01-17-2011, 12:28 AM
Sigfried sat there, his arm still held as if Roy was within them. False blood was awash everywhere. He wondered why he was so dizzy. The entire world swirled, and for the longest time he couldn’t remember why Roy had disappeared. The voice of his revolution. The man that pulled his dreams together.
His head weaved a bit, bobbing towards the ground. With a strain he lifted it up again and gazed out over the stage. There, the charred, scarred, bloody remains of the sweet rose haired girl waded in her love’s blood. He had not seen what she had done, but he assumed it could only have been horrible. There were still the screams of the crowd echoing out into the air. Everything was so confusing, like mud had been swirled over his brain.
He outstretched a hand weakly, his bloody fingers extending out. “Victoria…” He called to her. Something in the back of his brain was screaming out to her. It was clawing at the walls of his skull, trying to escape. A thought bouncing off the bones behind his sinuses. He felt his body pulling in different directions, as if it was at war with itself.
Skoll and Hati had been pulling Jarka from the scene towards their provided transportation, her head constantly on the swivel to see the terror again. She looked over and over, as if she saw it differently it may not ever have happened. Skoll suddenly turned and looked back at Sigfried, an understanding and concerned look spreading over him. He trotted back and knelt down beside him, wrapping a blanket around.
He hefted the young man up and rushed him towards the car, but his eyes were still locked upon the woman matted in death. “Victoria…” he murmured once again before closing off his sight.
Two familiar voices greeted him in the dark.
“I know, man. I understand. Things will get better soon.”
“Quiet now, everything is alright, Sigfried. Soon you’ll remember what all this is for.”
It was a swirl of sounds within the car. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to peel his eyes open, but his ears were so acutely aware that there was something going on around him. There were words being spoken, and the soft sound of tears. Shouting, somewhere, about something unknowable. He felt himself being jostled around, and his head being turned and inspected. Why were they looking at his head?
The sounds slowly dimmed until he was lost in the blackness. There was nothing around him, nothing to see and nothing to hear. He wasn’t all alone though. He had himself to keep the company. He was in many different places, all seeing different things. Experiencing different emotions and thinking different thoughts. His mind spread out into the universe like the roots of a mighty tree…
Accursed he was to remember the sight of Victoria, alone on the stage. All he had wanted was to go to her, to kneel beside her and say… something. Anything. He couldn’t think of anything he could say. “I’m sorry”? “I understand”? He was sorry. He did understand. How could he say that to her? The woman who he had destroyed from the inside out. He was terrified to comfort her, for fear that she might let her rage be known to him and wipe him from existence forever.
He was moving somewhere, the creaking of a door long uncared for. He was laid gently down upon something soft and springy. His arm slipped from his side and struck the carpet below. He just wanted to be still. Death seemed to be upon him, and his weary mind was almost ready to allow the sweet embrace to consume him.
He heard the voices of himself again, echoing now from the outside. “We have taken your pain… You’re back.”
Sigfried’s eyes slowly fluttered open, and he saw the speckled white ceiling of the basement and smelled the familiar stink of the smoky couch that lay beneath him. He rolled to his side and tossed his legs down onto the carpet below. He took in a deep breath before releasing it. Skoll and Hati stood beside him, each with a solemn look on their face.
“Jarka is in her room.” Hati informed him. Sigfried nodded and cracked his neck painfully.
He blinked a few times and pressed his fingers into his eyelids. “What the hell happened?” His voice cracked as thought it was new, being used for the first time.
“Roy got shot in the head, Sigfried.” Skoll’s voice was as stern as it could be when speaking to Sigfried. “You shouldn’t have done it. You took part of the injury. You could have died.”
The boy looked down to his clothing and found they had once again shifted back to his natural red hoodie, grey beater and jeans. He brushed them off once before standing to his feet. “I had to.” He began to remember the scene now. “I couldn’t have Victoria finding the body. Kai, what a wreck that would have been.”
Hati hopped in place impatiently before stepping after Sigfried. “What the fuck happened man?!” He was angry and confused, emotions too vastly evident to ignore. “That wasn’t part of the plan, was it? That wasn’t supposed to happen, right?”
