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Quotes / Mercy Kill

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    Anime and Manga 
"You poor creature. Once you have been given this form, there is no way of separating you again. At least your passing will be in peace."
Scar before killing the Nina/Alexander chimera, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

"I need to ask you something: If you find her changed, can you see that her death is without suffering? Be kind to her, please."
John Elbourne, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

    Comic Books 
"He'll soon realize his death would have been the merciful way out!"
Faora Hu-Ul, The Great Phantom Peril

"John... Steve. I'm so sorry. I know there's something more than just this world. Deep breath. Don't be scared. Just look into my eyes.

    Comic Strips 
"Actually, I think Windel was pleading for you not to kill him, Bob. His wounds weren't really that serious."

    Fan Works 
"We got to Shinji, but he was, was..." Tears began to drip onto their joined hands. "...dying. We gave him mercy... He died in my arms."
Asuka, A Crown of Stars

Rei: These are not human beings. Their official purpose is to serve as core for the Dummy Plug system, but even that is only secondary. As Dr Akagi explained, they are mere vessels to hold my soul. That was the only reason they were created for, just like the body I possess now and the ones before. Without a soul, they cannot become aware of their feelings. They notice the feel of the warm LCL around them, of this glass holding them; they can see us, the world outside of theirs. But... it does not matter to them. All they are doing is existing, blissfully unaware of everything. They cannot understand the difference between pain and joy. They do not know the vast variety of human emotions. They do not feel hope or fear for the future. I always wondered whether to pity or to envy them.
(Rei pushes the button and the clones' bodies break apart)
Shinji: Rei... What have you done?
Rei: I have... set them free...

And then, on the eve of the final battle, Jake pulls him aside for a private conversation. He speaks not as a commander to a subordinate, or even as one war-prince to another, but as a friend asking a difficult and terrible favor of a friend. That, Alloran thinks, is the truest mark of all that this boy was born to lead.
<I am the servant of my people,> Alloran says, once Jake is done making his request. <And of my prince. I have no honor left to give, but my life is not my own, and freely given for a worthy cause.>
Jake swallows. “Then you think… you think I’m making the right call?”
<I am not the person to ask about questions of morality. However…> Alloran considers, choosing his next words carefully. <My brother, Arbat, tried to kill me not long after I was taken by the yeerks,> he tells Jake. <I felt gratitude, and relief, and the wish that he would succeed. Not just for his own sake, or for the sake of our ancestors. For the sake of my Jahar, and the daughter I never knew except as a wish-flower. And for my own sake as well. It was a gesture of mercy, driven by love, and I recognized it as such.>
“Okay, then,” Jake whispers, after swallowing a few more times. His eyes are unfocused, watching a point somewhere in middle distance. “Okay.”
—"What if they rescued Alloran in #8?", All Assorted Animorphs AUs

"Talia has a poison. It takes six months to kill you. There's no cure. You spend the first month losing feeling in your limbs. Then it all comes back, but you wish it hadn't, because everything hurts. You don't know what's real and what's not. By month three you can't even walk anymore, the pain is so severe. They start begging to be killed by month four, usually. Month five if they're tough. But once she's administered it, no one's allowed to kill them. But she lets them plead out sometimes, lets them die quickly instead. Misericordia, she calls it. Mercy killing." Steph's expression is so flat that Dick believes her. For once, he's almost certain that the words coming out of her mouth are completely true.
“I killed them to spare them that. Twelve of them didn't take misericordia. The entire compound had to listen to their screams."

One was looking for her eyes, searching in a pool of liquid that burned when I touched it. That was the most peaceful interaction I had. The others were savage. I had to cut them down, so perhaps I'm giving them mercy.

Jasper: I will break you if that is what you desire. Others will try to revive you, but I will shield you, protect you from the harm of existence.
Petalite: You would do that for me?
Jasper: On whatever honor I have, I would. Just say yes, and I will take your pitiful life away.

As reported in the last biography, Galaxia still held her vital signs, but she was spiritually dead. But Venus refused to accept it, just leaving her mother's bed to go to sleep. However, after nine days (being her sixth, her 22nd birthday), seeing how much Minguanta and Planet suffered and were lonely, Venus saw that she was nurturing a hope that didn't exist. It was then that, while the whole kingdom slept, Venus went to her mother's bed, and with a pillow, covered her face and choked her, until her heart stopped. This secret was never revealed.

