"Maybe what her hagginess picked up on was your anger. Or your pain. Maybe it was your doubt over your choices. Maybe it was that you see yourself as bad sometimes even though you're not, like it's something you can't escape." A pause. He bobbled his head back and forth as he considered something else. "Or maybe it was the fact you carry around a giant kind-of-obviously-evil magic staff and dark magic passed down from your evil parents. The vibe I've gotten from your whole blood magic shtick is that the magic itself is a little wild, maybe something bad people could make bad uses of."
He stared her in the eye. "But you get to choose what to do with it. The anger, the hurt, the magic, all of it. Having it in there doesn't make you bad. Everyone's got that crazy mix of stuff inside them, even if not everyone has the magic part of it."
He licked his lips, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. "When it comes to choices, Sensei always used to tell us that the first rule of being a ninja was to do no harm." Dramatic pause. "Then the second rule was that if we had to do harm that we should do lots of harm. He taught us it's okay to hurt people sometimes and it's even okay to kill them sometimes. It's okay to be angry and even sometimes okay to act on it if you don't let it rule your whole life or make it so you make mistakes in a fight. It depends on which people you go after, when, and how, but sometimes it's the right thing to do. Sometimes people deserve it and if there's nothing else out there that can drop the hammer on them, it's left to whoever's just...there."
He gave her a small smile. "And if there's one thing my very brief and complete disaster of turn leading my brothers taught me, it was that it's hard being the one in the spot to make those calls, and, unlike you, I was even trained at this stuff. Having to make 'em can sometimes feel like anything you choose has to be wrong. But that's just 'cause you're you're not ready to make 'em and you're not the kind of person that's ready to carry that weight, not because those choices are actually wrong. People like my brother are the ones that can live with those choices better 'cause they know themselves better than people like us. All the feelings and stuff that make it hard to judge if it's the right choice are things people like him can push aside to see the closest thing to truth."
He shook his head again. "But there is no single truth. There's...there's a lot more greys than people like to admit. There isn't even a way to handle everything you had to handle that would've been objectively right because morality ain't like that. It's not like Space Wars where doing things out of anger makes you turn evil and there's always one right, perfect thing to do."
His hands slid to her upper arms to rub them comfortingly. "With all the pain and suffering those people put into the world, they deserved some kinda awful thing back. You're not a bad person for making them feel some of what they put into the world, and when you were one of the people caught up in that great big tidal wave of pain they created you had even more of a right to nail 'em to the wall for it. And it's even more understandable when you did most of that right after being horribly tortured so you were riding high on that pain."
Now it was time to bring it all home.
"So, basically, I think Witchy whats-her-face was a blowhard working on your self-doubt and the fact you have creepy blood magic that she probably sensed and wanted on her side." He gave her a small smile. "Now, you can take her word for it, when she knew you all of three seconds and had good reason to mess with your head to try to lure a powerful witch over to her side. Or you can take the word of the guy that's been hanging out with you almost every day since he met you who's currently hooked into your brain right now and isn't getting overwhelmed by any evil pouring out."
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He stared her in the eye. "But you get to choose what to do with it. The anger, the hurt, the magic, all of it. Having it in there doesn't make you bad. Everyone's got that crazy mix of stuff inside them, even if not everyone has the magic part of it."
He licked his lips, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. "When it comes to choices, Sensei always used to tell us that the first rule of being a ninja was to do no harm." Dramatic pause. "Then the second rule was that if we had to do harm that we should do lots of harm. He taught us it's okay to hurt people sometimes and it's even okay to kill them sometimes. It's okay to be angry and even sometimes okay to act on it if you don't let it rule your whole life or make it so you make mistakes in a fight. It depends on which people you go after, when, and how, but sometimes it's the right thing to do. Sometimes people deserve it and if there's nothing else out there that can drop the hammer on them, it's left to whoever's just...there."
He gave her a small smile. "And if there's one thing my very brief and complete disaster of turn leading my brothers taught me, it was that it's hard being the one in the spot to make those calls, and, unlike you, I was even trained at this stuff. Having to make 'em can sometimes feel like anything you choose has to be wrong. But that's just 'cause you're you're not ready to make 'em and you're not the kind of person that's ready to carry that weight, not because those choices are actually wrong. People like my brother are the ones that can live with those choices better 'cause they know themselves better than people like us. All the feelings and stuff that make it hard to judge if it's the right choice are things people like him can push aside to see the closest thing to truth."
He shook his head again. "But there is no single truth. There's...there's a lot more greys than people like to admit. There isn't even a way to handle everything you had to handle that would've been objectively right because morality ain't like that. It's not like Space Wars where doing things out of anger makes you turn evil and there's always one right, perfect thing to do."
His hands slid to her upper arms to rub them comfortingly. "With all the pain and suffering those people put into the world, they deserved some kinda awful thing back. You're not a bad person for making them feel some of what they put into the world, and when you were one of the people caught up in that great big tidal wave of pain they created you had even more of a right to nail 'em to the wall for it. And it's even more understandable when you did most of that right after being horribly tortured so you were riding high on that pain."
Now it was time to bring it all home.
"So, basically, I think Witchy whats-her-face was a blowhard working on your self-doubt and the fact you have creepy blood magic that she probably sensed and wanted on her side." He gave her a small smile. "Now, you can take her word for it, when she knew you all of three seconds and had good reason to mess with your head to try to lure a powerful witch over to her side. Or you can take the word of the guy that's been hanging out with you almost every day since he met you who's currently hooked into your brain right now and isn't getting overwhelmed by any evil pouring out."
He shrugged. "Your call."