Skoll put a hand on his chest and held a finger to his lips, shushing his brother. “I don’t think it was. Give him a second, man…”
Sigfried leaned forward against the shoddy oven with both hands and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I really just… I don’t know.”
The sound of the old room opening turned all of their heads to see a tear soaked Jarka standing confusedly in the door frame. “Are you ok?” she sobbed, thick words bubbling from her concern. She pointed to him with a crook in her eyebrows. “What happened to your clothes?” She took a few steps forward, her expression changing from confusion to anger. “And what happened to your head?”
“Yes, why don’t you tell her, Sigfried?” The voice came from behind them, deep and foreboding.
There stood a dark figure, a large rifle in his right hand. “Why don’t you tell her what all this means, huh?” He took a few steps forward, tossing his helmet into the corner. “Or would that ruin things for you?” He unzipped his black leather jacket with a jerk. He looked out across the room as eyes began to fire up with rage. “Oh? What? Am I interrupting something here?”
Sigfried pointed at the door to his old room but kept his gaze upon the intruder. “Jarka, get back in the room.” His voice was low, commanding. She simply stood there, shaking her head slowly.
“Don’t tell the lady what to do, Sigs mah boy!” The strange, ambiguously figured man grinned. “Don’t you think she deserves to know?” He stared through the space between them and into the young woman’s eyes. “Especially after she told her little secret to you the other day.”
“Get in the room, Jarka!” Sigfried shouted now, thrusting his finger at the room again. She simply stared on at the man as he stalked ever closer.
He slowly stripped the jacket from himself and let it hit the floor. “Don’t worry, Jarka, your secret is safe with me.” He chuckled and let his eyes trail back over to the boy. “It’s him you should be worried about.”
“Jarka!” Sigfried screamed at the top of his lungs, “Get the fuck in that room!” She suddenly turned, new tears springing forth and slammed the door behind her.
Sigfried took up a quick stalk towards the man, boiling hatred spewing up from inside of him. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He reached a hand out to shove the man, but he quickly brought the massive rifle up to bear at his face.
“I don’t think so, compadre.” His teeth grit, and he breathed quickly, but he kept his cool. “You stay right the fuck where you are.” He took a few nervous steps back. “I’m not going back in, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“The fuck you aren’t.”
The man scoffed and looked around. “And what makes you think I will?”
Sigfried’s eyes squinted and his head tilted to the side slightly, that mock confusion that came when somebody was being petulant against and authority. “Oh? And what makes you think that? Your little gun? Really?” He took a for steps towards the gun that was pointed at his face. “I can make you drop it, right here and now. I don’t need to touch you.”
The man’s scoff was obviously false, his terror spreading through him like a disease. “You- you can’t anymore. I’ve changed. I’m better. I’m different.”
Sigfried turned away, showing his back as he threw his hands up dramatically. He spun quickly and faced him once again. “No you fucking aren’t. You’re just like all the rest of them.” He laughed softly to himself. “You- You don’t even have a name. I didn’t give you one.” His eyes burned into the stranger. “That’s how unimportant you are.”
The man’s face contorted in pain and confusion. “No…” He pleaded. “That’s not-“
“Go on, think of your name,” Sigfried challenged him. “What is it?” The man started to part him lips, but he was cut off. “I made it so that your automatic response was to resist interrogation if your dumb ass got caught. You don’t have a name.”
“Fuck you!” The black clad assassin swore, threatening to pull the trigger.
Sigfried shook his head at the melodrama. “You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t even know what would happen. Hell I don’t know what would happen.” He waved his hand downward. “Just put it down.”
The man allowed the weapon to fall to his side before it slipped from his fingers. He stood there, a hollow look on his face. “I’m not going back in.”
Sigfried ignored the man’s comment and went forward with his own inquiry. “What the fuck happened? Why did you do it?” He pointed to himself. “You shot me. Twice.”
The strange individual smirked. “You gave me too much, I guess. You gave me self awareness. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Did you think I wouldn’t understand?”
