Nominated for Most Thought-Provoking '03
Savior in the Dark
By: Varyn
Prologue
In
the end, so much is seen through pity.
True
to that nature so weak in will, you pity yourself. The way you have been
twisted, severed. Or maybe it was really self-inflicted, your own fault for not
being able to meet the challenges that fate has rammed you under. You don’t
know but deep down all you know is
that you blame yourself, victim or otherwise.
And
you hate it.
You
hate it almost as much as you hate that overwhelming sense of pity…Pity at the
loss of what you never had but always thought you could have, or rather what other people always told you you could have.
Maybe they were the idiots that drove you here, full of empty words like
promises falling from nowhere. It was all an exaggeration of the mediocrity that
lies within you, based mostly upon your own self-inflating show. Why, then, do
you pity them most of all?
Because
they were the fools that believed in you.
You
know now that the only thing more terrifying than being thought badly of is
being thought well of. There is no greater torture than not being able to meet
the standards you have set for yourself, or worse, those set for you by that
wayside audience that is ever more expectation than admiration.
One
slip, and you will have lost it. They will hate you. You feel this like a cold
pressure nagging the back of your neck, followed forever by a sneaking
suspicion…
Maybe
they already do.
You
tried to slip beneath the radar, you just didn’t want them to know…To know
that you were different, somehow, not quite right no matter how hard you tried
to compensate for yourself. It must have showed, too. No matter how much you
punished yourself, you never said the right thing at the right time. You never
did what was best. You were just wrong somehow and they must have seen it all;
seen it in the way you dressed, the way you spoke. Neither were as they should
have been and you failed to make them so.
Certainly, people were often too kind--or too conscious of the pressure to be so—for they did not shun you directly. No, they put up with you. They even humored you, telling you that you were fun, or clever, or something. It didn’t help, you always knew how they must dislike you…And probably wished you would just go away. You wished for this, too, even tried it. Tried to escape the reality of your own awkward misfit nature…Falling into escape as though it could fix you. It couldn’t, but you loved whatever you could pump into your veins to lessen that sense of self. You still looked the fool, only now you were not so aware of it.
But
that was not enough.
Reality
kept chasing you for running away, building lies within the lies, an escape from
the need to escape. It only made you weaker.
You
trembled like a hunted thing fleeing from your shadow, helpless now to resist
yourself. And always the screams got louder, so that in those rare moments of
coherence you heard the truth like never before:
THEY
HATE YOU.
And
so they should. The disgust they must have felt when with you was but an echo of
what you yourself had always known. Yet somehow still it made you realize so
many latent things…And now you know…
You
just want to be alone.
That’s
what led you here, really. You, and I, stuck together: lunacy and its critic. We
are alone now, or soon shall be, the method and its madness self-defeated.
With
a twitch of truth, a slip of fate, you pull the trigger on me--shaking slightly
as that polished metal tube between your teeth explodes like a shocked
thing…And rings, so briefly, in our ears...
Then
at last, together, we are silence.
* * * *
Chapter
1: Alone.
Varyn never knew what drove her to walk down that alleyway.
Certainly, the blaring of a gunshot was nothing to
even turn one’s head at in this part of town. Those beside her, around her, on
the sidewalk shuffled on as if driven by some will alien to their own. Yet there
stood Varyn, rooted to the spot, a standing stone amidst the noise, the towers,
and the thousand tiny points of light blinking down upon the soiled streets, all
from windows as broken as the lives behind them.
In
but a moment, the mostly black ‘bot had turned towards the thing that beckoned
her, passing into the shadows that seemed to suit her so well.
She stumbled, driven blindly, through a maze of
refuse and makeshift homes for those who were without any. A few harsh voices
croaked at her as she strode hastily past, but their words were inscrutable, and
their origins seemed to be one with the trash in which they dwelt.
It was not long before she found what she was
seeking. Suddenly she was nearly stepping over the limp form of a robot--a lanky
black femme not entirely unlike herself. Beside her lay a gun, still tilting
towards her--laying lifeless as the one who owned it. The femme, for a moment,
looked to be merely sleeping. Her was mouth peacefully open as though it meant
to utter a sigh…Varyn would nearly have been convinced the ‘bot yet lived,
had she not seen that the back of the resting head was completely missing…Its
only legacy a splattering of shrapnel and fluid pooling slowly in the gutter.
She felt strangely empty as she buried the poor
‘bot with scrap that lay here and there in piles. She knew, without feeling
anything more than an apathetic acceptance, that if it were not for but two
things she would follow the same path as the one before her. The first thing
being the code of honor she had faced trial, torture, and traitorousness to
uphold, and the second was a promise made to a friend—to seek death only in
battle, with honor and purpose, as befit the warrior he had led her to become.
He had been less than faithful to the very code he had instilled in her, turning
to thievery and crime, but she at least would not abandon it.
With her usual cynicism she pondered the distinct lack
of anything even remotely resembling a true battle around her, so obviously
thievery and crime was the more popular option these days…
But
she had always loved the path less chosen.
She turned her gaze skyward, the moonlight leaving
silver hints upon her emerald-green face. In a moment she thought of the oddness
of it all, the mere existence of her kind, their planet, the universe itself...
Gently
she clasped her hands, wondering at the mere ability of touch being present in a
being of cold metal…And yet, here it was. Here, along with the planets and
stars, the myriad million lives and the strange dramas that moved them—indeed
sometimes moved them too far for life to be maintained.
Did this drama of life have anything more in store
for her, or had the Great War been her purpose—her ticket to notoriety?
Certainly it had granted her that. Infamy, if not fame…
She
was a traitor that the ages would not soon forget, though that now too was her
disadvantage. She was an odd one, a Predicon gone Maximal, a spy gone
warrior…She was all of these things--and none. She despised her former kind
for their cruelty, their deceitful natures…And yet she was no Maximal. She was
cold-hearted, and though she took no joy in the suffering of others she did not
empathize with it either. She lacked the defining Maximal compassion. She had
been a spy once, but this was a thing she could never again be, so it also was
void. She knew in her heart that she was a Warrior, and yet there was no war;
rendering this too without importance.
In
the end she was nothing and yet still something; that something simply being
…Alone.
The Maximals distrusted her. The Predicons distrusted
her. She was beginning to distrust herself.
Luckily, in these places of destitution, grand
matters of loyalty had little to offer and as such were disregarded in the utter
struggle for survival. Here she had been for years, trying to disappear into the
sea of degradation, taking small odd jobs to support herself and going by the
nick-name of Blade rather than her true title of Varyn.
She
tried not to remember how she had been given that nickname, so long ago…
Would
those days ever return?
Slowly she turned to walk away, but as she did so she
nearly tripped and sent something metal skittering ‘til it was a few feet in
front of her. When she stooped to find out what it was, she nearly froze with
shock.
There at her feet, no doubt uncovered from its
resting place during the burial, was a thing beyond all possibility:
The sword, Lehndar--her sword…The blade that she had so often held aloft during the
Great War, uttering a war cry whilst green fire ran the course of its blade.
How
had it come to be here? She had lost it centuries ago, and since then searched
every likely place, and many others besides. It seemed almost like a sign from
destiny, especially considering how her thoughts had been so centered on those
dead days but a scant moment before.
Signs? Did such things exist, or was this but a
tempting coincidence that held no true hope for the future?
Varyn
only sighed, murmuring softly:
“Fate
plays games with me still…”