#but victor kept the distance because he thought that was what raymond wanted AND he didn't want to bring the war to his doorstep

[narsh-poptarts]

(alone in a room) do you think he knows we can see his hopeless devotion

do you think the entire wizard council can see his hopeless devotion too

[this is an OC]

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 4.2.1

I started this chapter freshly annoyed with Marius but very quickly found myself realizing how blinded I’ve been by the authorial lens I’ve been peering through. I’m more annoyed now that it took me this long to strip away Hugo’s Romantic-colored glasses in regard to Marius. It was less what new information I gained and more I found the right combination of story elements, mixing the secret understanding-Marius-Pontmercy sauce.

The Gorbeau raid should have clarified some broader truths for Marius, even if it left him with a more numerous yet narrower set of questions than he had when he started. The thing is, he was happy with his nebulous fantasy of what could be, but when actually faced with real answers to real questions, he shuts down entirely. I was ready and able to castigate Marius for falling short of self-awareness yet again, but then Hugo kept talking.

“He had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labour; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.” Hello, alienation. Actual physical distance from alienating labor makes you realize how mentally and emotionally distant you had already been from it. You were only doing it because you needed the money, the capitalist demands of productivity were killing any outside satisfaction you may have gleaned from it. Hugo then claims: “Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound poison with nourishment” and Marius is falling into such a trap. Ok, I’ll bite, I’ve criticized him for this very thing many times (and pointed out this is likely a byproduct of profound alienation and isolation). Hugo appears to agree, identifying reverie and labor as having an explicitly inverse correlation. But suddenly there’s a new flavor here, and it’s not working. Hugo not only claims correlation, but jumps to extrapolate causation: “Woe to the brain-worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie!” An excess of reverie must cause a lack of labor (which can only result in suicide or crime and, oh, I’ll get to that). Except…no, that isn’t how systems work. Individuals don’t allow themselves to be alienated, it’s an inherent aspect of the society they exist in. Hugo has picked out a thread and declared himself done, but I intend to sit here and pull it. Let’s talk about capitalism and mental illness.

This is going to be a Long Post(tm) as I try to construct an appropriate lens to view this chapter through. Light content warning for discussion of suicide (mostly in an academic and historic context) and talk of mental illness.

His attempted example of Escousse and Lebras becomes its own counterexample with little effort. Victor Escousse and Auguste Lebras were poets and playwrights who committed suicide together after their play, Raymond, was a failure, declared guilty of an “excess of reverie” by Hugo. Honoré de Balzac said, “Escousse and Lebras have died, like many young people, from the disenchantment of their time. They died because they found nothing to do in this world, in the midst of this society, as the last forty years have done to us.” Well, that’s kind of right but for all the wrong reasons. They didn’t have “nothing to do,” both writers were actively doing labor. They were barely twenty years old and had produced multiple works each. They both had invested their sense of self so deeply in their labor, that’s its failure became a failure of their very beings. This is doubly crushing in a (capitalist) system that primarily values you for your labor! I’d be fucking disenchanted. The problem is both Hugo and Balzac have the entirely wrong idea of what is the cause and what is the effect. Reverie and disenchantment aren’t affecting people’s labor, the system of labor is so alienating and exploitative that people are turning to suicide or crime as their only answer to society.

I emphasize the connection to labor because Hugo does so, but there’s a host of other social influences we could consider in interpreting this vague notion of reverie. Emilie Durkheim’s Suicide categorizes the motivations for suicide by degrees of social integration and moral regulation, and if I wanted to lean entirely into that, I could say revolutionary France is a petri dish of anomie, a societal state of low moral regulation, meaning society lacks a foundational set of norms, often due to rapid change on a societal level, good or bad. Anomic suicides are characterized by a sense of alienation and a lack of purpose and are common in the wake of significant social upheaval.