Sigfried alit with a new unholy type of emotion, something that mankind could not have known before he himself had exhibited it. “Gave you too much? Too much?” He began to cackle, his voice reverberating off of the wall terribly. “I gave you too little.” He gestured to the man and spit. “If you had more put into you, you might not have been so fucking stupid.”
“I’m better than you’ll ever be!” Spit flung from his mouth in retort.
“YOU ARE ME!” The youth’s voice crept from his throat and exploded out like a thousand pounds of dynamite. “And you weren’t supposed to kill him! You were meant to miss and be seen by those stupid bastard media crews!” He felt his heart pounding in his chest, threatening to tear out of his ribcage. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve ruined everything. You’ve destroyed Victoria too! Why?” He almost begged for an answer. “Why did you do that?”
He stared at the ground. “Because I didn’t want to go back. To become nothing again.” He looked up to the man commanding him so oddly. “I learned how to do something that you couldn’t, too. I made them real, permanent.”
Sigfried blinked for a moment, his bewilderment to be made evident. “What do you mean? You mean that you learned how to split?”
He grinned a wicked grin and spat back an answer. “You think I wouldn’t? I’m not stupid, Sigfried. I figured out how to do it better, too.”
“You learned everything from me. There is nothing that you can do that I am not capable of.” Sigfried began to pace away from the individual in his living room. “To think that I’m unaware of what I can do with this is infantile.” He cast back a cold glare at him. “Too much…” He spat into the ground.
“Well, they’re all dead now.” He smirked as though he was winning the fight. “And look at me! I’m not.”
Spinning on his heel, the red cloaked young man looked into his eyes. “You aren’t alive. You’re nothing. You are a fraction of a fraction. I could, and trust me, I will, take you all back and I would have a few nicks. Nothing else. You don’t have enough put into you.”
The man curled his fists and prepared one final statement. He could feel it coming like a tornado. “Do you always talk to yourself like that?”
“Only when I’m being stupid.” With that, the man vanished as though he had never been.
Exhausted, Sigfried mulled over towards the couch and fell down into it. Skoll and Hati stood on the other side of the coffee table in front of him and looked down at him. “Hey man, are you alright?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine… I just need a minute alone.” He smirked and looked up to the two. “Hey, could you go and get us some booze? Something soft. I don’t wanna choke on any vodka or anything like that tonight.”
“Sure thing, boss.” The two began to walk towards the door, Skoll holding the door open for Hati. “Be back in a little bit.”
Sigfried nodded as the two left him alone in the room. He let out another long breath and rubbed his temples slowly. The cut and wounds from the others had already faded, their existence forgotten like a passing breeze.
What would he do now? He would have to lead this on his own now. He couldn’t be so smooth like Roy though. He couldn’t bring everything together as flawlessly as Roy did. He simply didn’t have the social patience. He was the only one out of any of them that had too much. Too much swimming around in his head, too much taunting him. He was incapable of spreading himself thinly, to dilute his anger and distrust. He had seen the truth of the matter that was the world and could not pretend he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t make people follow him because he hated the ignorance that lead them. How can you simultaneously hate people and want to lead them from their ignorance? Roy did it.
He could do anything they could.
There was the sudden sound of the door cracking open from across the room. He could hear her crying inside from the desk. The lock must not have engaged all the way. Strange how it seems the universe demands your attention to certain people, certain places and times. He hefted himself from the sofa and dragged himself towards the entryway. He did not anticipate liking this. He expected to hate it. It would be emotionally gory, and she might try to kill him. Thankfully for him, she wasn’t very good with her powers yet.
He didn’t bother knocking, but rather just pushed it open and stood in the space between rooms. He saw her sat there, her face buried in her hands, sniffling. It had to be hard, everything at once like this. It was never really that hard for Sigfried. He had it all happen gradually. Safely and on his own terms. He loved his powers, and he loved learned about them. When he figured it out it was like a prayer had been answered. He was something more than everyone else. He had something nobody else had. But it seemed like Jarka wore her skills like a burden.
He wanted to tell her that what she had made her special, that it made her better. Her mind could reach into reality and alter it. Sigfried could only change himself. He wondered which skill, at its mastery, would be have more potential. He saw some pamphlets in her room. She must have been messing with them before they left for the speech but didn’t have time to clean them up. Why would she, now that Sigfried knew? It must have been liberating to let her dirty little secret out in the air like that. In the light of day it wouldn’t seem so dirty.
