F-473 - Sattva

Sattva


If the human race comprises predator and prey, then there are three kinds of prey.

The sattvic prey that sees predators and knows its place.  The rajasic prey that sees predators and rails defiantly at their dominion.  The tamasic prey that lives in unquestioning, uncaring blindness.

Likewise, there are three kinds of human predator.

The sattvic predator that simply is.  The rajasic predator that wallows in its supremacy.  The tamasic predator that foolishly resists its own nature.

It’s one of the earlier lessons Akiko’s father tried to instill in her—be the calm and lucid predator, so that you can recognize the dangers the world poses to mind, body, and soul.  She was in a rebellious stage at the time, and stubbornly refused to see the sense in it.  All she knew or cared was that a man was forcing her to read religious drivel.

Then she saw Wilson out in public.  Until then, he’d always been a muttering shadow in the corner, ready to step in if someone threatened her father (purely a matter of saving face, because the oyabun shouldn’t dirty his hands with lesser folk).

This moment is very like that first time.

Wilson stands there with the ready stillness of a leopard coiling to pounce, and the crowd parts around him like water.  Some of them hurry past with fearful glances or averted eyes.  Some of them glower at him.  Some of them just walk on, as if he didn’t even exist.  Three kinds of prey with a predator in their midst.  In his stillness, he is the very image of sattva—acting calmly and simply according to his nature, the sacred duty passed to him by some esoteric creator.  She knows that he can be an incarnation of passion, killing because he hates, killing because he covets…but most of the time, he kills only because it is what he was made to do.

After she first saw him out among the sheep, Aki started obsessively researching Hinduism, and then she swerved into Buddhism.  The sutras of the Tripitaka lent her a sense of calm for a long time, even though meditation’s never done her much good.

“No origination,” Wilson says.  “No stopping.  No path.”

She’s always hated how easily he guesses her thoughts.  Her back prickles along the blank space left for a long quote from the Heart Sutra.  She dips her head in acknowledgment.  “Without hindrance, no fears exist.”

The grin on his scarred face is terrible to behold, made of equal parts sneering cynic and murderous psychopath.  “Exactly.  No fears.”

“Before…you told Lester you know where our son is.  How did you find out?”

Easy shrug.  “I found a guy who knew.  And then I cut into the meat of his thigh with a steak knife—shallow and slow, so he really felt it.  And then I told him that I was gonna carve my name into him until I felt like he was telling me the truth.  And then I cut on him a bit.  And then I asked about your kid.  And then I kept cutting for a little while longer, just to make sure.”

“Some people might say that’s beginning backward.”

Derisive laugh.  “You know as well ‘s I do—they’re wrong.  Saves time if you break ‘em down first and then start asking questions.  If asking nicely at the beginning gets you all the answers, you’ve got the wrong person.”

“Or the wrong questions,” Aki corrects.

Head down, hood casting eerie shadows.  “Never had that problem, myself.”

“Person or question?”

“Both.  Neither.  Collateral damage, yes.  Wrong interrogation subject, no.  It was your daddy who showed me that you avoid collateral damage but you don’t let it get to you, because hey, shit happens.  It seem right to you that my boyfriend gets so bent outta shape over collateral damage?  I mean, he’s worse ‘n me, as far as the cackling supervillain shtick goes.  Total double-standard.  I digress.”

“Often.”

“Torture always goes better if the guy you’re interrogating knows you’re actually willing to hurt him.”

“I agree.”

Slow circle, eyes on the buildings above.  “This is nice,” he says.

Aki isn’t sure what he means—being in public, not working, seeing her again, having a civilized conversation…

“Time to disappear.  We’ve got to kidnap me, after all.”

“Yes,” she agrees.  “And how shall we go about that?”

Half-shrug, a motion she associates with a stroke of a sword.  “Two things people don’t pay any attention to—trash and the people who get rid of it.  Richer they are, truer it is, so since Stark stinks of money as bad as Bill Gates does, I figure he must be completely trash-blind, and that’s our in.  Where d’you think they’d keep a captive?  Cap’s room?  He always struck me as one of those pushy, possessive doms.  God, that’s brilliant.  Nate’ll shit bricks.”

“I honestly don’t know what you see in him,” Aki sniffs.  “He’s awfully sanctimonious for a murdering tyrant dictator.”

The crowd passes by them for a while.

Wilson’s lips curve in a tiny, secretive smile.  That smile makes her think of schoolgirls passing notes.  And then the smile twists and turns bitter.  “If you can’t remember ever being kissed by someone you didn’t pay to do it, then being kissed without permission by somebody you’re starting to kind of like is…pretty amazing.  So.  There it is.  He bought me with a conversation, a six-pack of Sapporo, and a kiss.  What’d you buy your broken toy with?”

Akiko backs down, because it isn’t worth a fight.  Shouldn’t make personal remarks when you’re supposed to be working with someone.  Shouldn’t make personal remarks when you want information from someone immune to torture.

And she remembers him guarding her.  Remembers him letting her sneak off to bars and clubs (he justified it by escorting her).  Remembers him debating the sutras with her.  Remembers confessing that she’d tried, she really had, but she hated her father so much she couldn’t bear to be in the same country.

Wilson is a yakuza lapdog, but they’ve built a small measure of mutual loyalty between them.

“Don’t make that face,” he tells her.  “I know he doesn’t deserve my stupid hero worship.  And maybe I don’t deserve someone who can kiss me without gagging.  The world ain’t perfect.  We don’t get what we deserve—we get what we take.  The key is knowing what you’re taking.”

She nods.  “Let’s go.”

He turns to lead the way, and the crowd moves to compensate.  Like a frozen pea dropped into a jar of honey.  Like a bullet through water.

It’s surreal, and Aki tucks into his wake and rides it out like a water-skier.  Push with the legs, hang on tight.

He jaywalks diagonally through a big intersection, heedless of screeching tires and honking horns.  There are collisions, but they all miss him.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’d plotted some sort of complex trajectory.  It’s a lot more likely that the universe just doesn’t want him to get hit by a car today.  One thing she’s learned in her long life:  luck and karma are fickle bitches.  Maybe they’re saving up to drop a piano on him.

“I can feel you thinking at me,” Wilson calls over his shoulder.  “Not in a telepathic kinda way.  Just in a ‘the back of my neck is tingling’ kinda way.”

“I’m just marveling that you’d be dead a thousand times over if it weren’t for some cosmic force wanting to prolong your suffering.”

Spin, coat swirling, arms wide.  Manic grin.  Even walking backward, the world passes gently around him.  “Thousand’s a low estimate.  Million, at least.”

And he walks.  True to his dharma, violent when there is violence in his heart, killing because he is a killer.  Ignoring the trappings of society except as an amusing fancy.  The world passes gently around Wade Wilson because he is the most natural thing in the universe.

Aki makes a face and resolves (not for the first time) to be a little bit more like him.  Just a little bit.

He shoves a businessman on a cell phone out into traffic.

A very, very little bit.


.End.