So...I said I was talking about mental illness and..I haven’t really. I mean, I have but I’ve mostly talked around it, alienation and anomie and bullshit. I’ve rewritten this section multiple times now, trying to find a way to ground this to Marius and to me, honestly. There’s a balance that needs to be struck between the social and the individual and mileage will vary. Hugo treats reverie like an actual drug, an external indulgence that you either partake in or not. It’s characterized too much as an individual weakness of character. Yet at the same time, Durkheim’s interpretation is too reliant on broader social explanations. Hugo is pretty dismissive of class, but we know now that mental illness disproportionately affects the working class. But it’s also a product of individual brain chemistry, my seratonin whatever doesn’t give a shit about about societal moral regulation. Ugh, I just don’t know what the right balance is and it’s impossible to filter that past my own experiences with mental illness. Maybe I’ve successfully presented some contextual space to move around in.

With all of this in mind, let’s look back to Marius without the easy excuses of voluntary reverie or even labor clouding our perspective. Marius is way ahead of us, having sampled and discarded meaningless labor entirely. “He had lost the capability of work, and of moving firmly toward a definite end, but he was more clear-sighted and correct than ever…His judgement, almost detached from hope, soared and floated aloft.” Marius isn’t high on the drug of reverie, he’s dissociating. The Romantic glorification of ecstasy and melancholy—“The soul which loves and which suffers is in the sublime state”—is disguising the fact that Marius is profoundly depressed (likely has been for awhile) and, having lost his few coping mechanisms, is spiraling. His father was wrong about Thenardier, Ursula The Lark may not be the innocent girl he thought she was, the facts of his carefully balanced world of possibilities have been overturned. If I were inhabiting Durkheim, I would peg Marius as the poster child of anomic suicide. The possibilities before him are so unbounded that they’re overwhelming and he’s lost every set of foundational values he’s ever held on to. Even the value of transcending values has turned on him, his decision to stay neutral in the Gorbeau raid weighing on him just as heavily as the prospect of having chosen a side.

The clearest indication of this is the very end of the chapter. Grasping for anything to hold on to, Marius comes across the Field of the Lark and, through the desperate logic of a depressed mind, decides this is Ursula’s field and substitutes his daily walks in the Luxembourg Garden with visits to this obscure field. “The whole mind condenses abruptly around one idea, and ceases to be capable of any other perception.” In this state, he clings to the unfixed ideal of The Lark even more than before, needing a touchstone that can neither be confirmed nor denied. Schrodinger’s coping mechanism.

[charmingxsmiles]

feel again: Nine

feel again

“Do you love me?” Victor questioned as a smile spread across his lips.

I returned his smile, nodding my head. “You know I do, I love you from the moon and back.” It was cheesy, we always had a laugh when we said it, but we meant it.

“Then why did you let them kill him?” The smile on Victor’s face disappeared. Instead, blood dripped down his scalp, left eye swollen. “I trusted you, you promised me you would protect him.”

Looking down, I was wearing a hospital gown, with blood sliding down my legs. An immense pain began in my stomach and I screamed. I began to hear Victor repeat the words “you’re a killer”, over and over again.

“Stop, please stop,” I begged as I fell to the floor, curling up to a fetal position.

He stopped and I can feel his breath near my ear.

“You took him away from me, I’m going to take Seung Hyun from you.”

I opened my eyes then, sweat dripping down my body as I looked around. When my head finally cleared, I realized I was in Seung Hyun’s guest room. Before I could even process my thoughts, the room door opened and Seung Hyun looked disheveled as he hurried to my side.

“Are you okay?” He questioned, his hands cupping my face. “I heard you screaming, did you have a nightmare?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” never in my life had I been more thankful of Amelia’s training concerning masking our emotions. I was able to give Seung Hyun a reassuring smile. “It happens, you know how it can be.”

“You sure?” He dropped his hands. I instantly missed the warmth he provided.

“Positive oppa, go sleep,”

Seung Hyun looked at me and gave me a small smile. He kissed me forehead before leaving the room, closing the door behind him.

The tears freely fell when I heard the click on the door, as the pain from the night rushed through my body once again. It was an accident. Usually, I was calculated, looking at every risk. The one risk I didn’t account for was actually getting hurt while I was on a mission.

