![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockTentatively Entitled “Catch 22” Though That Will Probably Change
“Even if I wound him, I have neither the technological facilities nor the mental strength to keep Knives a prisoner, and there’s no injury or coma he won’t eventually recover from, given time. If I want to stop Knives, I have to kill him, or I have to convince him. But if I kill him I only prove him right and justify all the death he’s dealt out himself in the name of eliminating a threat. And I betray Rem and everything she stood for. Everything I stand for. But even if I manage to convince Knives that killing is not the way, I can never trust him with humans again. I will never be able to leave his side. And he will know it, and he will resent me for it, and as emotionally unbalanced as he is, this alone might send him over the edge again. For which I would need to be there anyway to keep him from harming anyone else. Even if he saw the light, the only thing that would allow him to fully recover would be for me to completely trust him, but I can’t, yet I’m the only one strong enough to be his keeper. It’s a catch-22.”
Her breath tickled the skin on one side of his chest, and her fingers drifted back and forth over the metal grate on the other. “I’ve never heard of a catch-22 before. It must be old.”
Vash’s expression twisted in a funny way that only the stars could see. Meryl couldn’t see it from the angle she lay, but if she had she might have kissed his forehead and touched his cheek, and told him that everything would be—
“I’m old.”
“Then teach me about the catch-22,” she said, hooking one ankle around his and imagining it would somehow pull them into each other, bind her physically to him by the limbs he depended on to carry him down his quest.
“It’s a phrase from Earth that was, from a book written by a man who flew airplanes for old human wars.”
Meryl tugged the blanket up tighter around them as he spoke, sinking with the sound of his voice.
“His government had a law that said any man who willingly chose to fly life-threatening combat missions was insane, and unfit tfor duty. But if a pilot formally requested to be relieved of such missions, the act of asking proved that he was of sound mind, therefore ineligible for relief. The government in all its bureaucratic glory reasoned the following: No sane man wants to be in a war, to fight and kill in a horrific battle. Thus the men fit to go to war were the ones that wanted it least, the ones that tried their damnedest to get out.”
“That’s mad. And cruel.”
“So is my brother.”
------
Blame any literary mistakes on the fact that Vash is telling this story several centuries after it was first written., therefore it's not my fault.
Like I said, this is definitely unfinished. Like a lot.
“Even if I wound him, I have neither the technological facilities nor the mental strength to keep Knives a prisoner, and there’s no injury or coma he won’t eventually recover from, given time. If I want to stop Knives, I have to kill him, or I have to convince him. But if I kill him I only prove him right and justify all the death he’s dealt out himself in the name of eliminating a threat. And I betray Rem and everything she stood for. Everything I stand for. But even if I manage to convince Knives that killing is not the way, I can never trust him with humans again. I will never be able to leave his side. And he will know it, and he will resent me for it, and as emotionally unbalanced as he is, this alone might send him over the edge again. For which I would need to be there anyway to keep him from harming anyone else. Even if he saw the light, the only thing that would allow him to fully recover would be for me to completely trust him, but I can’t, yet I’m the only one strong enough to be his keeper. It’s a catch-22.”
Her breath tickled the skin on one side of his chest, and her fingers drifted back and forth over the metal grate on the other. “I’ve never heard of a catch-22 before. It must be old.”
Vash’s expression twisted in a funny way that only the stars could see. Meryl couldn’t see it from the angle she lay, but if she had she might have kissed his forehead and touched his cheek, and told him that everything would be—
“I’m old.”
“Then teach me about the catch-22,” she said, hooking one ankle around his and imagining it would somehow pull them into each other, bind her physically to him by the limbs he depended on to carry him down his quest.
“It’s a phrase from Earth that was, from a book written by a man who flew airplanes for old human wars.”
Meryl tugged the blanket up tighter around them as he spoke, sinking with the sound of his voice.
“His government had a law that said any man who willingly chose to fly life-threatening combat missions was insane, and unfit tfor duty. But if a pilot formally requested to be relieved of such missions, the act of asking proved that he was of sound mind, therefore ineligible for relief. The government in all its bureaucratic glory reasoned the following: No sane man wants to be in a war, to fight and kill in a horrific battle. Thus the men fit to go to war were the ones that wanted it least, the ones that tried their damnedest to get out.”
“That’s mad. And cruel.”
“So is my brother.”
------
Blame any literary mistakes on the fact that Vash is telling this story several centuries after it was first written., therefore it's not my fault.
Like I said, this is definitely unfinished. Like a lot.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 05:19 am (UTC)I hope you make this less unfinished.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 07:35 am (UTC)I'm glad you like it. I think I'm going to break up the Catch 22 history paragraph with lots of description between most of the sentences.