The truth is, justice doesn’t clock in at nine and call it a day by five.
It doesn’t care if someone’s tired or overworked or waiting on a damn warrant.
Justice is perfection.
It’s what we hope for when we’re hurting. It’s what we demand when we’ve been wronged.
But real justice—universal, fair, untangled from bias or timing or budget cuts—doesn’t exist in the real world.
How could it?
True justice would mean treating everyone exactly the same.
Not just by law, but by biology.
It would mean every person feels the same pain, reacts the same way, carries the same emotional weight from a single action.
If I punched two people with the exact same force—same angle, same weight behind it—Person A might feel 80% of the pain. Person B only 50%. Maybe Person B has thicker skin, or a higher pain threshold. Maybe they grew up getting hit and learned to numb it out. Doesn’t matter.
Same punch. Different impact.
So would that punch be equally wrong for both of them?
Would it be just as cruel? Just as damaging?
If justice were real, it would have to account for that difference.
It would have to say, “Actually, hurting Person A was worse, because they felt it more.”
But then you’d also have to weigh why they felt it more. What traumas shaped their reaction. What privileges or genetics shaped Person B’s tolerance. What context surrounded the moment.
And that’s just two people.
Two.
Now try scaling that out to a city. A country. The world.
Billions of unique nervous systems, unique pasts, unique ideas of what’s fair and what isn’t, all trying to cram themselves into one courtroom or one rulebook.
Yeah, well… Everyone wants justice.
But what they really want is a world that agrees with their pain.
A system that says, “Yes, you were right to feel that way. And yes, they deserve to suffer for it.”
The ugly truth is that most people don’t want equality, they want validation. They want their pain towin.
But there’s no trophy for suffering.
I should know.
And even after everything I’ve seen, after witnessing just how broken the system is, I still want the same thing.
I want my pain to win.
Just a little bit.
Nathaniel, Cassian, and Talon want the same, I think.