I was pregnant, I should’ve known better, but when I was presented the assignment, the risk was so low, I didn’t think of it. But then I became involved in a fight and was beaten. It was a memory I hated visiting, it was what caused Victor and I to fall apart. It was the memory I hated visiting, because the pain of losing our baby would never compare to anything else. I felt him dying, as the blood ran down my legs, I knew when I regained my consciousness, things would not be the same.

I haven’t cried for some time regarding my unborn child. But it never prevented me from thinking how things would have been if he were born.

Would Victor and I be married? Would I have had the courage to visit Seung Hyun? Would I still be a part of Maquina? The questions go on really, but I tried not to dwell on those questions.

After I lost the baby, Victor changed. When we got together, he was much more open to the idea of Maquina because of me. But then, his attitude towards Maquina changed, towards me. He became resentful and every chance he got, he took a shot at me and blamed me for our loss.

He didn’t need to do that.

I hated myself enough.

But he added so much more self-loathing in me, that I took mission after mission after mission. Every one should feel my pain. I killed with no qualms. No longer was I calculated, precise, whoever got in my way was going to face my gun and if they manage to still take a breath after a bullet has gone through them, I would finish them off by a bullet to their head. I became so careless that I knew I was beginning to make noise in countries that should not even notice the deaths we were causing. Just when they were going to place me on leave, I chose to go on leave.

I began to hate myself more and more. With every life I took, a little part of my soul went along with it. Looking back at it now, I almost lost myself to the deep end just as Amelia had, but I was fortunate to reel myself back in. I would never forget what Michael said to me that finally woke me up.

“The lives you are taking will never bring your baby back, come back to us before you lose yourself just as mother had.”

My mother lost herself after our father was killed. Within six months, we were burying my mother right beside my father. I didn’t want that, I had so much more to live for and he was right, nothing was going to bring the baby back, but I remembered reasoning that, it was for retribution. I don’t know for what, but I barely could remember anything I did during those times.

If I wasn’t killing people, I was intoxicated with alcohol. For some reason, I never touched drugs instead alcohol was my choice.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm myself down, but I should know better. Sometimes, it’s okay to take sadness takeover, let the feeling pass. If I dwelled on it and kept prolonging it, I would be consumed by it once again.

Laying back in bed, I began to sob, not wanting to think of my unborn son anymore. Every time I did, the pain of my mistake always came running and Victor’s voice screaming in my head.

I know he was going to make me pay for my mistake.

Now, I’m ready to let him pay for the sins he had committed.

As Raymond Leon always told me.

“He was never truly one of us until you came along”

It wasn’t exactly a compliment.

Victor was never cut out to be a part of the Leon’s organization. He was too timid, with no drive for the family business. Victor could fight, but he wasn’t the best fighter. Victor could shoot, but he wasn’t the best shooter. In other words, Victor was average at best. But once we started hanging around, Victor began to improve and Raymond was thankful for that. He always saw Victor as someone who did not have any drive, one could even say he was the black sheep of the family.

Unlike his mother.

Miranda Leon was a cunning bitch. She never liked me, no matter how hard I tried to try and get along with her. It was important to Victor, so it was important to me. I guess in some ways I understood, I was taking Victor’s attention away from her. He was the only thing she had left after Victor’s father, Raymond’s younger brother, Charles Leon, left her. I never really knew the true story as to why he left. There were varying stories, the only thing the stories had in common was that he left and remained in Munich, leaving Victor with his mother. From my understanding, he didn’t want to leave him, but he feared for his ex-wife’s sanity if he took Victor away.

Charles was able to keep a strong relationship with Victor regardless of the distance, with Victor ultimately deciding to move to Munich and leaving his mother in Barcelona.

I shook my head as I took a deep breath, glad that the tears were finally subsiding.

Then I realized what I had to do.

I needed to do a mission, to distract myself.

It was insanity that the only remedy to keep my emotions in check was to take a life, but these people were not good people.

I’m not a god to judge as to who should live or die, but they made their choices, and I was the one to bring them the consequences of their actions.

Picking up my phone, I unlocked it, and clicked on Juno’s name on my messages.

I need work.

It was a simple message. Juno rarely questioned me so I was certain he was going to send me an assignment. I couldn’t focus on just Seung Hyun. He was safe.