    Film 
"I heard the screams. I didn't want them to die like the rest. I tried to shoot myself too. The fucking gun jammed."
Billy Kitka, 30 Days of Night

"Listen to me... you wanna honour your little girl, you better put her outta her misery!"
Jebediah Woodley, Don't Kill It

"If I turn into one of those demons, shoot me. One in the heart and one in the head, and don't you hesitate."
John Grimm, Doom

"Here is the peace in death I could not give you in life."
Seth Gecko to Richie Gecko, From Dusk Till Dawn

"Fucking guy was a bloody mess, he was crying and shit. I finished him off."
Devon White on Chainsaw Charlie, Slashers

You may encounter Enterprise personnel who have already been assimilated. Don't hesitate to fire. Believe me, you'll be doing them a favor.
Captain Picard, Star Trek: First Contact

For all humanity I make one wish: let the people die off fast.
David Charleston, Thunder Rock

"If I am for the axe, then, for mercy's sake, just... swing it!"

Mal: I had to shoot him. What Reavers would've done before they killed him—
Zoe: I know. That was a piece of mercy.

Mama: There's no hope for him now, Travis. He's suffering. You know we've got to do it.
Travis: Yes, Mama. But he was my dog. I'll do it.

    Literature 
Ammi would give me no added particulars to this scene, but the shape in the corner does not reappear in his tale as a moving object. There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is done in common humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law.

"They would not bring me a good death, all those men of Blue Vee. You … you five girls finally gave me the end I needed. The end I deserved."
Logafell, Boneless Mercies

But I can't shake the feeling something happened back there, when the battle was already over. That something was done while my back was turned...
And if it was? I didn't hear any savage barking or tearing. Is a killer still a killer if death comes as a mercy?
Lucky, Survivor Dogs

"No more rebirth. No more Returns. Free at last, my baby. Free."
Raboniel, Rhythm of War

“Crazy Sal sentenced her to fifty days in a turkey doctor’s chamber of horrors.”
“What?” Chebleu croaked.
“You know what a turkey doctor is?”
The guy was shaking his head, obviously hoping that he did not know.
Bolan said, “Think of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and the madmen who played medical games there with human meat. Then think of that sort of mentality transplanted to this time and place, give it the absolute power that is enjoyed by a mob boss, and turn it loose on a cute kid who got too cute with that same boss. You can forget names and identities now, because there’s nothing left but screaming turkey. It must have been about the forty-ninth day when I found Georgette.”
The guy turned very pale, covering his eyes with a hand, fighting for control over his emotions.
Quietly, Bolan said, “I released her, Andre. With that same weapon you were just holding. I put a 240-grain bullet where her eyes had been. And her soul thanked mine.”
The Executioner, "Canadian Crisis"

A paw gripped her ankle.
Granny Weatherwax looked down into the wolf's face.
"Preeees," it growled. "Annn enndinggg? Noaaow?"
The woodcutter never understood why the wolf laid its head on the stump so readily.
Or why the old woman, the one in whom anger roiled like pearl barley in a bubbling stew, insisted afterward that it be buried properly instead of skinned and thrown in the bushes. She had been very insistent about that.
And that was the end of the Big Bad Wolf.

And some were dead. Others were... well, if they weren't dead, if they'd just gone somewhere in their heads, it was as sure as hell that there was nothing for them to come back to. The chair had broken them again and again. They were beyond the help of any man.
Just in case, and without any feelings of guilt, Vimes removed his knife and... gave what help he could. There was not a twitch, not a sigh.

There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn't push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and... showed them the way.

Half-way across, and when he had already sighted the path rising high and dry upon the farther side, he was aware of a great splashing on his right, and saw a grey horse, sunk to its belly in the mud, and still spasmodically struggling. Instantly, as though it had divined the neighbourhood of help, the poor beast began to neigh most piercingly. It rolled, meanwhile, a bloodshot eye, insane with terror; and as it sprawled wallowing in the quag, clouds of stinging insects rose and buzzed about it in the air.
"Alack!" thought Dick, "can the poor lad have perished? There is his horse, for certain—a brave grey! Nay, comrade, if thou criest to me so piteously, I will do all man can to help thee. Shalt not lie there to drown by inches!"
And he made ready his cross-bow, and put a quarrel through the creature's head.

    Live-Action TV 
"If you fly directly over that core, I promise you by tomorrow morning, you'll be begging for that bullet!"
Valery Legasov, Chernobyl

Teddy: Please, put me out of my misery.
The Man in Black: I'm sorry, Teddy. It looks like misery's all you got.
Westworld, "Dissonance Theory"

Luke Cage: Just so we're clear... what could go wrong?
Dr. Noah Burstein: Well, your skin could peel off, like wax paper, and, uh, after about ten seconds, you'd beg me to put a bullet in your head because the pain would be so bad, but your head looks fine, so I guess the bullet would ricochet off your skull.
Luke Cage (2016), "DWYCK"

Tain: Tell me doctor, how sick is Garak?
Bashir: He's dying.
Tain: And you're trying to save him?
Bashir: That's right.
Tain: Strange. I thought you were his friend.
Bashir: I suppose I am.
Tain: Then you should let him die. After all, for Garak a life in exile is no life at all.

