Post by Jakob Rosenbell (Desert Fox) on Jul 27, 2009 19:32:58 GMT -7
Romeo Uniform Sierra Tango Romeo Alpha Tango India Oscar November
These damn scars. So long as I have them, I'm a Death Eater. I'm forbidden to show my face in public. I can't do what I do. I feel all kinds of useless.
All I can do is work my undercover position within the Death Eaters. I hate them so; their raging prejudice and horrible misconceptions of what is just and what is not. And the work is hardly stimulating. I have strings but I'm rarely allowed to pull them. I stay quiet; I take the role of my namesake. Just passing on information whilst I continue to let them operate. I could kill them all at once: call a meeting, they would all come... set some runes, turn it into an ambush, burn them alive. The world would smile.
But no, it's not kosher. Doesn't fit in with the master plan. Leverage against the ministry. Instead, I just wait, and wait, and wait.
The rest of the time, I study and I practice. It's something that I'm good at - something that I have to be good at. In the past two years, I've shaved my animagus transformation time a good quarter of a second. Isn't that something? That's progress. Nothing else is, though. I feel like a cripple learning to write his own name again. I don't get out much anymore, so I mostly just speak English in order to keep my grip on the language. My wand is still under lock and key at the ministry so I'm stuck breaking in the wand that I stole.
I'm now nearly as good with it as I was with my last one. But that's not progress. That's two years ago. My whole life I've been improving, getting stronger, more capable. As a wizard my life is only so long and I have a responsibility to the cause and to myself to make the most of it, so that when I am finally turned I can say that I was a "great wizard". But now I'm 32 years old and less talented and less useful than I was at age 30. My years are numbered and I've just thrown away two of them.
My contribution is valuable, he says. My sacrifice is noble. My atrocities: all in the name of the greater good. Admirable. Imperative. Damn frustrating. At least in Azkaban I could get out.
I'm used to waiting. We spent a year in a half in the Czech Republic doing nothing - just hiding and learning. Russia was similar, but we had more friends, more objectives and enemies and ground to cover. The training there was amazing. I had scars when I first arrived there, then I learnt how to remove them. Maybe somebody there knows something about these burns that we don't. I think Russia might just be "home". He might even let me return there to his coven in Minsk whilst my scars heal, if it weren't for my position within the Death Eaters.
Or back to Turkey. It's been a decade since I've seen or spoken to my sister. By now she'll be a woman. I know she still loves me. She'll have forgiven me. Our embrace will be warm when we meet again.
((I was writing a post today for my thread with Satin, and sort of started getting into this part of Jakob's mind, but it didn't seem right for that post so I decided to remove it, expand it, and then put it into a one-off diary entry. Jakob doesn't actually keep a diary. I don't intend to write more like this, but I hope someone enjoys it.))