Need I remind you that you are currently working?

Prick.

I am well aware of that fact.

A few minutes later, my phone buzzed once more.

Did you have that dream again?

My nightmares were common knowledge between the people close to me, but it was never addressed. I was thankful no one pushed me to talk about my nightmares, I wasn’t exactly the best at talking about them. The energy it brought, it was dangerous and not something I was willing to share.

No.

Not a minute later, my phone buzzed, but it wasn’t Juno who messaged me.

Vic

I come in peace.

We need to talk.

You’re in danger.

Victor Leon always knew how to caught me off guard.

He was the last person I expected to text me or care about my life.

But I was willing to talk.

After all, I planned on taking care of him once and for all.

Walking into the kitchen, I found Seung Hyun browsing on his laptop. That usually meant he was browsing artwork that he was adding to his collection. His eyes met mine and he gave me a smile.

It was 1 in the afternoon and after reading Victor’s message, I oddly fell asleep. I should have replied to him, but I had Juno trace his number to find out his whereabouts and he was currently in Beijing. He had no business in China, but then again, I no longer knew anything about his life.

Sitting beside Seung Hyun, I placed my cup of coffee on the counter, my hands wrapped around it.

“I’m glad you fell asleep again,” Seung Hyun closed his MacBook.

“It happens from time to time, curse of being a killer,” I shrugged. It became easier to shrug at these kinds of answers or statements.

“Doesn’t sound like you were the one doing the damage.”

“I’ve gotten smacked around every once in a while.” I was hoping Seung Hyun would drop it. I wasn’t ready to let him back in, he didn’t need that baggage. What I’ve been through these past few years, it not only tainted me, but it changed so many things in my life. Seung Hyun needed to remain as what I remembered him. He was the neighbor that became my best friend, who I left because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t give shit if he was an assassin now.

Our lives were worlds apart.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why don’t you talk about yourself?”

I noticed then that I only ever asked about him or his dongsaengs. I never cared to tell him what I’ve been up to and if I did, it was the minimal. Sharing my life with him used to be so easy, yet now, I couldn’t do it.

Was it shame?

Maybe.

Fear of disappointment?

Possibly.

Did I want him to keep this illusion that I didn’t change? That I was still the same ol’ Rhian?

Sure.

I wasn’t really sure. I just didn’t want to let him back in when I was going to disappear again. He didn’t need that. Maybe what I was doing was worst, showing an interest in his life, but it was difficult.

When Amelia first came to me, I taught I could lie to myself and say I could remain disconnected, but slowly and surely, I was falling back into this comfort with Seung Hyun and I hated myself for it. No matter what he said, the lives he took was nothing compared to the amount I’ve done.

I wasn’t proud of it.

But I did what I had to do to save others.

It was a terrible moral compass, but it kept me asleep at night. Though, there were those nights where it kept me up. Where I questioned if what I was doing was truly right. The occupation I had now was such a stark difference of what I wanted to be when I was younger.

I wanted to be a teacher, to children of all people. It was laughable now, but I truly wanted to be a Kindergarten teacher. The innocence they held, it was something I cherished and something I wanted to protect. It was idealistic of me to even think of such a thing, but I couldn’t help myself.

“I’ve lived a pretty boring life, nothing interesting to talk about.” It was such an easy answer.

“We both know that’s bullshit,” I looked at him then and he had this sly smirk on his face.

Yeah asshole, I know, you know me well, but I was betting on you didn’t know me as well anymore. Underestimating Seung Hyun was something I always lost out on. Its not that I didn’t think he was capable of certain things, but I was hoping he wasn’t so I didn’t have to answer things I didn’t want to answer to.

As I sat here beside Seung Hyun, I thought about what I was truly losing out on. I wasn’t. I could still cut off all contact even if I told him everything.

“What do you want to know?” This was it. Maybe I should take Michael’s advice.

“Who was Victor to you?” I turned to Seung Hyun then, since I felt that I should look at him when we spoke about this part of my past. One that I kept buried, but once a upon a time, this man was my best friend, I trust him.