“Jarka,” his voice started without even his noticing. “I don’t think you understand just yet. I hope you can get a hold on it all.” He was talking without thinking first. Words were just tumbling out of his throat and through his lips. “You know, you’re not the first person to know that I can do things, but you’re the first friend I’ve had in a really long time.”
She looked up at him, face laced in snot and tears. “What?”
He continued on without any heed to her confusion. “You- It was really hard to do this. It was like, taking the whole world up in your hands.” He cupped his hands up as though he Earth was a tiny ball he could scoop out of the sky. “I made sacrifices. I changed. I did a lot of things I regret.” He paused for a moment, still staring blankly. “That’s a lie. I don’t regret them. They had to be done.” He stared down at her, empty. “Do you get that? Nobody ever got hurt. Nobody except me, that is.” He smiled shyly. “I mean, that’s the way it was suppose to be.”
He huffed and traced his finger along the door. “I mean, mistakes were made. Not a lot of them, but, you know, there they are. Some people got hurt.” He glanced to her quickly. “I’m mostly worried about Victoria. Not just because of the plan or anything, but because, well, man, I really hurt that girl.” He jiggled his head back in forth as though in disbelief. “Fuck I don’t know what she is, but I know that I wish it hadn’t happened to her that way.”
He suddenly exploded in energy, pacing around the room. “It’s like, no matter what the world is going to grind you up and spit you out, you know?” He clenched his fists and stared up at the ceiling. “No matter what you do you’re just fucked.”
Jarka turned in her chair and cast a baleful glare. “What are you talking about?”
He stopped and looked her in the eye. “I…” He caught himself. After a moment of choking on his own words, they finally won him over and beat through his teeth and into the world. “I’m everyone, Jarka.”
Her face only grew more perplexed, her confusion frustrating and hurting her even more than what had already been done.
“I’m Roy.” He paused, allowing it to sink in. “I’m Skoll and Hati. I’m the sniper and I’m the aliens.” He gazed at her as she sat, blankly observing him. “I. Am. Everyone.”
His head weaved a bit, bobbing towards the ground. With a strain he lifted it up again and gazed out over the stage. There, the charred, scarred, bloody remains of the sweet rose haired girl waded in her love’s blood. He had not seen what she had done, but he assumed it could only have been horrible. There were still the screams of the crowd echoing out into the air. Everything was so confusing, like mud had been swirled over his brain.
He outstretched a hand weakly, his bloody fingers extending out. “Victoria…” He called to her. Something in the back of his brain was screaming out to her. It was clawing at the walls of his skull, trying to escape. A thought bouncing off the bones behind his sinuses. He felt his body pulling in different directions, as if it was at war with itself.
Skoll and Hati had been pulling Jarka from the scene towards their provided transportation, her head constantly on the swivel to see the terror again. She looked over and over, as if she saw it differently it may not ever have happened. Skoll suddenly turned and looked back at Sigfried, an understanding and concerned look spreading over him. He trotted back and knelt down beside him, wrapping a blanket around.
He hefted the young man up and rushed him towards the car, but his eyes were still locked upon the woman matted in death. “Victoria…” he murmured once again before closing off his sight.
Two familiar voices greeted him in the dark.
“I know, man. I understand. Things will get better soon.”
“Quiet now, everything is alright, Sigfried. Soon you’ll remember what all this is for.”
It was a swirl of sounds within the car. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to peel his eyes open, but his ears were so acutely aware that there was something going on around him. There were words being spoken, and the soft sound of tears. Shouting, somewhere, about something unknowable. He felt himself being jostled around, and his head being turned and inspected. Why were they looking at his head?
