Face Yourself

"She has master level martial arts skills and remarkable courage. But she also has memories. Her ability to inflict harm is not theoretical. Nor is the evil, of which she is inherently capable. She has vividly experienced her own capacity for violence, and this puts her at acute risk. In addition to being less aware of the degree to which evil is inherent in us all. Her experience of being trained almost from birth as an assassin leaves her less than fully able to acknowledge her own capacity for good. Not for doing good. but for being good. The detective is aware of all this...has been especially mindful of it since he took on the girl.

-No! This is not how it works! You do not push me to safety! You keep assuming we're on suicide missions. That's not how I work. It's not effective. Where's your grapple? You left it behind somewhere? The portal it's the exit! I always leave an exit. I knew I could climb to itwith my grapple! You're in a death trap and there's no reason for it! Unacceptable. You do not quit. You fight your way to that exit. I Know. I know what it's like to hate yourself. I know what it's like to view every fight as a potential excuse to go out in a blaze of glory. But that's no way to win. I could save you again, but I'm not going to. If you want to continue working with me...with my family... you need to commit. You need to decide in your bones that you're not going to lie down and die, not going to go down with the ship...and you need to do it now!

He knows all too well that is possible to have memories that you literally cannot bear. The events that took his aprents from him... changed him, literally, from a child into an orphan...that's a memory now. Just as her life as a trained asassin. It's not something she does, not something she is, not even something she has to be...It's something she remembers. And the need to swim through that again, to transform what she believes it means about her... that's her albatross. That is what brings her back to sinking ships. And that is why he ahs to leave her there.

-There's no functioning...motor on that life boat. If we don't pull them out of here right now, the undertow from the ship will pull all of us down. I took the liberty of tying them on. We need to move away...if we leave right now, we'll barely make it. Sir?

-Not yet.

-Oh...you had a woman with you, didn't you? Is she...?You...you left her to drown?

-I left her to decide not to.

He tells himself he would never put her at risk. There are twelve...fourteen different ways to save her, if it comes to that. Ways to save her body, but the truth is...only she can save her soul. If he's honest with himself he might acknowledge that his own motives in letting her test herself might not have been purely unselfish. He knows better that anyone that to skillfully fight back the world's demons you must first conquer your own.