ALFG 167

#04: HOW VILLAINS ARE MADE by MADALEN DUKE

Seven lets her roam the city, giving her a phone and a number to call him in case she gets lost, though with his apartment being at the tallest floor of the tallest building of Hatsune-shi, that shouldn’t be a problem. She wanders the streets until it gets dark, until the noise of the busy city life falls away, until it’s only her in a darkened sidewalk, heading for a dimly-lit bridge that goes over a shallow river.

No point in staying here, she supposes. It’s all the same, everywhere she goes. She can’t even get any peace here, in a world so far away from her own.

She leans on the railing, folding her arms as she looks out at the skyline, at the buildings lit up in neon and fluorescent. It was…nice? While it lasted? It’s hard to put emotions into words when she can’t feel anything at all. She can’t remember the last time she actually felt anything that went past skindeep.

“If you’re thinking of something drastic, probably best not to do it here,” a voice says. She looks over her shoulder to see a man passing by, hoodie up, hands stuffed in his pockets. Great. Just what she needed. Someone who was probably going to mug her and throw her off the edge of the bridge.

“I’m just taking a walk,” she says.

“Well, let’s hope it stays that way,” the man says. He leans on the rail a few paces away from her, his back to the river, his hands still in his pockets. “Why are you out this late, anyway?”

“Why are you?”

“On my way home,” he says. “You’re just hanging out by a bridge, which is concerning.”

“Maybe I like hanging out by bridges.”

“Maybe,” he says. “In my experience, though, it’s a different sort of hanging out by a bridge, so you can’t blame a guy for checking up on you.” He shrugs. “Reckon it’s not always for good reasons that someone hangs out by a bridge this late anyway, even if it’s just for a walk. Having some trouble?”

“Might be.”

“Someone break up with you or what?”

She snorts. “I wish it was that simple,” she says.

“How complicated is it, then?”

“Very,” she says.

The man hums. “Problem’s with everyone else kind of complicated or problem’s with you kind of complicated?” When she doesn’t answer, he does another careful shrug. “It’s usually one thing or the other.”

“And if it’s both?”

“Well, then, you have an interpersonal conflict.” He turns around to lean his arms on the railing, though with the dim lighting, Damara still can’t properly see his face. “Who was more at fault, you or them?”

“I’d be biased if I answered.”

“We all are. It’s what we do when we’re hurt. I’m guessing you did a lot of awful stuff, then?”

“They did it first.”

“So your behavior was in response to their behavior to yours over time?” he asks, and it sounds like he’s reciting it from something. Damara raises an eyebrow. “Shit my therapist says.”

She sighs. She supposes it was. She doesn’t remember where everything started anymore, when the bitterness in her heart took root. “Maybe,” she says again.

“You’re very non committal.”

“It’s not like it’s any of your business.”

“No, it’s not,” the man says. “I’m just saying - not a lot of progress gets done when all you keep doing is going in circles.” He waves a hand. “Of course, it always depends on the situation and it’s not a one size fits all, but sometimes all you can do is see where you can go from where you are now.” He shrugs again. “Just, food for thought.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, we’ll never get the time we had back. We’ll never get the lives we had before. But it’s shittier to just get stuck in the same place because you can’t move on, right?”

“But what if I’m a terrible person?”

“Do you like being a terrible person?”

“No.”

“Then do your best to get away from it,” he says. “S’what I think, at least. It’s easy to wallow, but sometimes we get stuck in it instead of doing anything. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s just that, objectively, it’s better for you.”

He pushes off from the railing.

“You need help getting back home or something?” he asks.

“No, I’ll be fine.” She turns away from the bridge, up towards the tallest tower in the skyline, at the lights that are still on, visible from the windows. She can get there by herself fine.

#

Seven is still awake by the time she gets back. He’s on the phone texting someone, perhaps either of his siblings, but he lowers his phone when she comes in. Damara shuts the door behind her and stays there, saying nothing.

“Did you have a good walk?” he asks, eventually.

She nods.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s 2 a.m. You should sleep.”

“And you?”

“Don’t need to,” he says.

She nods, turning away towards her guestroom. The reminder of there being ready guestrooms in Seven’s house makes her pause again. Her other self probably stayed here once, or was hosted by another god, was friends with them. Good for her; she was happy, safe, well-liked, well-respected.

“Megido-san?” Seven asks. “Are you alright?”

“I…” she starts. “Could you tell me something?”

She hears Seven sitting up behind her, but he doesn’t approach. “What?”

“I just - I don’t understand,” Damara says. She doesn’t turn to him, merely standing in the middle of the room facing away.

“Don’t understand what?”

“You…know what I did to my friends.”

“I also know what your friends did to you,” he says, offering her a boon, but she shakes her head because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter when he already knows her, already sees her.

God, she’s a mess. She wants to throw him against a wall. She wants to hide from him. She’s relieved he knows and is still in the same room as her.

