VESSEL

I hated myself for a long time, ladies and gents.

It was such an easy thing to do. I had shed the blood of kin and enemy alike and in doing so, I had run away from my moment of death. Secretly, since then, I had often wished to find a proper way to die. One where I can go out on my own terms, as myself and not as the nameless soldier I was destined to be. All my life under the thumb of the Great Houses was spent with that impossible dream in my head. A dream I couldn’t find the words for, let alone verbalize. But once I got out from under said thumb, I hated myself for not doing my duty.

The bloody fucking irony of it.

And it would be so easy to blame the Multitudes for this mess. I have for the longest time. I always blamed either them or others on the outside. They have always been here, after all. Inside me. Subconsciously at first, then busting out when the dam broke. They call me innocent. That may be true. I am just a vessel and I have always been. But not a single thing has occurred without my blessing.

Every fuckup we ever made.

Every glory we ever seized.

Everything we ever done, for good or ill.

They are a collection of aborted souls and I am the ship they try so hard to steer. I am the peace to their collective chaos, the perfection sequestered inside their imperfection. Stained with blood and yet…so white. So pale white. We’re a paradox. An anomaly. The bastard child of Gallifrey.

Maybe it’s because we’re getting older. The older you get, the less fucks you have of the opinions of others. The older you get, the more you realize that every thing you’ve been taught from first breath to realization is at best, a half-truth and at worst, a fabrication. Heroes don’t always wear white hats. Hell, heroism is a matter of perception. Life’s a mess and every living soul is a hazy shade of gray.

Many people live in denial about this and even I can admit, the ideas of the extremes are the hardest to break. We always want to believe in the siren’s song even when we know it’s bullshit.

(Personally, we blame the human scraps in our DNA.)

Either way, we’re kinda done hating ourselves now. The angst has settled into…well. We can’t really call it apathy, but…

Peace?

Yes. Weirdly. Peace. The same exact peace I felt on that final day when I saw the dance of the dueling suns. We were a soldier. We are an artist. To honor both, we paint with physicality.

I use the box cutter to get out of my own box.