frost_jewel | 20. [mostly action]

20. [mostly action]

[Mia has been through a lot recently. The invasion wasn't so terrible, but its aftermath and the information surrounding it dealt a blow she still hasn't been able to face properly. Then, some of her dearest people went on a mission that continues to tear them apart inside - and may do a similar thing to all of them in due time, depending on what happens as a result. Then she became, briefly, herself but a few years younger, which might sound like a reprieve but was really just a way of delaying the inevitable backlash. Mia knows better than to think that that might be the 'punishment' coming to them after aiding in the implementation of a shift explosive.

In all that time, the way she interacts with people shifted, too. She is as friendly and welcoming as ever, but in some places more...distracted-seeming, perhaps, or carrying an air of professional civility instead of closeness. If anything, her tenure as pre-adventure Mia only reinforced her ability to stand at that distance.

Things haven't much calmed down, but she can't think of a time better than the present to take care of some things she's put off since the invasion happened. Shuffling them all around her work schedule means it happens at odd hours, but that's just how things have to be. She seeks out specific friends of hers, and stops by the plaza clinic to see who might be around. It isn't her usual routine, but she also goes to the cafe - though hardly a coffee drinker - for a change of pace. The gallery too.

Sometime in the afternoon, she finds a quiet corner to attempt to send a filtered message to Luceti's newest in-world resident, without knowing exactly how:]

Could we speak about a few things in person?

[It might work, it might not.

No matter how that turns out, as night falls she'll skip training, opting to visit the beach instead. To walk along the water with her bare feet in the sand and...hope that helps, somehow.]

[[ooc: Building walls with lego-bricks made of words, around here. Go nuts! Just not totally nuts.]]

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[He bows his head. It's minute, but a more genuine expression of thanks than he could put into words.]

Looking at you, I wonder if my guess for your answer would be the correct one.

Oh, you have a guess? [It isn't hard to guess at his guess, either.] What is it?

It's hard to put into words. [He tilts his head.] When push comes to shove, you're not a medic, or a doctor. You can do the same things as them, but your character lends to something broader than that... A healer, if I had to pick one word for it.

Well, I am a healer. [Her hands relax, finding no purchase on anything solid nearby and holding each other instead.] I've spent my life learning how to be one. But-

[It isn't a job, is it? Not the way those other words are. It's a responsibility, yes, one wholly different from both job and duty.]

When you...when you say it, that way, it doesn't sound- lesser. Separate and unrefined. [His analysis is so disarming it pushes aside her anger for the moment.]

My greatest responsibility is to the well-being of the people around me. All of them.

[He nods. It's what he thought. He remembers her from the first time they met, on that mission to the Third Floor; how she acted to heal everyone, no matter the risk to herself.]

It's not lesser. It's admirable, in a world where people are convinced they can't afford to think that way.

[He's one of those people, but he still respects it.]

[Part of that responsibility is making sure she doesn't put herself in harm's way if it isn't necessary. A comparatively small part.]

I am not convinced. Healers, doctors, what people call us doesn't really matter. We're supposed to help people, whenever we can. To choose not to bring destruction and pain to others.

[Can he hear it? No matter what side they're on. There is a line between defending herself or others and making an attack.]

There's several arguments I can make to that. [Blithely:] 'Not everyone can be helped; not everyone wants to be helped' and so on...

[Trailing off, he circles back to the point.] But I think that way because I'm a tactician, not a healer. That option has to be plausible besides worthwhile for me to pursue it. Doesn't mean I don't wanna, just that I need to see a way.

So if helping people like that is your ambition, I think you should keep doing what you're doing, and push people like me for it. [And Law, and everyone who disagreed with her on that locked post.] If you want to make it happen, you need to show everyone how it can be done.

I know not everyone can be or wants to be. That doesn't mean we choose to hurt them instead. And maybe...maybe sometimes, it can't be done. Sometimes the only choice that can bring hope to the future is one of strife in the present.

[Heaven knows she and her friends dealt with that choice often enough in a very short time.]

There are people I shouldn't need to push. Who have the same duties that I do, and make the same promises. I don't know how true that really is, now.

You mean Law.

[A question that isn't a question.]

[She looks him in the eye, silent.]

[Shikamaru sighs. And considers. Staring off into the space over her shoulder, he continues.]

There's something you're failing to consider, when you say he has the same duty as you do. [He doesn't miss that she's may be talking about several people, not just Law, but he can't speak for those.

In truth, maybe he can't speak for Law either.]

He's a doctor, not a healer. Even then, to him that is not his most important role. To think so is a mistake.

[The truth ringing in his words doesn't make them any easier to understand. How could he - or anyone - accept the role of doctor or healer without the knowledge that it was the most important one when they did so? It didn't limit a person to only that, of course, all people had passions and interests and other things they were good at and, at times, other duties of necessity.

But.]

Then I have been mistaken.

He's a pirate.

[He meets her eyes now. Pirate is not a duty he can define; the meaning seems to hold a different value in Law's world.]

I have no doubt being a doctor is important to him. But as a pirate, whatever that means to him... That matters more.

[Suddenly Mia feels a headache coming on.]

It isn't...exactly that. I know- that all of us working here, and in the other clinic, have important things to do that aren't about healing people.

It's...hard to explain. [It was hard to hear, at the time.]

[Hard to explain? He doesn't know where she's going with that, so he'll give her a shot at it anyways.]

This time...and maybe other times, if I care to spend the energy thinking about them- it's not the choice itself, that was bad. It's that there were better ones. There were ways to not kill people, even indirectly.

It's just. Those- they wouldn't have been advantageous. [Mia isn't the type to say 'or whatever' but it is very implied.]

...you're thinking too hard on it.

[Something in her stance deflates completely.]

Is that meant to sting more because it comes from you?

[He shakes his head.]

No. I just know my teammates.

Your teammates?

[She has a guess. She hopes it's not entirely right.]

They were there. [But what they felt isn't the important part; he's not there to defend them (but he would to the death) so much as use them as an example. With his thumb, he taps his heart.] The both of them think with this more than they do their heads. They, and most of the people there, wouldn't have been looking for ways out over advantages.

I didn't mean to question your teammates. [With a lot of sincerity. As she said to Luke when it happened, she wasn't there and judging their decision as a whole feels sloppy and pointless.]

[He waves a hand.]

You didn't. I say it for your sake.

Then I don't understand. For my sake?

No matter what I say, you're going to dwell on what happened trying to realize how it could've been handled differently. Each time you'll feel worse for it.

That in itself is hard enough. I don't want you losing faith in anyone from this village, thinking they had the opportunity to save people and chose not to when the reality is they never had that chance.

20. [mostly action]

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