Anonymous (Tristan)
When you're in a war, you don't always know you're on the wrong side, not if you believe in what you're doing. I'm not saying I believed in what I was doing, but I was young and naive, and, while I should have known better, I didn't. Not when it was presented to me in a shiny package and in such a way that it didn't appear bad or wrong. Sometimes you get swept up in thinking you're doing good because everyone around you has such faith that you are. No one presented it as a negative. No one ever said, "We are the bad guys, the villains, and we will do villainous things because that is what we are." That only happens in really bad stories, and while this story was bad, it wasn't poorly written with caricatures of people portraying the antagonists.
I didn't set out to be a bad guy. I wanted to help people, believe it or not. And I was proud in a way I shouldn't have been, in the way teens often are. They think they're invincible, and while I didn't think I was immortal, I thought I was above certain things and would be able to tell what was what. By the time I actually could tell what was what, it was too late. After a certain point, there is no backing out except by death.
I was a Death Eater in part by choice and in part by force. I know that excuse has been used before, and I know people don't believe it so much anymore because of it being used so much in the First War. But people still have ways of making others do what they want. Sometimes they use Unforgiveables on you. They use the Imperius Curse to control your will. They use the Cruciatus Curse to break your will so you're more susceptible to the Imperius Curse. They use other means of torture and other means to brainwash you. Not everyone goes willingly, but by the time they're done -- these people you trusted -- you start thinking they're right and the others are wrong. Because why would you be locked up with no food in your own filth if the other side were right?
How do you cope with someone you trust betraying you in such a way that you're scared to mess up, scared to not do what they want, scared that the last fuck up might be your last because there's a very good chance they'll kill you or torture you beyond repair? How do you cope with the fact that you've killed people, and some of those people you killed weren't because you were under a curse but because you were one part afraid and one part believed, even briefly, that you were doing the right thing? How do you cope with people looking at you like you're less than pond scum and wanting to explain everything to them but knowing they won't believe you? How do you cope with nightmares that you're back in that small room and just blacked out and hallucinated a whole other life? How do you cope with not sleeping and a desperate need to have some semblance of control in a group of people? How do you cope?
I don't cope. I'm trying, but I don't know how. I don't have any methods for coping, though I'm seeing someone who's trying to help. Although maybe not coping and just shoving it all away as often is possible is how I'm coping. And I know, on some level, that isn't healthy. But I don't know what else to do. Because there's a lot of waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's a lot of waiting for someone to decide I don't deserve what I have and to throw me back in Azkaban, to be accused of something I didn't do, to be attacked verbally or physically because I trusted someone I shouldn't have but didn't know at the time that I shouldn't have trusted; because I made a mistake.
I'm just waiting for it all to fall apart again because of a mistake I made years ago.