075 | [Voice]

[with_discipline]

[Open, but filtered AWAY from the Borg Queen and O'Brien]

[So T'Pol is really bad at small talk. Really, really bad. She tends to need a few minutes just to figure out what to say, because it's awkward. So there's a few seconds of silence, because on some level she can't believe she's actually bothering.]I'm - curious. Most take individuality for

Comments

[creatingalegacy]

To rehabilitate those people who do not appreciate life.

[with_discipline]

[Man she does not want to ask this.] If you would explain.

[creatingalegacy]

[She should've gone with that D: ]

Those who don't appreciate life don't deserve it. This goes for the self-destructive--such as drug addicts--and those who do harm to others. They need to be given a choice: change or die.

[with_discipline]

[Probably. :c]

Do you believe you're deserving?

[creatingalegacy]

[Amanda turns on the video feed and shows T'Pol the old track marks on her inner elbow.]

I am now. I was given that choice, and I changed.

[with_discipline]

Yet you've done harm to others.

[creatingalegacy]

No. I gave them choices, and placed the rest in their hands. I did for them what my father did for me.

[with_discipline]

May I ask what he did?

[creatingalegacy]

John locked a device called a "reverse bear trap" around my head, which was hooked into my mouth. I had one minute to retrieve the key, unlock and remove it before it ripped my mouth wide open. The key was in the stomach of my drug dealer...the person who'd preyed on my weaknesses, who'd taken everything I had in exchange for something he knew would eventually kill me. He was alive on the floor but paralyzed by opiates. A scalpel had been left next to him, and I'm sure you can piece the rest together.

I never touched heroin again--never even wanted to. Doctors say it's impossible to kick that addiction cold-turkey, but thanks to John, I did. He saved my life, made me stronger, and then he took me in. He made me his successor.

[with_discipline]

[She is just so horrified by that. It's a moment before she has any kind of response.]

He asked you to do harm, and yet those who do the same you judge. It's hypocrisy.

[creatingalegacy]

John is not a hypocrite.

[And on Amanda's end, the gratefulness and adoration in her voice when she speaks of what John "did for her," and how she takes him being called a hypocrite as a personal insult, are very obvious. He clearly fucked her up in the head, BADLY.]

He gave me a choice. I could allow myself to be the victim of my own weakness and apathy yet again, and just sit back and die...or I could take my life into my own hands, and overcome both my addiction and the person who had reinforced in me it over and over again. Donnie Greco preyed on the desperate for a living and made their existences worse. He didn't appreciate a goddamn thing about life.

John empowered me, and showed me that I had what it took to survive and turn my life around.

[with_discipline]

[So, so badly. T'Pol's voice just goes hard in response; she's trying to keep a very tight control on her emotions right now.]

He made you his own victim. How can one who condones mutilation and murder appreciate life?

[creatingalegacy]

[Most of Jigsaw's surviving victims--roughly 8 out of 10, in fact--experience nearly-instant Stockholm Syndrome upon finishing their tests and go public with their thanks. Amanda is, by far, the most drastic case of this.]

Don't try that angle. He does not condone murder, and despises murderers--those are his own words. I didn't murder Donnie, and he didn't ask it of me. Self-defense is not homicide.

And he never, ever made me into a victim. [Except when she failed his second test for her and got shot in the neck for it--BUT WHO CARES ABOUT MINOR DETAILS LIKE THAT.] He took me when I was a pathetic victim of myself, and made me into a survivor...and in return, I pledged every cell in my body to him and his work. In giving up who I was, I became everything to him--his words, again.

[with_discipline]

He orchestrated the situation, knowing you or the other man would die. That is homicide. His words mean little.

[creatingalegacy]

Don't you dare try to tell me what his words mean! If I had died it would have been from my own inability to take control of my life. When Donnie died, it was from me fighting to save myself. Suicide by apathy and self defense do not make him a murderer!

You don't fucking get it. You don't want to understand, so you run from the details and hide behind generalizations. He knew one of us would die, and he set it up. So what? He didn't make that choice for me. I decided to survive. I decided Donnie would die, and if I hadn't, I'd just be killing myself.

He handed me the gun, that's all. I pulled the trigger, not John, and I did it in self-defense. There was no homicide involved.

[with_discipline]

If you had died, it would have been because he attached that device to your head.

Accepting the situation as you explain it, you've described him as an accessory to homicide. Hanging someone a weapon and instructing them to use it is cause for arrest on most planets and, I believe, in most centuries.