“I was horrible,” she says. “I mean, I know I hated it while it was happening. I hated Rufioh for what he did, a-and with Horuss! Fucking - Horuss, who didn’t even like lowbloods until he was with my matesprit. But - ”

“You shouldn’t have done it.”

She takes a moment, then nods.

“Then why did you?”

“Because I wanted to,” she says. “I wanted to, so bad. Because I couldn’t fucking take it anymore and someone needed to hurt, and maybe, just maybe, for the first time, it wasn’t me.”

Seven hums. “Sometimes we are angry because we’re hurt, Megido-san,” he says. “It doesn’t excuse it, but it helps us understand why we do it. Why we get the impulse. There’s only so much people can take before something gives.”

He turns to her, those gold eyes of his still unnerving, but his voice unbearably kind.

“We’re still horrible people for it,” he says. “That doesn’t change that, but it helps to put a name to the demons in your head. Makes it easier to get rid of them so you never do it again.”

“Does it matter?” she asks. “If I never do it again, even if I already did it?”

“That’s the tragedy of existing, sadly,” he says. “For as long as you’re alive, you get to live with the consequences of your actions.” He shrugs. “The tragedy of time is that it goes on, and you have to simply exist with your mistakes. You can’t cease to be the moment you make them. That’s the horrifying part about it, because no amount of guilt will ever erase the fact that it happened anyway.”

He looks down at his hands.

“I suppose it’s why it’s…well, human, for lack of better word, to be given grace,” he says. “And to learn. To grow.”

She wonders what he knows about that. He’s a Prince of Space, an incredibly powerful combination of class and aspect. She wonders what he sees when he looks at himself in the mirror.

“I know a place,” he says, suddenly. “I like to go there when I want to clear my head. You wanna go?”

Damara studies him for a moment. He hasn’t given her any reason to be untrustworthy.

Yet.

But still, she takes his hand when he holds it out.

#

It’s a beach.

On the other side of the planet, it looks like, as it’s bright out here, even if it’s cloudy. There is a cliff face to Damara’s right, the waves crashing against the bottom of it, and the boulders below it. Inland, it’s nothing but rocks and sand, and even further, gray grass. The beach itself is more pebble and washed-up shells than gray sand.

In front of them, the ocean is dark and stormy.

Seven picks up a pebble and tosses it as far as it can go. Damara barely sees where it lands in the churning waters.

“Where is this?” Damara asks.

“North of the planet,” Seven says. “Nobody’s found this place yet - none of the mortals. So it doesn’t have a name.”

“You didn’t name the place?” She turns to him.

“No.” He shrugs. “We have to give our subject some freedom too, you know? This is their world, we’re just looking after the big stuff for them, make sure they don’t wreck each other too much, as much as we can manage it.”

“It’s not suffocating?”

“We hope it’s not. We try our best not to be too suffocating,” Seven says. He takes in a breath and lets it out, looking over at the ocean. “Our world was…very empty because it was formed through genocide and war. We don’t want to take away people’s freedoms, but sometimes we have to make sure they don’t destroy each other to that level. That’s some shit you can’t ever come back from.”

“Have they ever tried to destroy each other?”

“Once or twice,” Seven says. “If we have the capacity to feel we have the capacity to hate, and if we have the capacity to hate we have the capacity to destroy.”

Damara frowns. She sits down on the sand, leaning back on her hands. Seven picks up another pebble and tosses it into the ocean.

“There’s - ” Seven starts. He pauses again, and huffs. “We like to think that when we make mistakes, we can make up for it and take it back somehow, but the truth is that when we’ve done it, it’s happened. Of course our friends can forgive us or not forgive us, but it’s out there, now, and it can’t ever be erased from history.

“If you’re forgiven, it will stay as something you and your friend know you’ve done, was in your capacity to do and was in their capacity to forgive. Or if you’re not - well, you’ve found a breaking point,” he says. “We are…more often than not creatures of action than we are creatures of thought, no matter how much we like to think ourselves otherwise. And we think otherwise, we are already fools.”

He tosses another pebble into the ocean.

“We can hide what we’ve done,” he says. “We can run from it, but people don’t just disappear because we no longer associate with them. All that we’ve done will inform their actions and reactions and thoughts for the rest of their lives. Their biases, their likes, their dislikes. We’re all echoes of each other, and that’s the tragedy of existence.”

“So, what, it’s easier to die?”

“I didn’t say I had answers, Megido-san,” Seven says. “Some things don’t have answers, some things just exist. The way that we interact with each other sucks, but that’s the truth of it. And our role models always tell us to be careful, to be polite, to be kind, but once we grow up, it either gets tossed out the window for us or we do it ourselves, one way or another.” He sighs. “And we live with it.”

She nods. She looks up at the cloudy sky above them.