The sounds slowly dimmed until he was lost in the blackness. There was nothing around him, nothing to see and nothing to hear. He wasn’t all alone though. He had himself to keep the company. He was in many different places, all seeing different things. Experiencing different emotions and thinking different thoughts. His mind spread out into the universe like the roots of a mighty tree…
Accursed he was to remember the sight of Victoria, alone on the stage. All he had wanted was to go to her, to kneel beside her and say… something. Anything. He couldn’t think of anything he could say. “I’m sorry”? “I understand”? He was sorry. He did understand. How could he say that to her? The woman who he had destroyed from the inside out. He was terrified to comfort her, for fear that she might let her rage be known to him and wipe him from existence forever.
He was moving somewhere, the creaking of a door long uncared for. He was laid gently down upon something soft and springy. His arm slipped from his side and struck the carpet below. He just wanted to be still. Death seemed to be upon him, and his weary mind was almost ready to allow the sweet embrace to consume him.
He heard the voices of himself again, echoing now from the outside. “We have taken your pain… You’re back.”
Sigfried’s eyes slowly fluttered open, and he saw the speckled white ceiling of the basement and smelled the familiar stink of the smoky couch that lay beneath him. He rolled to his side and tossed his legs down onto the carpet below. He took in a deep breath before releasing it. Skoll and Hati stood beside him, each with a solemn look on their face.
“Jarka is in her room.” Hati informed him. Sigfried nodded and cracked his neck painfully.
He blinked a few times and pressed his fingers into his eyelids. “What the hell happened?” His voice cracked as thought it was new, being used for the first time.
“Roy got shot in the head, Sigfried.” Skoll’s voice was as stern as it could be when speaking to Sigfried. “You shouldn’t have done it. You took part of the injury. You could have died.”
The boy looked down to his clothing and found they had once again shifted back to his natural red hoodie, grey beater and jeans. He brushed them off once before standing to his feet. “I had to.” He began to remember the scene now. “I couldn’t have Victoria finding the body. Kai, what a wreck that would have been.”
Hati hopped in place impatiently before stepping after Sigfried. “What the fuck happened man?!” He was angry and confused, emotions too vastly evident to ignore. “That wasn’t part of the plan, was it? That wasn’t supposed to happen, right?”
Skoll put a hand on his chest and held a finger to his lips, shushing his brother. “I don’t think it was. Give him a second, man…”
Sigfried leaned forward against the shoddy oven with both hands and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I really just… I don’t know.”
The sound of the old room opening turned all of their heads to see a tear soaked Jarka standing confusedly in the door frame. “Are you ok?” she sobbed, thick words bubbling from her concern. She pointed to him with a crook in her eyebrows. “What happened to your clothes?” She took a few steps forward, her expression changing from confusion to anger. “And what happened to your head?”
“Yes, why don’t you tell her, Sigfried?” The voice came from behind them, deep and foreboding.
There stood a dark figure, a large rifle in his right hand. “Why don’t you tell her what all this means, huh?” He took a few steps forward, tossing his helmet into the corner. “Or would that ruin things for you?” He unzipped his black leather jacket with a jerk. He looked out across the room as eyes began to fire up with rage. “Oh? What? Am I interrupting something here?”
Sigfried pointed at the door to his old room but kept his gaze upon the intruder. “Jarka, get back in the room.” His voice was low, commanding. She simply stood there, shaking her head slowly.
“Don’t tell the lady what to do, Sigs mah boy!” The strange, ambiguously figured man grinned. “Don’t you think she deserves to know?” He stared through the space between them and into the young woman’s eyes. “Especially after she told her little secret to you the other day.”
“Get in the room, Jarka!” Sigfried shouted now, thrusting his finger at the room again. She simply stared on at the man as he stalked ever closer.
He slowly stripped the jacket from himself and let it hit the floor. “Don’t worry, Jarka, your secret is safe with me.” He chuckled and let his eyes trail back over to the boy. “It’s him you should be worried about.”
“Jarka!” Sigfried screamed at the top of his lungs, “Get the fuck in that room!” She suddenly turned, new tears springing forth and slammed the door behind her.
Sigfried took up a quick stalk towards the man, boiling hatred spewing up from inside of him. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He reached a hand out to shove the man, but he quickly brought the massive rifle up to bear at his face.
“I don’t think so, compadre.” His teeth grit, and he breathed quickly, but he kept his cool. “You stay right the fuck where you are.” He took a few nervous steps back. “I’m not going back in, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“The fuck you aren’t.”
