#{basch has no idea how much he influenced caelen}

[tarnishedxknight]

Caelen, isn't it weird being friends with someone who's killed other Dalmascans? How do you know Gylfie won't turn on you in the name of the Empire?

@disillusionedjudge

"And I have killed Archadians. It does not make either of us right, but it does make us equals, in that we have both, at some point in our lives, been a part of the war machine. That system of engaging in "Othering" and calling it victory. That set of blinders that you put on so that you can fulfill duty to country, king, or emperor without sacrificing too much of your conscience. I can no more condemn Ynarra for killing Dalmascans than I can exonerate myself of killing Archadians. War is a terrible, terrible thing, and it affects and changes all it touches. I am more saddened and disheartened by that than I am angry or affronted."

Caelen thought for a long while about how to answer the second question, for the answer was not one easily reached. "I do not know she'll not turn me in," he finally answered. "The question is... under what circumstances and in what context would she do so. That is very important. Let me tell you a little story..."

"I had a mentor in childhood and through my young adult life. One I greatly valued. One I could tell anything to, even more so than to my father or my siblings. One day, after he had returned from the war front, I said to him that I had only ever known him to be warm and kind to me, and that I knew that was no farce. And yet, I had heard stories of what he'd done in battle, and could not reconcile the two in my mind. How can both exist within a man I had never known to be duplicitous in any way? He replied to me that, 'War... has its own set of unspoken understandings... and soldiers, their rules of engagement'," Caelen said, thinking back and remembering the words. "'When I am at home, I am myself, as I am free to be. When I am on a battlefield, I am a soldier. That compartmentalization is something that must take place if one wishes to protect their heart from the savagery of what war entails.'

"I told him that I was not certain I could do that, that I might not be able to separate my heart from what I was being ordered to do. He said to me, 'It takes practice, but also desire.' I responded, disgusted, 'How can anyone desire to kill or to further the cause of war?' He replied, 'To protect. To shield. So that others will not have to. And in hope of one day seeing peace emerge out of all that suffering.'"

Caelen paused again, and though his expression didn't change much, his eyes welled up with tears. When he spoke again, his voice quivered. "I told him I was scared... that I couldn't stomach killing, even in furtherance of that eventual peace. That it evoked in me such a twisting feeling as to feel as though my very soul was attempting to flee the horror my body had wrought on others. And..." Another pause, his eyes unfocused, remembering the conversation. "...I did not understand at the time what he meant when he said what he did, not fully, or why he looked so sad when he said it, but his response to me was, 'Then you are someone I ought to be fighting for, and not beside.'" Finally, a smile. He paused to wipe his tears that were beginning to trickle down his cheeks. "He knew me better than I knew myself, even then," he said, chuckling.

My point in telling that story is that I can look past what one does as a soldier if I believe that they do it for the right reasons. I can separate the soldier from the friend in Ynarra. And if she ever decided to turn me in, I know it would be the soldier doing so, not my friend. I know it would be in fulfillment of orders, or because she was following her heart with regard to protecting her sovereign nation. I know her heart is in the right place, and I would bear her no ill will if she thought my apprehension would help, protect, shield... anything my mentor mentioned to me that day we spoke. When we are soldiers, there are different rules, and I respect that. I know my friend would never expose me, and I forgive the soldier if she someday must."