What Yan Wrote

Dear Halen,

I don't know when you're going to get this letter. It might take a long time to reach you. You might never get it. You might never read it if you do get it. But I feel compelled to write it anyway.

I wish I could say I'm sorry and mean it. Maybe you won't believe me when I say that all I wanted, all I can think about, is staying with you and Aymon and Sid. It's stupid of me beyond belief, but I wish that things could have stayed the same. I hate change. I hate having to leave people behind.

God. This is a hard letter to write. I keep writing things and erasing them because they don't say the right thing. They don't tell you anything.

I need to turn my thoughts off and tell you why I did what I did. I need to lay out the facts, even if they won't change your mind, because you UNDERSTAND me. I need to know that you UNDERSTAND me. That's all I've ever wanted from anyone in my life.

You remember, when you were in my head. I don't know if you saw what it was like, when the Green King held me down, and I was in prison, and he broke my fingers. You must have seen, or you must have read something in Iri's report, because you started there with Kino.

The revenge you took on her was not yours to take. It should have been mine, and mine alone.

I know what you're going to say. You knew I couldn't have killed her. When I was with the Emperor, you knew I couldn't do it because I ran away. I don't know why I couldn't, because I should have. I should have been so angry about the whole thing.

Kino nearly killed me. She put me through this prolonged nightmare, and I'm never going to be able to escape from it. I think it killed the last good part of me, if there ever was any to begin with.

When I saw you-- I was watching on the security system what you did to Kino-- I knew that I couldn't let that happen to somebody else. I couldn't stop thinking about how it had been me laying there. Is that a stupid reason to do something? Am I crazy?

There were other reasons, too, but those only came to me later.

I know you saw, at least a little, what it was like when I finally did escape from prison, but I don't think you know the whole story. When I was in that place, I couldn't stop thinking about you. You know that. I imagined you there with me, all the time. And I imagined myself with you, when you were trapped in your own shuttle. I talked to you, just anything that came into my head. I couldn't talk to God, but I could talk to you.

That was what let me escape. I think Iri told you that, in what she wrote. It doesn't really matter.

There was this girl there, her name was Etta, though I didn't know it at the time. She was the one who came at night to bring me food, and she was the only other person I saw for a month, I think. I didn't know anything about her. She had this head injury, brain injury, and half her face didn't move. She never hurt me, but when I got out and I saw her, the first thing I did was I beat her and threatened her with a gun. I would have killed her, or used her as a human shield, or anything. I would have done anything to get out of there. I didn't care about anyone except myself.

I think that was when the last good part of me left. I didn't care. She had never done anything to me, and I would have killed her without even thinking about it, if I thought it would have helped me get out.

And so I got out of the building, and there was the Green King there. He was the one with the power. And he grabbed me, held me there, and I was so so sure I was going to die. He was going to have me shoot myself, right there on that hill.

I broke out of his control enough to drop the gun, but he still had me. I still would have died if it had just been me there. But Etta, she saved me. She shot him, gave up her entire life, everything she had ever known, and she saved me. She did that even though I had been one wrong move away from killing her where she stood, two minutes before.

I couldn't have explained it then. I didn't understand what could have compelled her to do that for me, because it made no sense. I was her enemy. I had hurt her, and I was part of the Empire, intent on destroying her planet.

I understand, or I think I understand, now. She couldn't watch someone else suffer. No matter what I had done to her, or what I deserved, she couldn't stand there and watch me be torn apart.

I didn't understand that until I saw you and Kino. I couldn't let what happened to me happen to her. I couldn't let the debt that I owed Etta go unpaid.

You did what you had to do. All you wanted was to protect Aymon, and to protect me, and to protect the Empire. Probably in that order. I don't blame you, but I had to make my own choice anyway.

Maybe I could have talked to you and stopped this all from happening. Maybe I could have convinced you to secret Kino away somewhere, leave her alive, let her be free and just gone. I don't know, though, and that road is closed off forever.

I'm tormented by this retroactive indecision, where I wonder over and over if I made the right choice, if there was anything I could have done differently to stop this from happening. I keep coming up against the same brick wall, though. There wasn't ever any other option.

If I realized that Kino shouldn't be made to suffer, then surely the millions of people on other planets out there shouldn't be made to suffer either. Surely Etta, who lives on the Mother's world, doesn't deserve to die for no reason. The reason of giving more land to the Empire isn't a good enough one. There's always more planets, more worlds, more people,more blood on all our hands.

You don't want to hear about any of that. I know.