The man scoffed and looked around. “And what makes you think I will?”
Sigfried’s eyes squinted and his head tilted to the side slightly, that mock confusion that came when somebody was being petulant against and authority. “Oh? And what makes you think that? Your little gun? Really?” He took a for steps towards the gun that was pointed at his face. “I can make you drop it, right here and now. I don’t need to touch you.”
The man’s scoff was obviously false, his terror spreading through him like a disease. “You- you can’t anymore. I’ve changed. I’m better. I’m different.”
Sigfried turned away, showing his back as he threw his hands up dramatically. He spun quickly and faced him once again. “No you fucking aren’t. You’re just like all the rest of them.” He laughed softly to himself. “You- You don’t even have a name. I didn’t give you one.” His eyes burned into the stranger. “That’s how unimportant you are.”
The man’s face contorted in pain and confusion. “No…” He pleaded. “That’s not-“
“Go on, think of your name,” Sigfried challenged him. “What is it?” The man started to part him lips, but he was cut off. “I made it so that your automatic response was to resist interrogation if your dumb ass got caught. You don’t have a name.”
“Fuck you!” The black clad assassin swore, threatening to pull the trigger.
Sigfried shook his head at the melodrama. “You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t even know what would happen. Hell I don’t know what would happen.” He waved his hand downward. “Just put it down.”
The man allowed the weapon to fall to his side before it slipped from his fingers. He stood there, a hollow look on his face. “I’m not going back in.”
Sigfried ignored the man’s comment and went forward with his own inquiry. “What the fuck happened? Why did you do it?” He pointed to himself. “You shot me. Twice.”
The strange individual smirked. “You gave me too much, I guess. You gave me self awareness. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Did you think I wouldn’t understand?”
Sigfried alit with a new unholy type of emotion, something that mankind could not have known before he himself had exhibited it. “Gave you too much? Too much?” He began to cackle, his voice reverberating off of the wall terribly. “I gave you too little.” He gestured to the man and spit. “If you had more put into you, you might not have been so fucking stupid.”
“I’m better than you’ll ever be!” Spit flung from his mouth in retort.
“YOU ARE ME!” The youth’s voice crept from his throat and exploded out like a thousand pounds of dynamite. “And you weren’t supposed to kill him! You were meant to miss and be seen by those stupid bastard media crews!” He felt his heart pounding in his chest, threatening to tear out of his ribcage. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve ruined everything. You’ve destroyed Victoria too! Why?” He almost begged for an answer. “Why did you do that?”
He stared at the ground. “Because I didn’t want to go back. To become nothing again.” He looked up to the man commanding him so oddly. “I learned how to do something that you couldn’t, too. I made them real, permanent.”
Sigfried blinked for a moment, his bewilderment to be made evident. “What do you mean? You mean that you learned how to split?”
He grinned a wicked grin and spat back an answer. “You think I wouldn’t? I’m not stupid, Sigfried. I figured out how to do it better, too.”
“You learned everything from me. There is nothing that you can do that I am not capable of.” Sigfried began to pace away from the individual in his living room. “To think that I’m unaware of what I can do with this is infantile.” He cast back a cold glare at him. “Too much…” He spat into the ground.
“Well, they’re all dead now.” He smirked as though he was winning the fight. “And look at me! I’m not.”
Spinning on his heel, the red cloaked young man looked into his eyes. “You aren’t alive. You’re nothing. You are a fraction of a fraction. I could, and trust me, I will, take you all back and I would have a few nicks. Nothing else. You don’t have enough put into you.”
The man curled his fists and prepared one final statement. He could feel it coming like a tornado. “Do you always talk to yourself like that?”
“Only when I’m being stupid.” With that, the man vanished as though he had never been.
Exhausted, Sigfried mulled over towards the couch and fell down into it. Skoll and Hati stood on the other side of the coffee table in front of him and looked down at him. “Hey man, are you alright?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine… I just need a minute alone.” He smirked and looked up to the two. “Hey, could you go and get us some booze? Something soft. I don’t wanna choke on any vodka or anything like that tonight.”
