Whilst work is still keeping me down until the end of the week, I
did have time to dig this up as an apology of sorts :p It's a piece of writing I did a few months back again in reference to Worm (which I highly recommend reading) but with the aim this time of provoking emotions of sadness.
Brief Context: The point-of-view character is a woman who was once a superhero, one of the most famous in the world who was secretly dedicated to defeating an extinction level threat. After an encounter with an Endbringer, creatures that strike randomly across the world with their own unique powers and strategies, it communicates something to her. This is set some time after that.
{MAJOR WORM SPOILERS FOR COMPLETE CONTEXT}
Spoiler
Context {WARNING - MAJOR WORM SPOILERS}: Superheroes are people called 'parahumans', who get their abilities from extra-dimensional beings called Entities for various reasons I won't explain due to SPOILERS. NB: This piece is written as part of a fan-fiction of Worm called Hypnos, so the below is only spoilers for that.
This piece shows Alexandria, part of a secret group named Cauldron with the sole aim of stopping the Warrior entity from doing its thing, after one of the Endbringers (who is a twisted version of Worm's main protagonist in this piece (but not actual canon) reveals that each time they succeed, the second entity - dubbed the Thinker - resets time to just after its arrival and turns the individual who killed her partner into an Endbringer for the new timeline.
Alexandria is driven mad and attempts to kill every parahuman before they can be turned into weapons against humanity and her friends.
Someone asked why Alexandria went mad and tried to kill people. This was my first response:
She told her about the shards, maybe, perhaps their influence? Or she revealed what she was before, and the idea that a powerful parahuman could become a foe in the future was too much for Alexandria to bear.
So she killed them. As many of them as she could reach. All the while her friends were trying to stop her and it was just so hard to make them understand! Understand that she was doing it for them, that she couldn't stop even if she wanted to because if she did they would win.
Alexandria died with a soft smile on her face and a whispered thanks for preventing her ever becoming a threat like that.
It's little wonder, really, that Legend has become so cold.
"You were the worst, you know."
The words taunt her. Like the dripping, quiet leak that persisted no matter how hard you sought its cause, those same words would always find away back into her head, past the shields she'd previously believed impervious to all comers. Finding the cracks, the weaknesses... and widening them.
"
I saw what you did, what you do. How you lost your humanity to try and save it."
She shakes her head, blinking away the tears and dirt before her gaze tracks down. There's blood on her hands again, and unlike all those times before it isn't a metaphor. She watches, carefully, almost entranced, as a single ruby-red drip runs from immaculately maintained nails down to pool in her outstretched palm. Blood on her hands, blood on their hands... No, no. Another frantic toss of the head, heaving breaths as she tries to focus. To think about anything other than the blood.
Not your blood, a traitorous part of her whispers.
You're still alive.
She finally unclenches her left hand and feels the sensation of weight fall away. The body slumps against the ruined and broken wall before gravity catches it properly and it slides sideways. Another red mark. Too much red. A whole book, dripping with blood. Names she'd crossed out, personally, all those she'd let die by her inaction, those she'd never even attempted to save. All the so-called justifications, useless.
"
You'd probably become like me, in the end. Taken and twisted into a mockery for the others to fight the endless fight against. Pawns in an unimaginably large game of chess we can never hope to win. Are you justified now?"
No, she wants to cry, no! I am not! I never was! It sits in her chest like a leaden weight even her incredible strength does nothing to lessen. She sees it now, what the Gem had wanted her to see all along. Her breath hitches as for the first time she truly sees the broken body in front of her. A hand flies to her mouth, painting her face with red. Does it matter, that she's coated in blood and grime? She had an image, once...
This one, she recognises. A name tries to force its way through the fugue, attach itself to the twisted, terrified features and those sightless green eyes as they beg her, call out for her,
demand absolution. An incomprehensible absolution they couldn't ask for, because they did not know.
Her hearing is as sharp as it ever was, sharper now perhaps. It never crosses her mind to check things like that. What does it matter, in the grander scheme of things? Something shifts where nothing should, and she turns. Through the trail of broken walls, the devastated compound, she sees the city like she had never seen it before in her life. The road beyond is stationary, traffic scattered across the road as if tipped from the hand of some inattentive God. Had... she..?
"
All those travesties. All the innocents you took, telling yourself it was okay because in the end you'd be vindicated. All those lives you took-"
She remembers interrupting, screaming obscenities at the beast. Perhaps they'd been questions. It was so... hard... to remember, now. The response, however... That she could, probably always would remember.
"
For nothing. Worthless."
Her life's great work, her greatest mission, the unreachable goal so close to her grasping finger tips, wrenched away in an instant.
"
Because if you win, she
wins. She takes you and unmakes you, remakes you to her liking and starts the game anew. You take her King with your rook and the rook becomes hers, infinitely more dangerous. Can you really beat that?"
No.
No, you can't. No one could beat that, a game so thoroughly rigged from the beginning. But she remembers. A figure moves in the distance, frost-white and ice-blue, calling, begging. She pretends not to hear,
forces herself not to hear. To hear is to weaken, to lose conviction, to falter.
And if she falters now, it becomes worse. So much worse. They didn't understand it, maybe couldn't. Perhaps that was part of
her plan all along, the so-called Fallen Garden. Set her up to fall. It didn't, doesn't, matter. She is indomitable, a true hero. If they could not listen, then maybe they could see?
With a flex of willpower, she is gone. Faster, yes, maybe even stronger too. Perhaps She, not
she, but She... perhaps She'd seen this, had known she'd do what it took.
That had to be it. Why else would She crack for no one else? Why share Her secrets if She had no faith in her chosen messenger? Yes... They would see, just as she had been shown. Maybe not now, maybe not even in the next week or the next month, but they would.
Because they had to. All of them. They had to. Had to...
Had to die.
The woman that was once Alexandria blinks away tears, but this time they are of happiness. She is broken, that she can tell, but she can be fixed. All it takes is one... more... Just one more.
And then she, too, can die.