“I know that,” she says. “Of course I fucking do. Why do you think I’m here?”

“I think you’re running away from your mistakes hoping they’ll stop existing.”

“And isn’t that my choice of dealing with things?”

“Maybe,” Seven says. “But I think you’re running from yourself too, and you’re losing badly.”

She says nothing.

“It’s not my business how you deal with things,” he says. “But word of advice, if you can’t run from yourself anymore, it’s better to stop and pick another direction to go in.”

She snorts. “That’s an awful metaphor.”

“I’m serious, Damara,” he says. “You keep wallowing in your own misery, you’ll never get anywhere, you’ll just sink deeper.”

She clenches her jaw, clenches her fists. The beads of sand around her start to whip around, pebbles rolling back. “They hurt me too. You said so yourself.”

“I know,” he says. “You didn’t deserve that. You deserve to be angry.”

She sighs, her fury draining at his words. She’s so used to constantly being told she has to suck it up, that she’s the one in the wrong, that hearing someone acknowledge her own hurts cuts her loose.

“That remains a truth too, Damara. You were also hurt, and for that, you also deserve to be mad about it,” he says.

“Then what are we talking about, if you agree with me but think I’m awful too?”

“I’m saying to acknowledge both sides. The world’s not as clear cut as people like to make it seem. You were hurt, you hurt them. Both are true,” he says. “And I think you need to make peace with both of those things so it can stop destroying you.” He turns to her, expression pitying. “Isn’t it tiring, Megido-san?”

Damara closes her eyes. Slowly, she nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it is.”

“Then rest,” Seven says, “Then grieve.”

#

They stay by the ocean until Damara tires of it. When she’s yawning and listing to the side from exhaustion, Seven teleports them back, and she passes out in her guestroom until the next morning.

The world hasn’t changed when she wakes up the next day. The city is still there, slowly rousing from its slumber into the ever-busy, noisy hub that it is. The sun is rising in the horizon. Somewhere in Kisaragi, Strider is probably wallowing in his own uselessness or wracking his brain for how to escape this universe without breaking it irreparably and dooming a whole population. She’s here, still reeling from the realization that a version of her had turned out somewhat decent despite everything.

Or maybe not, she doesn’t know the girl, but in those photos everyone had liked her enough.

Damara wonders what she’s doing. If she’s still happy. If she’s unburdened by her own sins and the horrors that others have done to her. Is she a good person? Can you be a good person when you’ve done so much wrong, if you try your best to never look back? It’s still happened, hasn’t it? Seven’s right, the conundrum of existence is that even if you change your behavior, it still happened, and you still hurt people, and you can’t do anything to change that.

And where do you go from there? Can you?

She asks Seven this over breakfast. He pauses passing the plate of bacon over to her, looking up curiously.

“You have to,” he says. “It’s not a question of can or should you, it’s that you have to. Because to stop means to destroy yourself, or to die. And historically, that’s never been a well-received answer.”

“Even if everybody hates you?”

“That’s consequence, Megido-san,” he says. “It’s better to have not done the action than to take it back. This is what growing up means. Learning to think, to weigh your actions before you do them, and to live with the consequences of your mistakes. People are not going to forgive you. Hell, sometimes you won’t even forgive you, but forgiveness does not equal peace. Acceptance does.”

He sets the plate in front of her and takes his seat across from her by the island counter.

“We rage against things because we wish we had control. We don’t. There are very few things we have control over. To let go of that wish for control, sometimes it’s what we need to achieve peace. To accept the parts of us we cannot change,” he says, and shrugs. “I can’t change the way my father raised me. I wish he hadn’t raised me the way he did at all. I am a Prince of Space, I am a destroyer, I will herald destruction.” He pauses. “But I can watch my words, I can take care of how I interact with people. I can’t change how they perceive me, but I can be kind in how I perceive them. Little victories.”

Damara nods.

“You can’t control others,” he says. “And you can’t stop how they feel about you, but you can change how you feel about them. You can control how you interact with them. You are angry, because they broke you down so much that there was nothing left but anger. Your anger was a defense mechanism that got out of hand, later used as something to hurt. It was not wrong to defend yourself, but it was wrong to harm them out of line.”

She nods again, though she has to grit her teeth and swallow her pride to do so.

“Apologize to them if you want. Cut away from them if you want. Maybe they’ll forgive you, maybe they won’t, maybe you’ll go your separate ways and you can build new relationships and you’ll just be hazy memories to each other.” Seven shrugs. “That’s how life goes.”

“I…” She starts. Stops.

“You don’t have to make a decision now,” Seven says. “The fact that you’re thinking about it is already a big step. Take your time.”

“How long?”

“For as long as you need. We can go back to Kisaragi,” he says. “Just as long as you keep moving, Damara.”

“Yeah,” she says, wiping her eyes. She’s not crying. She isn’t. “Yeah, okay.”