Displaced

Chapter 36

"I'm very proud of you, you know."

Rudra grumbled and winced as the bandages slowly tightened around his torso. "It hurts to breathe," he complained.

"Of course it hurts to breathe, you have two fractured ribs! Those are painful! Now hold still," Jaya chided. "Given your bruises, you should feel lucky you don't have more."

"I don't know if I'm cut out for this whole pacifism thing," Rudra sighed. "I don't see what's to gain from just letting people beat you up or worse."

The bandage wrapping halted suddenly. "Hold on a minute, did you..." The woman rubbed her temples in exasperation. "Tell me everything that happened."

"Well I was walking along when this one guy from a different gang who I'd beaten up before saw me and attacked me. He came at me with a piece of pipe and I was about to punch his lights out but then I remembered that I'm not supposed to fight so I didn't and he got me. Then I fell to the ground and he kicked me a bunch and then he left."

"You let him break your ribs?!"

"You said I can't fight! No violence!"

"That doesn't mean you do nothing, dummy! Uuuuugggghhh..." she moaned, her face in her hands. "All right, apparently I need to explain basic concepts to you. Let's go over how you could have done this right." She began to count on her fingers. "One, you could have tried to talk with him. Maybe work something out. If he knew you weren't part of the gang anymore, maybe he wouldn't have wanted to hurt you so much."

"I doubt it. He seemed to take it personally."

"Two, you could have run away."

"I'm not the sort of person who runs away. I'm not a coward."

"There's nothing wrong with avoiding conflict when it's not needed, but fine, whatever. Three, if you didn't want to run away, at least you could have dodged. Just because you don't fight doesn't mean you have to just stand still. Even more, if you had the chance, you could have tried to disarm him. Take his pipe away, and maybe he would have run."

"That doesn't count as violence?"

"You're not hurting him, are you? There's many ways to prevent violence that don't count as violence. I mean, you could have even gotten him on the ground and just sat on him so he couldn't move if you wanted. As long as you're not injuring him, you shouldn't worry.

"The point is, being a pacifist doesn't mean you have to be passive. In fact, being proactive is usually the best way to prevent violence. You need to see it coming and head it off at the pass."

"And then what? How do you make things change?"

"Any way you can. Start a dialogue. Make a deal. Just because violence is off the table doesn't mean that you have nothing to use as leverage. Find those things. Apply pressure. Or just refuse to cooperate. Sometimes doing nothing accomplishes more than doing something ever could."

"This is more complicated than you made it sound before."

"The world is rarely simple, Rudra. But that doesn't mean a simple and pure idea isn't what the world needs sometimes. Now stop squirming so I can finish this."

*     *     *

He'd felt this pain before, though it had been much less painful last time. His head spinning and his consciousness still only half-there, Rudra took a deep breath and doubled over in agony. The pain made him cough, which only made it hurt more and triggered more coughs.

His vision swam, the world around him refusing to immediately form into recognizable shapes and patterns. He rolled over and suddenly pain shot through his hand as he put weight on it. He tried to move his fingers and found his hands wrapped in so much cloth that they were nearly spherical. The cloth was bound tight, keeping the hand and fingers unable to easily move. They throbbed like his ribs.