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May. 12th, 2016 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysHonestly, somewhere along the lines adult Shin characterised himself in my head as just Incredibly Done with the City and the Vanguard and everything about a place that would define itself as the last, the best, the true light of civilisation, and in doing so cast aside everyone outside their walls.
You know what most Guardians do when they find a struggling settlement? Bring the willing ones back to the City, and write the others off. What a bitter revelation that must have been after knowing Jaren Ward, who chose Shin’s home for his own, who lived and fought alongside them, who helped them find stability and peace far from the Traveler’s reach.
And in the end it wasn’t the amorphous Darkness who razed Palamon, was it? It wasn’t Fallen, it wasn’t Hive - it was one of the City’s own, who they apparently could not find the time or energy to bring to heel before he tore Shin’s life apart over and over again.
Fuck the City.
I don’t think Shin particularly loud in his temper, though. He learned well from Jaren: to pick his words as carefully as his shots, and only loose his anger on those who had earned it. He is small and quiet and stubborn, and while he is sometimes bitter he is not embittered. For all that he has lost much, Shin has not lost his connection to the world and all the peoples in it.
So he won’t deny someone assistance just because he has glimpsed a Ghost at their shoulder. He can even - after a time, well and truly after Yor - admit that as monumental a struggle as the City faces, it is understandable that they pick their battles. He simply does not agree with where they draw their lines, and does not count himself one of them.
Most Guardians are kindled from bones and scrap metal. Shin was kindled from a broken young man who had just lost his family all over again. There doesn’t need to be worlds between them: just one. Just this world, the one he grew up in, the one he belongs to.
The City stands for many; he will stand for the rest.
(Any Guardian who did manage to hunt Shin down after all was said and done was liable to be greeted with 5′6″ of pancake-flat contempt. He kept The Last Word close, but everyone agrees his real weapon was his legendary stink-eye.)
You know what most Guardians do when they find a struggling settlement? Bring the willing ones back to the City, and write the others off. What a bitter revelation that must have been after knowing Jaren Ward, who chose Shin’s home for his own, who lived and fought alongside them, who helped them find stability and peace far from the Traveler’s reach.
And in the end it wasn’t the amorphous Darkness who razed Palamon, was it? It wasn’t Fallen, it wasn’t Hive - it was one of the City’s own, who they apparently could not find the time or energy to bring to heel before he tore Shin’s life apart over and over again.
Fuck the City.
I don’t think Shin particularly loud in his temper, though. He learned well from Jaren: to pick his words as carefully as his shots, and only loose his anger on those who had earned it. He is small and quiet and stubborn, and while he is sometimes bitter he is not embittered. For all that he has lost much, Shin has not lost his connection to the world and all the peoples in it.
So he won’t deny someone assistance just because he has glimpsed a Ghost at their shoulder. He can even - after a time, well and truly after Yor - admit that as monumental a struggle as the City faces, it is understandable that they pick their battles. He simply does not agree with where they draw their lines, and does not count himself one of them.
Most Guardians are kindled from bones and scrap metal. Shin was kindled from a broken young man who had just lost his family all over again. There doesn’t need to be worlds between them: just one. Just this world, the one he grew up in, the one he belongs to.
The City stands for many; he will stand for the rest.
(Any Guardian who did manage to hunt Shin down after all was said and done was liable to be greeted with 5′6″ of pancake-flat contempt. He kept The Last Word close, but everyone agrees his real weapon was his legendary stink-eye.)