“He was my ex-boyfriend, actually ex-fiancé.” I saw the hurt that flashed in his eyes and it almost made me regret telling him. “We were together for over 4 years and then things changed between us.”

“Did he hurt you?” There was anger laced in his tone and I had to slightly smile at that. I always loved how protective Seung Hyun was, it was endearing, incredibly sweet.

“No, not physically,” Victor never laid a hand on me. Even though I dreamt of him physically hurting me, he never did. Maybe it was the verbal abuse he kept barraging me with that I wished that he just hit me instead. Wounds heal, but words, fuck, they never do. Every insult he threw my way, every blame he threw my way was embedded in my head.

“He emotionally abused you?” There was a slight raise in his tone, but he kept his composure to some extent.

“Yes,” I nodded my head, proud of myself for keeping my tears at bay. “I was pregnant with our child and I stupidly took an assignment.”

“You were pregnant?” Again, there was that hurt in his eyes, but now, even in his tone I could hear the sadness. Maybe this was a bad idea. I forgot that he had feelings for me before.

“Yes, I was 4 months pregnant, I wasn’t showing much then and I was still capable of working. His mother was kidnapped and I took the assignment to rescue her.” I still remember that night, I couldn’t believe I fell for his mother’s bullshit. She was psychotic. I mean, who faked being kidnapped?

When I arrived to the warehouse where I was supposed to rescue her, she was playing poker with these assholes as I fought my way to her. When I finally arrived, she had 4 guys attack me, I should have known better and asked Justin to come with me, but he was on a date, I didn’t want to bother him.

They made sure to aim their kicks and punches at my stomach. After one punch, I was incapable to move because the excruciating pain that radiated through my body was something I couldn’t explain. I fell to the ground, held onto my stomach and I knew then that I lost ‘Peanut’. It was the name Victor and I used for our unborn baby.

I would never forget what she told me as she stood above me.

“I told you, you’re occupation is unsafe. How do you expect to be a good mother when you can’t even protect your unborn child? You are pathetic. You will never be good enough for Victor.”

My tears were still kept at bay as I finished recounting the story to Seung Hyun. His side was facing me, his eyes trained at the living room in front of us. His fists were closed and I knew he was angry. I could see the tick in his jaw as he tried to kept calm.

I placed my hand on his, giving his closed fist a squeeze.

“Does he know what his mother did to you?” His voice was composed.

“No, I never could tell him, he would never believe me.”

“You took all the blame, that’s why he hates you. His mother set you up!” He slammed his other hand against the table. I didn’t flinch, but I was surprised by his reaction. “What psycho kills their unborn grandchild?”

“Rebecca’s love for Victor is odd, obsessive. She didn’t like sharing him with anyone.” I remembered then how indifferent she was about the news when we told her. I always thought that she would like me then. What mother didn’t want a grandchild? Apparently her.

“Why would you sacrifice your own relationship to keep their relationship intact?”

That was a good question. I don’t know why I did it.

But I couldn’t look at her then, I wanted nothing to do with her.

Did I let my relationship with Victor fall apart?

Maybe.

But I couldn’t stand looking at her, every time I did, I had flashbacks of what she did, what she took from me.

I wanted nothing more than to kill her, to kill Victor to let her know the pain I felt.

But I refused to stoop down her level, it was the reason I was never able to pull the trigger on Victor.

“Do you still love him?”

Seung Hyun’s question broke me away from my memories of Victor.

“No.” And I didn’t. My love for Victor died along with our child.

“Why do you choose to keep these things to yourself? How you lost yourself due to your self grief? Do you not think I did my research on you?”

“Because you’re the happiest memories I have, I didn’t want to taint it by sharing with you the monster I’ve become.”

“You’re not a monster, you can never be a monster to me,” he opened his hand, intertwining our hands. “No matter what happens, you’ll always be the same Rhian to me. Everyone has their scars, that doesn’t mean they can no longer be loved.”

I squeezed his hand. “The hardest thing I ever had to do was leave you.”

“Then don’t leave again, stay with me.” He kissed the back of my hand.

“I won’t.”

He didn’t have to know it was a lie.