“Sure thing, boss.” The two began to walk towards the door, Skoll holding the door open for Hati. “Be back in a little bit.”
Sigfried nodded as the two left him alone in the room. He let out another long breath and rubbed his temples slowly. The cut and wounds from the others had already faded, their existence forgotten like a passing breeze.
What would he do now? He would have to lead this on his own now. He couldn’t be so smooth like Roy though. He couldn’t bring everything together as flawlessly as Roy did. He simply didn’t have the social patience. He was the only one out of any of them that had too much. Too much swimming around in his head, too much taunting him. He was incapable of spreading himself thinly, to dilute his anger and distrust. He had seen the truth of the matter that was the world and could not pretend he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t make people follow him because he hated the ignorance that lead them. How can you simultaneously hate people and want to lead them from their ignorance? Roy did it.
He could do anything they could.
There was the sudden sound of the door cracking open from across the room. He could hear her crying inside from the desk. The lock must not have engaged all the way. Strange how it seems the universe demands your attention to certain people, certain places and times. He hefted himself from the sofa and dragged himself towards the entryway. He did not anticipate liking this. He expected to hate it. It would be emotionally gory, and she might try to kill him. Thankfully for him, she wasn’t very good with her powers yet.
He didn’t bother knocking, but rather just pushed it open and stood in the space between rooms. He saw her sat there, her face buried in her hands, sniffling. It had to be hard, everything at once like this. It was never really that hard for Sigfried. He had it all happen gradually. Safely and on his own terms. He loved his powers, and he loved learned about them. When he figured it out it was like a prayer had been answered. He was something more than everyone else. He had something nobody else had. But it seemed like Jarka wore her skills like a burden.
He wanted to tell her that what she had made her special, that it made her better. Her mind could reach into reality and alter it. Sigfried could only change himself. He wondered which skill, at its mastery, would be have more potential. He saw some pamphlets in her room. She must have been messing with them before they left for the speech but didn’t have time to clean them up. Why would she, now that Sigfried knew? It must have been liberating to let her dirty little secret out in the air like that. In the light of day it wouldn’t seem so dirty.
“Jarka,” his voice started without even his noticing. “I don’t think you understand just yet. I hope you can get a hold on it all.” He was talking without thinking first. Words were just tumbling out of his throat and through his lips. “You know, you’re not the first person to know that I can do things, but you’re the first friend I’ve had in a really long time.”
She looked up at him, face laced in snot and tears. “What?”
He continued on without any heed to her confusion. “You- It was really hard to do this. It was like, taking the whole world up in your hands.” He cupped his hands up as though he Earth was a tiny ball he could scoop out of the sky. “I made sacrifices. I changed. I did a lot of things I regret.” He paused for a moment, still staring blankly. “That’s a lie. I don’t regret them. They had to be done.” He stared down at her, empty. “Do you get that? Nobody ever got hurt. Nobody except me, that is.” He smiled shyly. “I mean, that’s the way it was suppose to be.”
He huffed and traced his finger along the door. “I mean, mistakes were made. Not a lot of them, but, you know, there they are. Some people got hurt.” He glanced to her quickly. “I’m mostly worried about Victoria. Not just because of the plan or anything, but because, well, man, I really hurt that girl.” He jiggled his head back in forth as though in disbelief. “Fuck I don’t know what she is, but I know that I wish it hadn’t happened to her that way.”
He suddenly exploded in energy, pacing around the room. “It’s like, no matter what the world is going to grind you up and spit you out, you know?” He clenched his fists and stared up at the ceiling. “No matter what you do you’re just fucked.”
Jarka turned in her chair and cast a baleful glare. “What are you talking about?”
He stopped and looked her in the eye. “I…” He caught himself. After a moment of choking on his own words, they finally won him over and beat through his teeth and into the world. “I’m everyone, Jarka.”
Her face only grew more perplexed, her confusion frustrating and hurting her even more than what had already been done.
“I’m Roy.” He paused, allowing it to sink in. “I’m Skoll and Hati. I’m the sniper and I’m the aliens.” He gazed at her as she sat, blankly observing him. “I. Am. Everyone.”
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]