Maybe Kino was right in what she did. I don't like to think about that, though, because if Kino was right in what she did, then the consequences of that are right, and I deserve to have suffered. You told me that we don't know what we deserve, and we don't get what we deserve either. Maybe you're right.

It's all wrapped up in these layers of pain. If I look at them too closely, they go all the way back to the day I was born. I'm not going to say that I wish I hadn't been born, or anything like that, but I wish that none of this had happened.

Why am I even writing to you? I don't know. You're never going to respond. I'm never going to come back. I think I just have to say things so that they're not just inside me anymore. If I get them out into the world, then I won't have to think about them. So I'm telling you, because there's no one else to tell. I'm telling you because I spent a month talking to the you that I imagined in my head, and I'm doing the same thing writing this letter.

I'm not going to say that I wish you could see the Empire for what it is. You do see it, probably clearer than I do. You definitely know what the Empire does, because you're right there at the top, and you don't turn your eyes away. You see everything, and you do probably more than I'm aware of. You make that choice, and I know that nothing that I say would ever compel you to make a different one.

So we're trapped on opposite sides of this, and will be forever. Until something changes, anyway.

You let me go, when I was running away with the First Star. I can't know your mind, exactly, but I can imagine that you were thinking. It was probably a moment of weakness, and if you see me again, you won't let me go so easily. I understand that, too. We do what we have to do, don't we?

What am I going to do? I'm sure I'll figure that out at some point. I don't know right this second, not while I'm writing this letter, and I probably won't know for a while. I have to figure things out in my own head before I can start figuring things out in the universe.

Should I really tell you that I'm sorry? Would it matter? I suppose I should apologize for stealing Aymon's ship. I'm a real pirate, now.

Isn't that funny?

It's all such a joke.

Sorry.

There's so much more I want to say, like I want to lay my heart bare to you, but you already know, and you probably knew better than I know myself. Words aren't going to cut it, so I'll have to leave it where it stands.

Kino said something to me. She wrote me a letter, too, so we're all just writing letters to each other, trying to express our deepest selves. She said she never wanted to be my enemy. I never wanted to be yours. I still wouldn't consider us to be enemies, but if an enemy is someone who's on the other side of things, then maybe I am, even if I don't want to be, even if I don't want to think about it.

I'm either thinking too much or thinking too little about things. It's two sides of the same coin. If only there were a way to take my brain out and replace it with someone else's, someone who could be a better person than I am, someone who hasn't done everything that I have, and who hasn't had the good parts of themself killed. I don't like the person that I am, and I don't like making choices. It always hurts, because there's no good ones. I try to not make choices, and I try to put it off and not look at it, but it all comes rushing towards me anyway, and then I always do what I have to do. I kill people, I hurt people, I run away from the little family we made because it was the only path forward that I could understand. I don't know if I could have lived with myself if I had stayed.

What would it have been like? If I had turned away from what I was watching on that screen, or if I had kept watching and done nothing? If I had let Kino die, that would have stayed with me for the rest of my life. But so will this. Which is worse?

I wish I could say that someday we'll meet again in God's house. All will be forgiven there; all will be understood. I don't know if I believe that, but I want to. I want to imagine this place where the conflicts that have separated us are gone, and there's no reason for us to hate each other. It's a beautiful dream.

In the meantime, I'm sure I'll content myself by talking to the you who lives in my head. I don't think you'll ever leave me, not really. You made an impression on me, and I can call up that impression, that core of what I saw in you, and comfort myself with it. I have to make myself feel less alone that way.

I have to imagine you happy. I have to imagine myself happy, too. Even if it's all a lie, it's a pleasant one, and what will be the difference if I never find out the truth?

This letter is for you, and not for Sid and Aymon. You can tell them about it, if you want, but I don't have the same things to say to them, so I won't say anything. It would hurt too much, and I think that you're the only one talking to would help. I'm sorry if this makes things worse and doesn't help anything. I had to do it anyway.

So. That is the way it is. We're set on our courses. There was no path we could have taken that didn't lead us to exactly here, and the path we're on is going to take us down into the dark future.

I'm not going to ask permission to call myself your friend, because I want to believe that I have it. I want to imagine that things between us have not changed, and that they never will change. As long as I don't see you, and you never talk to me, I can keep that comforting illusion.

It's hard to say that I hope we never meet again, because there's a part of me that's struggling, that's reaching out, that wants to go back. There's no way to come back home to the past, though. And I want to make the future as painless as it can be by not seeing you, by not having to face this.

It won't be painless.

I don't want to say goodbye, but I have to.

Goodbye.

Your friend,

Yan BarCarran