ataraxion | [voice]

[Edgeworth sounds characteristically brisk and serious.]

I would like to ask everyone to take a moment to speak here - or to leave a text message - about what it is that they most wish to get home to, or what it is they most appreciate here.

There's a jump approaching, and not too long from now. As we all know, jumps rarely bring good things - they herald lost friends, new disasters. This is a difficult life we have here aboard this ship - one fraught with pain, with misery, with fear. It's far too easy to become lost in the morass of despair. It's too easy, with each jump, to think: what if I don't? What if I do not go to the jump bay? What if I simply sit back and let it all end?

I ask that you, in this post, remind everyone why it's worth it to keep on. Why it's worth it to suffer through these jumps, month after month, and why it's worth it to keep cautious and not just go seeking our death in those hallways, and why it's worth it to keep trying to make life better here. As we approach this new jump, as we prepare ourselves to welcome and console these new arrivals, let us remember why we should continue to fight.

Thank you all for your attention and cooperation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've been looking for him since before I met Coyote.

I see. I'll...not press for more details.

Not really a lot of details to give.

Well, I just know it's an uncomfortable thing.

Yeah. [ She sighs. ] That's what I've got to go back to, though.

It's a good reason. Family is...important.

Depends on the family.

I don't think it does.

You've never worked a child abuse case?

That doesn't make the family less important, for all that the situation might be poisonous.

Someone who does that doesn't deserve to be called family. Related, sure. Not family.

...A family is a family. Those who would abuse their children should be punished, and harshly. But it doesn't render the issue less complex.

Not when you're in that situation, no, but from the outside? Pretty clear to me.

[He's quiet a moment. Finally:]

I spent a year in the foster system. From age nine until age ten. I didn't speak much to the other kids, but I knew enough from them to know - It's never clear. It's never easy. Even when they're monstrous people, affection and need still linger.

Isn't that what I just said?

[Edgeworth hesitates a moment, unsure whether to be glad for her lack of reaction or a little bit hurt by it. Finally:]

No. It's not. You say from the outside it's easy - but even if done by the hand of a skilled surgeon, cleaving a cancer from the body is not a simple operation. And the mind, with all its emotions, is more complex by far than simple biology.

Weird. You're usually so black-and-white about things.

[ She pauses. ]

That was part of why we ran, you know. Me and my brother. I wasn't letting us get split up by the state and I wasn't letting him get shipped off to some assholes who'd treat him like shit.

[A slight pause, then quietly:]

I think that is not a very...praiseworthy way to speak about the sorts of people who would take in children in need.

Considering all the horror stories I've heard about foster parents? Oh well.

Fine.

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