and a hand rubbing her back.] Easy, Maria. Just a nightmare. It's not real.
[Maria chokes on a noise that's half sob, half cry of fear and all but doubles over, pressing the heels of her palms into her eye sockets until she sees stars. Her heart hammers, and she shakes her head without speaking.
It is real, she can't say. Real and vivid and awful; her subconscious may have chosen a greatest-hits reel and embellished it with bright, awful splashes of terrible things happening to Ben in retribution for what she did, but the bulk of it, the worst parts of it, those were all real, memories instead of subconscious terrors.
And she can't tell him the half of it. She doesn't dare.]
Shh. I gotcha. [He rocks her, rubbing circles on her back and pressing his lips to her hair.] You're all right now, Maria. Just a bad dream. No one's hurting anyone anymore. [Ben's not the only one who talks in his sleep, or whose subconscious is a mean bastard. He's gleaned a few things, here and there.
But he doesn't pry either. If she wants to tell him, she will.]
[She leans hard into him, turning to bury her face against his chest. She's never acted like this, been this vulnerable or this obviously in need of comfort, with anyone. Hell, in her better moments, she realizes that even the fact that she wakes up like this -- that her training and her subconscious allow her to let her guard down enough for that -- is a sign of how far she's come and how much he's done to break down her emotional walls.
It doesn't make her hate this any less. Feeling this raw and this wounded in front of another person is dangerous. Feeling this raw and this wounded by things that would probably horrify him if he knew about them is even more so.]
You know. [He keeps his tone conversational while he tightens his arms.] I lived with a pair of ex-demons. One, the first time we met, chained me to a post and beat the hell out of me with a bullwhip. And the other one spent thousands of years bilking people out of their souls and got me kidnapped by a rich megalomaniac.
I loved them like brothers.
Your past won't change how I feel about you in the here and now, Maria.
[Maria takes a shuddery breath and wraps her arms around him in return. Partly to reassure herself he is here and alive and not suffering for what she's done; partly for other reasons, if she's being honest.]
I am no demon, Volchok moy. I have no such excuse for what I've done.
[He huffs.] They made their choices, same as anyone.
And they changed.
And if you want a human example, that rich megalomaniac? I started out hating him and bucking his system and doing everything I could to make his life as miserable as possible. He was a selfish old man who thought he could buy love by gathering his very own werewolf Pack around him, before slavery was even a Thing. Consorted with demons and made deals with them to live an unnaturally long life. I'd've sworn the man didn't have a giving bone in his body.
And then came the slave mandate. And he bought us all and kept us together and took care of us like we were his kids. And we did love him. All of us, in the end. And I watched him walk into Heaven at the end of his life, after he nearly gave up even that to protect us.
[He squeezes her and speaks into her hair.] Anyone who treats me the way you do isn't evil.
[Maria closes her eyes, not moving her face from where it's buried against his chest.]
Not so evil, maybe. But also not so very good.
[She wraps one hand around her other wrist and tightens her fingers, like she's trying to keep hold of him while someone else tries to pull him away.]
I didn't change, Volchok. All it is I did is find something else to do once I was too slow and too crippled-up to be any good at ruining lives and starting wars anymore.
No, you know what, I don't buy it. Because if you were really that person, you could've found some other way to keep ruining lives. You could've found other awful things to do.
Instead, you're a doctor who treats a werewolf like a person. [He kisses her hair.] You found a broken slave in a market and built him back up into a man. You didn't have to do that, and it came naturally to you. Unlike every other Master I've had except Wynter.
[Maria wants to believe it. She does. On her good days, she believes it.
But it's the middle of the night and the worst things she did and had done to her have all been dredged up by the nightmare, lying too close to the surface. She shakes her head, and her voice is very, very small.]
How many wars does that blot out, do you think? How many lives of men and women who wanted only to live and not be terrorized by men I armed and men I fought for?
It's not a balance sheet. Dad doesn't work that way. By Grace ye are saved through faith. But salvation is a journey, too. I've slipped, more times than I can say, and faith isn't some nebulous pie-in-the-sky thing to me. I know. I battled demons and have the scars and an angel died in my arms.
But I don't have all the answers for why. Why did Janni die and not me. Why did I kill my friend in the ring? Why did Dad let Guri be murdered? Why the hell is slavery a thing when I thought we'd learned that lesson. I don't know. I may never know. All I can do is trust, and sometimes...
Sometimes, that's really, really hard.
You don't use me. You certainly don't abuse me. If you're still working out what kind of person you are, well, I guess you can do that. [He kisses her hair again.] But it's clear as a bell to me.
Ach, Volchok.[Maria doesn't say anything else. She just holds on and leans into him and breathes in his scent and his presence for a long, long time. When she finally does speak, the words spill out without any hesitations or pauses, like she's rehearsed this in her mind more than once before
( ... )
[He shrugs roughly. He's not letting go of her anytime soon.] I don't know. I'd still enlist, even knowing what was going to happen to me in that cave. I'd still take that vampire embezzlement case, even knowing that Guri would be ripped away from me in the end. I'd still murder my last Master in his bed even though doing that breaks my rules of engagement to bitty shards and probably broke Gib's heart while I was at it.
