002 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

Comments

[hauntedsavior]

Well.
There's probably worse ways to find out I'm still human even with 90% of my body being metal.

Mind if I ask where you're coming from?
Considering I already got the attention of both a devil and the Devil by being fucked up about my dead friend.

[peripheries]

I'm an Angel, a messenger on a pre-ordained quest. Though, due to the meddling of humanity, my soul has been forced into this human-shaped form so I can live amongst them.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, dope, now I got both sides of the fence paying attention to me.
Welcome to the party, coats go in the room on the left, smiting anyone is a serious foul that will result in me asking you to leave.
Corrupting people is still on the table, though.

Anyway I know I just made a joke about it 15 words ago so it kind of defeats my point, but,
Yeah, humans sure do love messing with souls.
Sorry for your loss.
And/or welcome to humanity.

[peripheries]

Well, I'm technically not human. But I'm not quite inhuman either. My existence is somewhat hard to define.

And while my mission was to end humanity, it wasn't done out of a desire to smite or anything like that, nor is doing such a thing possible here. Besides, I failed anyway.

[hauntedsavior]

Well, I sure fuckin' hope you failed.
Otherwise I've got a whole host of apocalypses with a real convenient answer all of a sudden.
(That was another joke.)

For real, though.
Your soul got shoved into this weird halfway place because of humans? Not because you failed a mission from big G?
I mean, I assume that's who you took orders from.

[peripheries]

That's right. It was an attempt by humans to create gods. Because there are no gods, just what humans wish to create to find meaning in their lives.

[hauntedsavior]

Okay, but, like.
You know you're an angel, right?
Like, you just told me. I was here for that.
How the hell do angels work if there's no capital G?
What, do you just exist 'cause people believe we should have angels?

[peripheries]

No.

We are are descendents of a being called Adam, sent to Earth by an ancient race far far in space. Earth was meant to be our home but another seed of life, Lilith, usurped Adam and gave birth to the Lilin, humans, who populate the planet.

We seek to regain the earth as our birthright.

[hauntedsavior]

[well. that's a hell of a cosmology. compels her, though.]

Huh.
Feels like the whole "be not afraid" thing needs a word removed in the middle.

You asked me earlier. Your turn.
Would getting the world back have been worth it?

cw: death mention

[peripheries]

By the time I arrived, Adam was already lost to us, so I cannot say. But if I had some into contact with Lilith, all of humanity would have been erased, fused into a single being and I too would cease to exist. And if I abandoned my mission, my creators would have punished and killed me.

So I chose death on my own terms.

[hauntedsavior]

[he chose it, huh. that gives a not small amount of insight to everything he's told her tonight. he's observed humanity—he observes humanity, and the answer he's sticking with so far is that he would rather choose how he dies than follow a cosmic plan that leaves him without that choice.]

[that's heavy as shit, anna thinks.]

Wish we could all be that lucky.
I guess you don't regret it so far?
Giving up divinity to live and die on your own terms.

[peripheries]

Well. I don't know if I have the capacity to regret. But it was one thing I was able to do to show my own will.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, dog, I don't know how long you've been like this for,
But let me tell you.
I'm pretty much entirely a robot, and this baby can hold a ton of regret in her.

[she gently slaps her breastbone, on her end of the screen, just to complete the meme that is only funny to her.]

I think as long as you've got a spark of humanity in you, you can feel regret.
But I would say that right about now, yeah?

[peripheries]

I've been this way since I was born. Only human in form but not in nature. Nor was I raised to be human at all. If I had regrets, my creators certainly would have feared I would be unable to complete my mission out of weakness.

[hauntedsavior]

Well, joke's on them, I guess.

[he can fail his mission all on his own, she thinks, but she's not gonna send it even as she gets halfway through typing it. she already feels a little out of her depth and doubts the joke would go over well.]

At least you're getting a lot of time in for observing other people's regret.
I guess if I start saying something like "regret is one of the things that makes us human" then it's just gonna prove the whole thing this post is about, huh?
Hope you're learning enough to make it worth the struggle.

[peripheries]

Indeed. There was much they failed to anticipate.

[if only smugness he feels could be conveyed through typing.]

Oh, I've been learning so much. People here are very different from the Lilin I met back home.

[hauntedsavior]

Well, we've got people from across all kinds of universes here, right?
Makes sense.
Hell, I ran into a rabbit girl that could, like, talk and type and shit. She's in this post if you look for it.

Just don't pay attention to the cheesy shit I said to her.

[peripheries]

Oh. The romantic. I've spoken to her before.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.
I mean, it's probably insensitive to say it or whatever, but I didn't even know sentient animals were, like, a thing?
I feel like I'm learning as much as you are.

Never feels like you're just mimicking everyone else you see and hoping no one else notices, does it?
No reason.

[peripheries]

Mimicking? I suppose so. This is the second time I've been outside the place I was born. So, sometimes I look to others to see how they behave in certain situations.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh yeah, no, no, like, that's what I meant. Okay, just checking in.

Do you mean Earth as the first place or are you also coming from, uh, some weird town that no one else here knows exists?

[peripheries]

Earth. But back then I'd only just left the lab I was raised in for the first time.

[hauntedsavior]

So hold up, you're an angel, in a human's body, who is also an alien, and you grew up in a lab but you're also the child of Adam.
Dog, with all due respect, how is your cosmology doing? Pretty good, it doesn't seem.

[peripheries]

What am I supposed to do about it? It's the way I was created. I can't change anything about that.

[hauntedsavior]

No, like, you're right. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I was following.
I've never really talked to anyone outside of my own world before I came here.
So I hear angels, I think, like. Wheels and eyes and fire from the heavens.
I'm still getting used to actually running into people from where it works different.