Perspective

Tired.

So tired.

Completely, utterly, totally exhausted.

Even the cheers of the crowd are no longer enough to convince me that what I have done was right.

My people call me a hero. I have slain generals, trampled armies, even destroyed entire nations for that which my people call holy justice.

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, a memory rises up. What do you believe? I hear the director ask. Did they wrong you? Did your actions help anyone? The soft recollection morphs into a nightmare of disappointment, an emotion I never saw the director show but can still somehow picture so clearly. Who have you become? I don't remember teaching you to hurt people.

I swallow and try to shake myself out of it. The next group of people lining the parade street cheer extra loudly, and I force myself to smile a bit. I glance at my hands to make sure they're not clenched into fists, but get slammed with the memory of the same hands being coated in blood not a week prior. Looking at the fancy open carriage in which I'm seated reminds me of sitting on the pile of bodies at the end of the last war, slumped over from exhaustion. I close my eyes, but the flashbacks only get worse.

Finally, the parade ends. I suffer through another audience with the emperor, where he praises me for things I am increasingly less certain are praiseworthy. I eat at his feast, stand around feigning interest at his ball, and suppress the niggles of doubt that eat at me.

Two weeks. A month. The emperor announces another war. The fifth Holy War in my lifetime, the seventh in his reign. Upon the declaration, I suffer another bout of flashbacks, struggling under the weight of the knowledge that more people will die by my hands.

I can't. No. Not again.

I cannot voice my cries. My dissent would lead to abandonment, to execution.

But neither can I stay. To participate yet again would break me. I am not sure I am not already broken. If I break further, I can do nothing to atone, to understand what I have destroyed.

So I leave. Cloaked, under the cover of night, like the criminal I would be if they knew. Like the coward that for the first time in my life I wouldn't mind being but cannot convince myself that I am. Like the man who cannot face the brilliance of dawn without questioning his entire existence that I have become.

I need to see what is whole, but first I need to see what I have destroyed.

My journey takes me through many places. A small village, starving after the army I led stole their stored food. A large city, in ruins after our onslaught. Entire forests burned beyond recognition, rivers polluted with ash and death. Everything that remains of the child the director taught cries at the destruction my actions have wrought.

Small things surprise me. Before I left, everyone was trying to use me, to take things from me no matter how little I truly had. Now, in places where people have barely enough to survive, all I find is kindness.

An elderly woman who shares her blanket. A child who offers half of her last loaf of bread. An expecting mother who invites a stranger twice her size to share her roof for a night. A farmer who asks for three hours in the fields in exchange for not handing me over to the soldiers now hunting me.

I cannot understand it. I cannot comprehend how those who have almost nothing will share what little they have with complete strangers when those whom I have known who have everything continue to take whatever they can from even those they know well.

It hurts some part of me that I didn't know I had to know that I was the one who caused their suffering.

They tell me that they know me. That they knew who I was before they helped me. That they haven't blamed me.

Their words confuse me. I destroyed their lives. I caused them to lose nearly everything they had, to be reduced to barely surviving. How can they be so forgiving?

It is not forgiving, the village elder tells me. You are not the monster you think you are. Every place you have been, we all agree. You do not seek to harm us, were not cruel to us in the war. You are not to be blamed.

I object. It was the soldiers I led who destroyed the fields, who stole the rations, who harassed and harmed the people. It was I who eradicated the armies, who slaughtered the villagers' fathers, sons, brothers, husbands. I cannot be absolved.

You are not innocent, no, he agrees. But neither are you to bear the blame. The soldiers who survived all told the same tale: a man of great size and immense strength, who stands alone and unsupported. A general with no loyal soldiers. A warrior who cries as he kills. No monster would show regret as you do.

His words strike me deep inside. I had thought the wetness on my face was always blood. It brings a creeping sense of peace to know that those I slew knew I took no pleasure in it, but it does not mean I can be forgiven. I have hurt too many.

That you believe that is exactly the reason for which we can forgive you. Very well. We of the lands you have freed from the control of the tyrants who owned us, we who you believe you have wronged, we who have seen the man of gentle, fractured soul who believes the façade of a monster which he wears, we now charge you thusly: continue your travels through our lands. Learn of us, and let us learn of you. See our darkness and our beauty, our destruction and our wholeness in equal measure. Seek your atonement in any way offered; help any who ask.

Though you may never believe that you have atoned, though you may never believe that you deserve forgiveness, though you may never feel absolved of the weight of your actions, we who have seen your heart thus far and will see your actions in the future will be satisfied.

So I travel. I fight each day with the knowledge that all around me is evidence of my crimes. I fight with the knowledge of the monster inside. I fight with the knowledge that the only crime my empire has pinned on me is that of deserting, not those I committed or allowed my soldiers to commit during war.

In one village, a father asks me to teach his daughter swordplay. When I depart, I have come to a decision. My sword will remain sheathed. It needn't see any more bloodshed.

The people of the five nations I destroyed begin to see my visits as a natural occurrence, nothing to be concerned about. I feel for the first time that I have a home, though I am always moving. One day, I stumble on a pair of babies, the only survivors of a bandit attack.

The village elders say I should raise them.

Though my first instinct is to protest, I have learned much in my travels. Guilt. Resolve. Absolution. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Perhaps the elders are right. I am human now, not a monster, and my sins may be lessons of warning.

Yes, I believe I will raise them. I have a very large home and many family members now, after all.