Chapter Text
What was left of the man he once was? Objectively speaking, very little, if anything at all. The things he did for survival, for pleasure, for revenge, they were unspeakable, but he didn’t regret any of it and it’d be ridiculous to become a man of morals now. So why, why did he feel that heavy stone in his chest tremble from shame when she saved his life?
This world would've made this out of anyone.
He wasn’t one to spend much time introspectively, at least he tried not to, chems and meds, whatever he could take to avoid thinking, he took. It’d deter him from his goal, from the one thing that had kept him going this long. To stop now? After all the horror? After all the blood? If there was a chance to be different he lost it a long time ago, what was left of that man was gone, gone like her, gone like both of them. This new world was not one of heroes, much less of morals, it was a world of monsters and only the strong would claw their way to victory. That’s the man he had become and mourning for the loss of the man he used to be would not exonerate him from it.
So then, why? Why was his heart suddenly twisting from shame when she returned good for evil? As if for the first time in the glass vials that separated him from death and madness, he saw his reflection only to find a monster staring back. He wished to turn his head to avert its gaze, but he knew the monster would not go, for it was himself. Across the years, there were moments when he looked back and felt horrified of himself and what he became, although very brief and admittedly less frequent, there were moments in which he was scared of himself, much more because he knew he’d do it all over again. But this? Shame? He thought that feeling so foreign and distant to himself and now he was engulfed in it.
“This world would've made this out of anyone”, those words that once served as sweet comfort would be of no reassurance now. For the first time he was met with someone with those old world morals he once had, fresh to the cruelty of the world and yet after all he put her through, her heart so incorruptible like that of a silver screen heroine, made her save him. Him, who lying there in the ground, incoherent, was no different than a leprous dog, just a bullet away from being put out of its misery and yet, she saved him.
He took a deep breath from the inhaler.
No excuse worked for him now, he couldn’t properly put a name to it, but it was something close to repulsion that he felt. A feeling that not even the drugs or radaways could dispel from his mind. When he thought about the kind of man he had been, he was actually repulsed when he caught glimpses of what he had become. Maybe he still had a conscience, damn it he did and to his misfortune it was eating away at him like the radiation that had deformed him. He was bothered by her upon meeting her, those old world morals, it was a reminder he didn’t need. He felt it was unfair, the world should tear her apart like it did to him. He thought he achieved it when she bit off his finger, it was annoying but there was this sick sense of satisfaction, it was the reassurance that the world would trample and mangle even the most noble of hearts…and then she went and challenged it. She challenged everything he thought about himself when she saved him despite not deserving it.
“Feo, fuerte y formal”
The haunting words of a man from another world.
Dignity, it was dignity. He was stronger and the world made him ugly but in turn he lost his dignity.
BANG!
The sound of a bullet aimed at his heart, and he felt it, more than ever, he felt it.