The things that happen to us mold who we are. Change the events, and it changes you. And I'm not sure, when all's said and done, that I want to be a different person, or that I want you to be a different person.
Because if you hadn't gone with them, you wouldn't have ended up here, and you wouldn't have ended up in the slave market that day, and I... I'd have ended up dead in the pits while some poor damn wolf ended up riddled with guilt over it. And maybe that's selfish of me, but I'll be fucked if I'm sorry about it.
I've got stuff in my past -- hell, in my near past -- that I'm not proud of, but not particularly sorry for either. That bastard needed killing and no one else was gonna do it. [He winces a little; he knows he lost the plot somewhere along the way and would really like to find it again.] That didn't use to be me. I didn't kill people because I was angry at them.
But if you know you should be sorry, sometimes that's the first step to actually being sorry. [He noses her hair.] Not everyone can jump into it all at once. And that's okay, I think.
Still, the past is the past. For the most part she doesn't speak of it and she doesn't think overmuch on it.
Sometimes, though, even the past you avoid contemplating will come back to haunt your nightmares and wrap you up in terrors so vivid they send you bolting upright in the middle of the darkest hour of the night, screaming.]
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So when Maria screams awake like that, Ben is right there with sheltering arms and a hand rubbing her back.] Easy, Maria. Just a nightmare. It's not real.
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It is real, she can't say. Real and vivid and awful; her subconscious may have chosen a greatest-hits reel and embellished it with bright, awful splashes of terrible things happening to Ben in retribution for what she did, but the bulk of it, the worst parts of it, those were all real, memories instead of subconscious terrors.
And she can't tell him the half of it. She doesn't dare.]
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But he doesn't pry either. If she wants to tell him, she will.]
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It doesn't make her hate this any less. Feeling this raw and this wounded in front of another person is dangerous. Feeling this raw and this wounded by things that would probably horrify him if he knew about them is even more so.]
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I loved them like brothers.
Your past won't change how I feel about you in the here and now, Maria.
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I am no demon, Volchok moy. I have no such excuse for what I've done.
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And they changed.
And if you want a human example, that rich megalomaniac? I started out hating him and bucking his system and doing everything I could to make his life as miserable as possible. He was a selfish old man who thought he could buy love by gathering his very own werewolf Pack around him, before slavery was even a Thing. Consorted with demons and made deals with them to live an unnaturally long life. I'd've sworn the man didn't have a giving bone in his body.
And then came the slave mandate. And he bought us all and kept us together and took care of us like we were his kids. And we did love him. All of us, in the end. And I watched him walk into Heaven at the end of his life, after he nearly gave up even that to protect us.
[He squeezes her and speaks into her hair.] Anyone who treats me the way you do isn't evil.
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Not so evil, maybe. But also not so very good.
[She wraps one hand around her other wrist and tightens her fingers, like she's trying to keep hold of him while someone else tries to pull him away.]
I didn't change, Volchok. All it is I did is find something else to do once I was too slow and too crippled-up to be any good at ruining lives and starting wars anymore.
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Instead, you're a doctor who treats a werewolf like a person. [He kisses her hair.] You found a broken slave in a market and built him back up into a man. You didn't have to do that, and it came naturally to you. Unlike every other Master I've had except Wynter.
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But it's the middle of the night and the worst things she did and had done to her have all been dredged up by the nightmare, lying too close to the surface. She shakes her head, and her voice is very, very small.]
How many wars does that blot out, do you think? How many lives of men and women who wanted only to live and not be terrorized by men I armed and men I fought for?
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But I don't have all the answers for why. Why did Janni die and not me. Why did I kill my friend in the ring? Why did Dad let Guri be murdered? Why the hell is slavery a thing when I thought we'd learned that lesson. I don't know. I may never know. All I can do is trust, and sometimes...
Sometimes, that's really, really hard.
You don't use me. You certainly don't abuse me. If you're still working out what kind of person you are, well, I guess you can do that. [He kisses her hair again.] But it's clear as a bell to me.
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The things that happen to us mold who we are. Change the events, and it changes you. And I'm not sure, when all's said and done, that I want to be a different person, or that I want you to be a different person.
Because if you hadn't gone with them, you wouldn't have ended up here, and you wouldn't have ended up in the slave market that day, and I... I'd have ended up dead in the pits while some poor damn wolf ended up riddled with guilt over it. And maybe that's selfish of me, but I'll be fucked if I'm sorry about it.
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[Maria shifts so her ear is right over his heart, and she listens to it beating for a long moment.]
There is so much I only know that I should be sorry for, and yet cannot make myself feel sorry for.
But not for this. Never for this.
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But if you know you should be sorry, sometimes that's the first step to actually being sorry. [He noses her hair.] Not everyone can jump into it all at once. And that's okay, I think.
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