    Music 
His bone exposed
His hind was lame
I raised a stone to end his pain
Hozier, "In the Woods Somewhere"

    Tabletop Games 
The worst losses are when dark forces steal an Engineer from us. We deal with them every day: Marauders tear across the Near and Deep Universe alike, sowing insanity and horror. The Nephandi and Entropic EDEs bubble up out of the underworld, seducing and maddening in equal measure. Threat Null lulls and cajoles with familiar faces. You don't come back from that kind of corruption. When one of us falls to it, the only reasonable and human course of action is to kill the poor bastard - before he can do more damage and take more people from us.
Mage: The Ascension - Convention Book: Void Engineeers (revised)

    Toys 
"Someday, if I am feeling charitable, I will free him from his current empty existence...and repay his gift of life with mine of death."
The Shadowed One about Sentrakh, BIONICLE

    Video Games 
"My brother is suffering in his own private hell. It is for that reason that I intend to kill him, to end his pain forever. To save him from the insanity of this world."
Jin Kisaragi, BlazBlue

I came upon one of Nupraptor’s serving girls, catatonic with fear, choking out half-words through bloodied, broken teeth. Although tempted by hunger, I stayed my hand, allowing her to tell her story...
She spoke of her Lord Nupraptor, driven to insanity by the brutal slaying of his beloved Ariel. She spoke of his self-mutilation, sewing his eyes and lips shut to deny the outside world. Fueled by despair and hopelessness, he turned his magic on the Circle, infecting their minds with his madness. Nupraptor cared for nothing now, save his pathetic self-pity.
Scars such as hers would never heal. Death would only be a mercy.

"Now, I will show you mercy, you will die, forget the dream, and awake under the morning sun. You will be freed from this terrible Hunter's Dream..."

"Welcome. I am Ballos. Ages ago, in fear of enduring further punishment, I allowed my magic to run wild... its power soon became such that not even its master's hands could control it. As I looked on, unable to quell its fiery rage, it took from me my loved ones, my children, my dearest wife... their cries of agony soared above the flames. Unable to avert my eyes, I merely gazed upon the spectacle... laughing... Jenka sealed me away, but my magic yet rages out of control even now. Long, long have I waited... waited for the one who would subdue my magic's fury... now, kill me! Or I... shall kill YOU!"

"I have considered ending my Ghost. None of my research indicates a way to extricate the Vex technology from its shell. This is how I know I am a coward.... because I can not bring myself to do it."
Asher Mir, Destiny 2

Haedrig: It's my wife. She's locked in the cellar, like all those who've been bitten. I'm to put them all down. But how can I kill my own wife?
Demon Hunter: Sometimes death is the only mercy we have left. I will help you.

"Rites to the gods, mending for the bleeding, a dagger for the dying."
Amund the Sky-Watcher, Dragon Age: Inquisition

"I could not bear the sight of Andraste's suffering, and mercy bade me end her life."
Archon Hessarian, Dragon Age: Origins

"If only I could show you the places I have seen, you might understand the things I say. I have been to the Desolate Lands, wandered by those souls who still see the lands of the living but wear the cloak of the dead. Blind to their own ends, they cry, passing through one another like shadows in the dying light of day. I have travelled to where souls rot in torment, pierced with the jagged shards of life and vision, clinging to memory - regrets of the flesh. I saw that this prison was of their own making, and that the key was in unknowing, in release... and still, I travelled on. And finally, I came to the place where souls go to die. Where the mirrored and worn spirits fall into an endless sea of grey, mirrored glass... and I lowered myself within... and lay among them... and I almost did not return. And do you know what I found there? There, among the silent and battered shells of the innumerable? Peace. Enlightenment. Truth. Only then I realized that this place, this "Life", is an abomination, a horrible distortion of the natural order. This "Life", who mothered Pain, and Fear, and Envy - these twisted children who exist only because we are here to feed them, to nourish them. This "Life", this... afterthought - a disturbance, a mere ripple in that great, dead sea, not even the cause, but merely an effect, sending these souls upwards, screaming for release from the day they are torn from their waters! The effect of what! I do not know. Nor do I care.
I see your soul, traveler. It screams, tattered and spent. Do you feel its pull? Do you hear its wailing?"

