Cho shucks her gloves, dropping them onto the floor, and then from a little pocket at the waist of her leggings (usually meant to hold your house keys while you go on your run) she pulls a pale lavender handkerchief with darker purple embroidery at one corner. She tucks it into Ben's fingers as he's wiping at his eyes, and her heart breaks for him.
"No one is born evil." She says this with a kind of conviction that few people ever hear from Cho. It's not always easy to dig down this deeply into what makes her tick, and she likes to hold herself safe from pain when she can, but everyone has those things that they just can't let pass without comment. This is a big one, for her. It's not a child's fault if their mother dies in childbirth, it's not their fault if they're conceived in violence, it's not their fault if they're unwanted for whatever reason. Maybe that's the case with Ben? Maybe that's why he blames himself, because he was unwanted, but any terrible thing that happened to his mother, he didn't do that. "Hey." She reaches up, to cup his face and make him look at her. "No one is born anything. We're-- blank slates. We're a part of our mother until we're born, and her choices and feelings and actions are her own. We're born as nothing, just potential, and then our own actions shape us. We are a sum total of our choices. You can choose to do bad things, you can choose to do good things, but no one chooses to be born, no one chooses how it happens." She didn't choose her gender, her mother's complications, he didn't chose his mother's death, no baby who has ever been born into bad circumstances has been born so because they deserve it, or have done something wrong.
"You were not born bad." And then she's hugging him. Which is not something she would usually do without permission, but heck if this isn't pinging some very deep wells of personal feelings for her, too. No one asks for life, and no one chooses their family. Well, their biological family. "There are people in the world who will do bad things, for selfish reasons, and cause pain and feel nothing out of place while they do it. They weren't born that way, though. Someone taught them how to hate. Someone broke them, or they broke themselves, but it happened to them." I don't think evil by nature exists. It's just an excuse. A good person can do a bad thing, and a bad person can do a good thing, and that's-- really scary, because it means that we decide who we're going to be, but I think it's better to have the choice."
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"No one is born evil." She says this with a kind of conviction that few people ever hear from Cho. It's not always easy to dig down this deeply into what makes her tick, and she likes to hold herself safe from pain when she can, but everyone has those things that they just can't let pass without comment. This is a big one, for her. It's not a child's fault if their mother dies in childbirth, it's not their fault if they're conceived in violence, it's not their fault if they're unwanted for whatever reason. Maybe that's the case with Ben? Maybe that's why he blames himself, because he was unwanted, but any terrible thing that happened to his mother, he didn't do that. "Hey." She reaches up, to cup his face and make him look at her. "No one is born anything. We're-- blank slates. We're a part of our mother until we're born, and her choices and feelings and actions are her own. We're born as nothing, just potential, and then our own actions shape us. We are a sum total of our choices. You can choose to do bad things, you can choose to do good things, but no one chooses to be born, no one chooses how it happens." She didn't choose her gender, her mother's complications, he didn't chose his mother's death, no baby who has ever been born into bad circumstances has been born so because they deserve it, or have done something wrong.
"You were not born bad." And then she's hugging him. Which is not something she would usually do without permission, but heck if this isn't pinging some very deep wells of personal feelings for her, too. No one asks for life, and no one chooses their family. Well, their biological family. "There are people in the world who will do bad things, for selfish reasons, and cause pain and feel nothing out of place while they do it. They weren't born that way, though. Someone taught them how to hate. Someone broke them, or they broke themselves, but it happened to them." I don't think evil by nature exists. It's just an excuse. A good person can do a bad thing, and a bad person can do a good thing, and that's-- really scary, because it means that we decide who we're going to be, but I think it's better to have the choice."