HUMANITY..

It’s a talent, looking alive behind the eyes when there is nothing there. There have been many times I’ve had to wear that mask and play that character. Times when I’ve felt obliged to do something or say something that I didn’t truly want to. That is part and parcel of being a politician, I’m afraid.

Politics is hard when you’re starting out. The best way in is to know someone who knows someone. If you don’t, then you need to buy that acquaintance. If you can’t buy it then you have to earn it. But earning it is not easy. Your morals have to come second to get that first step on the ladder. You tell yourself that once you reach the ladder everything will be fine. The first step is the hardest, and the climb to the top will be easier.

Only it’s not. Once you get that foot on the ladder then each and every rung is a longer, harder slog. Because you’ve sold your soul to take that first step, everyone wants and expects more to boost you up to the next rung. Each rung takes a little bit more from you, strips more of your humanity away.

Now I’m trapped, forced to climb higher than I ever wanted to, stripped of so much humanity that I don’t know what is left any more.

X was a good man. He took that first step onto the ladder when he became the man he did. When he got the arm and the eye, and lost the memories. He took that step into the unknown, and he was boosted up onto it by Mark Gouldern. He found his rhythm when he joined Imperium. Found a way to do what he needed to do to survive, but be part of something greater. But still, despite that, when he lost his memory, some of his humanity was stripped away too.

Then X found himself in the same position I am now. He found himself bumped up too many rungs, further up his ladder than he wanted to be. But the rungs he’d climbed before were gone, and there was no way down aside from certain doom. Now he finds himself stripped of even more of his humanity. Now he’s no longer even X. This Revenant that stands before me has lost so much humanity that I can’t even recognise him any more.

We’re not so different he and I. Both pushed further than we wanted to go by people using us for their own selfish gain. Both losing grip of our own humanity. But there is at least one difference between us. He allowed the rungs beneath him to be destroyed as he made his way up that ladder. I didn’t. My rungs are still there. My path back to humanity, whilst perilous, still exists.

I fully intend to take that path, but Revenant can’t. He can no longer choose that path because he is no longer human enough to want to.

And I pity him.

And I’m afraid of becoming him. I have to choose the path back.