Reflections on a Sword
Since I was a child I admired the sword.
There is a cleanliness to it. A clarity. An incisive certainty. An end to debate and argument.
Where else in this world is one to find a simple 'yes' or a simple 'no'?
Others call the line cruel. Harsh. Without mercy.
I thought of these things as I watched Bianca turn from me, to climb the stair and leave me there, sitting alone. I reflected on these past months as I watched my own reflection in the sword that I sat there, and sharpened.
Flexibility. Mercy. Variability. Something I lack, I am told.
Ahhhh... irony. In the next breath I am told my sense of honor is too flexible.
It's true. I lack the mercy that allows me to cast off bonds of kinship or faith. I lack the mercy to place more importance on my own sense of decency or inflated self image than in the execution of my duties or the protection of my wards. I lack the mercy to 'understand' my way into neutrality and out of positions of faith or principle. It prevents me from choosing the one who might not forgive, over the one that would, based solely upon that virtue. I am unable to cast off knowledge of a consequence for the satisfaction of an urge to consider myself 'good'.
They are right. I don't know these mercies.
Those who do these things, I am told, know mercy. And are called honorable for it.
Murderer. Liar. Villain. Sadist. No better than my father. These are the things I am called. It absolves the honorable, I suppose, of any sense of obligation in terms of their treatment of me.
And so, I sit back, and watch the honorable, and wait for them to be honorable to each other. A lone, honorless man with a sword. And watching them, with a smile, I wait for them to show each other their mercies. Because, there is one more of those mercies that I will not perform.
Forgetting.