"Mercy killing is expected of NCR snipers. The Legion likes to torture their prisoners within sight of NCR positions. We get called on to end it. I've had my share. Some of them, you think, maybe you could've gotten them out. Maybe it's not the Legion that got them killed. Maybe it's your orders and you following them."
Craig Boone, Fallout: New Vegas

We have let down the captain Rudimer of the dungeons. He is beyond our reach now.
If you are to run into him. Or what's left of him. Spare whatever honor he has left and let him out of his miseries.
Buckman's letter, Fear & Hunger

Diamant: We have to end this.
Alcryst: What are you saying, Brother?
Diamant: You think Father would want to live like this? As this...abomination fighting for Hyacinth? We have to let him die as the proud, noble man he was. As the king of Brodia.
Alcryst: I don't know if I can do this...

Charles: John, look, we should agree on something. If it's really bad... this might not be about saving him.
John: What the hell are you talking about?
Charles: If it's really bad... it might be better... to stop the pain.
John: Jesus, you mean to...
Charles: I mean you can live a week without a scalp. But it ain't a good week. A gut wound, you can live a month, but it's horrible. What they've done to him, might have killed him already, with only hurt to come.
John: We get him, and we see, okay?
Charles: We'll make it his call, if we can...
Red Dead Redemption 2, after Uncle is kidnapped by the Skinner Gang

(to Blade) "You will rest in peace, commander. I swear it to you, by my sword."
Leo, Red Earth

"Besides, death is a kind of salvation... For some."
Zaveid, Tales of Zestiria

In centuries past, the Draugr walked these lands just as you do now. Pity them, caught between the living and the dead in a shadow of the world they once knew. To destroy them is a mercy.

At this place I killed seven of the draugr and ended their long years of fighting and misery. Now who will end mine?

But pride cannot be killed entirely and the warriors who fought in that final battle will not surrender until their bodies are dust and the dust long gone. They return as Draugr, unholy walkers in ancient armour, creatures of rust and despair.
Break them, bury them, let them know they are dead.

Rest, wanderer, and consider the wraiths.
We know that when a warrior dies, their soul cracks open and seeps into the earth around them, thereby to nourish new life and strengthen those who follow after.
Yet if a warrior should die with no great deeds to their name, their soul will be too thin and airy. It will flow upwards instead, like smoke from a hearth. These wisps of souls sometimes catch in the branches of trees long enough to form wraiths, wretched shadows with nothing but bitterness and jealousy to drive them. Blown about the land in despair, they remain only to prey on those who are still living.
Should you see one, kill it and count it a mercy.
—Runestones found in the swamps, Valheim

Victor Saltzpyre: In light of our past association, I promise that when the time comes when your witchery consumes you, I will make your death as painless as I can.
Sienna Fuegonasus: And that's supposed to make me feel better?
Victor Saltzpyre: Does it?
Sienna Fuegonasus: Actually, a little bit, yes.

"She's fed off countless hosts and now cannot remember her true form. A voice called out to help her, but it has since fallen silent. Before the night ends, she must be given her eternal beauty sleep."
Pause screen description for Soul of Sectonia, Kirby: Triple Deluxe

    Visual Novels 
"Please kill Aroe. It's impossible. Nobody other than me will take care of her. Her parents ran away, so an institution is out of the question... People will pity her, but they won't be kind to her. I can't rely on anything. We went though so much trouble even with the two of us. So there's no way that she can live alone. Everyone else is cruel. Please kill her. Please. Amako-san, kill her. Kill her right now. I can't leave Aroe in such a cruel world. If she's only going to suffer, please kill her."
Aroe's sister, Swan Song

    Webcomics 
"How I felt about it didn't matter. Sometimes mercy takes the shape of a knife."
Eliza, Wilde Life #697

    Western Animation 
Jake: Finn, if you can't save me from the Lumps... if I do turn... if I become lumpy like them, I want you to-
Finn: It's not gonna come to that! But if it does, I'll bury you beneath the nicest, most shadiest tree-
Jake: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm saying that if I go totally lumpy, then I want you to get used to Lumpy Jake. What did you think I was sayin'?
Adventure Time, "Trouble In Lumpy Space"

Yep, just as I thought: he's pickled. Rewinding his mush brain back is the only humane thing left to do.

    Other 
Uncle Donnie: I fucking put him out of his misery. He was going to die, anyways.

"Horses are sentient, wonderful creatures but they have no concept of the future. When a jockey breaks his leg he knows he can put up with the discomfort; all a horse knows is that it is in pain. It is up to us to make the decision to end that suffering."

Tetsuo Shima: (having just been shot in the forehead with a psychic bolt) Thank you...
Magneto: (sigh) You're welcome.

You are liberated from hell. Find peace in the next life.

Promise something
Kill me right away if I start to get slow
And don't remember
How to separate the worm from the apple
Soundgarden, "Black Saturday"

"Kill me
I won't stay down much longer
Kill me
I'll only wake up stronger
Kill me
I've opened up the path
You'll wake up from this scary dream and laugh"


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