fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, September 3, 1st period]

Anakin walked into his classroom precisely on time and gave the students assembled there an appraising glance as the door clicked shut behind him. If you were late, you weren't getting in. "I'm Master Skywalker," he said in a voice that was intended to carry, "this is Ethics, and we're going to skip the introductions--I'll figure out who you are--and move straight to our first discussion."

He paced around the room, cloak flaring out behind him, as he handed out the syllabus. "Today's topic," he said, pointing to the top of the page. "Self sacrifice: knowing the difference between saving people and being a pretentious twit."

"Any time I ask a a group of people what they would do to save someone they love, they all blither on about how they would set the world on fire, lie, cheat, steal, kill, die, et cetera, et cetera. I've been at this school too long to believe that half of you haven't already been put into this situation and I'm in no mood to hear adolescent ramblings about how wonderful you were or might hypothetically be. Instead I want you to give me a concrete example of a time you admitted to yourself that a problem cannot be solved, and that to sacrificing yourself wasn't a statement, but merely pointless?" His gaze swept the room. "How long does it take for you to realize you can't fix everything by yourself?"

He would hear the replies and choose his TAs from there.

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"I ... don't know if this is what you mean, exactly," Elena said, slowly, trying to reason out her thoughts. "But I was in a situation once where ... two friends of mine took off, to do that heroic self-sacrifice thing. We could have gone tearing after them, or joined them, or done something else like that. But ... it wouldn't have helped anything, getting myself killed. So I left the world-saving to everyone else. Instead, I ... sucked it up, and went to tend to the injured."

She'd felt helpless, waiting for the explosion to come. But she'd gotten some of the injured children away from the fires. It was productive, and tangible, and real, even if it wasn't heroics. It was something.

"That's an excellent example," Anakin said, nodding. "When I was still learning to be a Jedi, I was often left in the rear when my master took the lead on difficult to practically suicidal missions. I could have followed him," and had, on any number of occasions, "but then he'd would have been focused on me and not on the mission."

Elena smiled, ruefully. "It took me ages not to resent being the rookie," she said. "Not to push my way to the front, try to show off how important and clever I was. Most of the time, all I did was screw things up."

"Exactly," Anakin said. "It's only through time that you realize what a complete idiot you used to be."

"It's tough, knowing that others are off, doing something amazing and self-sacrificing and that you aren't a part of it," Karla said, giving Elena a sympathetic smile. "But rather than just sit around and mope, you went and helped in whatever capacity you could."

She paused for a moment, torn between wanting to say something and being unwilling to stir up memories for others. "I've now been on a battlefield," she said, keeping which battlefield vague. "And I've been a Healer for many, many years. Sure, it's the people out doing the heroics that get the glory. And it's oftentimes even deserved, since without their fight, everything else might become meaningless." Like if Elena's friends hadn't actually saved the world. Karla just kind of assumed Elena was speaking literally.

"But having seen both, I find be a Healer the much more difficult job. You're the one, dealing with the aftermath, seeing the price that is paid. Often, you're the only thing between a patient and death, and you know that you're probably on the losing end of that battle. Saving the whole world is difficult and amazing. But you did the same thing on a smaller scale, every time you rescued someone. All the heroics in the world wouldn't have mattered to the ones you saved, Elena, had you not been there to save them."

Elena smiled back, a bit ruefully. "I'm all right with not getting the glory," she said. "More or less, I guess. I think I was more ... feeling a bit useless. Like I should have been with them, doing my part. But there wasn't a part for me, not with them. And ..."

She hesitated, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. "There were children," she said. "They'd been near an explosion. It was bad. I don't know that I saved any of them. I don't know that they wouldn't have been all right, without me. But it was ... better than doing nothing, you know?"

And then, as she realized that she hadn't said it already: "... Thank you."

Karla smiled and nodded. "Your welcome," she said. "And I'm willing to bet you had a bigger impact than you know. You'd be surprised, how much kindness helps after being hurt. Especially for children."

Ethics [Thursday, September 3, 1st period]

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