okay this is still just me but I've been having a lot of feelings about unknowingly "betraying" my past self. also apologies for midnight writing, the tired brain doesn't edit well, I might have to edit this in the morning.
this prompt fic has a part 2, read it here.
Not because the reason isn’t important. Not because the reason isn’t catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important.
It is catastrophically, life-changingly, personality shiftingly important and that was what was so frustrating about not remembering. And distressing.
He’s never not in a state of distress. Part of him wonders if it’s from the personality shiftingly part, but then he remembers being distressed before. Another frustration, added to the ledger he forgets. “This isn’t even the worst part.”
In front of him is the array of helpless people who tried stopping him. One of which he swears he knows, he just can’t remember.
“The worst part, is not knowing if I’m remembering right what I don’t remember.” If over time, the things he’s told himself he’s been telling himself wrong and more wrong each time until he’s not even doing the right thing anymore. If over time, he’s deviated so far from the original intent that he’s failing or betraying the reason he’s done this.
He looks over the faces he can’t recognize and the one he swears he ought to. There’s various levels of screaming involved, but he hefts what is truly an imposing blade without any mind to the ‘no’s and the sobbing and the glare from that one. The weight is unfamiliar but weight in his hands is familiar. It almost feels right and—not remembering much most of the time—feels is all he has to work with most of the time.
So he hefts the blade and, with the force of someone so unsure but so sure, he plunges the whole of it into the solution he hopes he’s remembering right.
part 2. Okay this is no longer me, I just keep thinking up more stuff for basically every prompt. Enjoy the perspective change and feelings.
this prompt fic has a part 3, read it here.
He wasn’t entirely wrong and that was the worst part of it all. Asher had to admit he wasn’t entirely wrong and that things were better and different, and the opportunity—imposed and inescapable—for change was a powerful and uplifting force despite all the tremendous horrors unleashed.
He who hefted the blade—he who wasn’t entirely wrong—saw all his plans come to fruition; saw the aftermath; saw just one impression of violence upon the world, and broke. In the makeshift dungeon, those who deliver his meals started their duty with venom, then pity, and now a strange warmth trying to convince him that things are better now. The world is better. He succeeded.
“Some better world,” he spits at Asher, paying no mind to the departing failures to convince him and instead gesturing at his physical imprisonment with his eyes that were so much more tired and distressed than spiteful.
Asher sniffs dismissively and unbothered. He surveys the makeshift dungeon that he’s been avoiding up until the excuse of helping sort and settle things ran out. He’s aware he’s being watched with that particular distrust he wishes he didn’t know all too well, so he lowers himself to the floor to sit opposite he who was more or less shackled down here. “You didn’t think they were going to let you go, after everything you did?”
Honestly, he had thought he would die during the whole blade tearing the earth asunder. “Seems antithetical still.”
If Asher didn’t know he wasn’t remembered; if Asher hadn’t steeled himself to the fact that he who sat opposite Asher wouldn’t have the same reaction he used to, Asher would have barked his deepest, head-tilting-back laugh. He chuckles instead. “You’re not wrong.”
The silence that doesn’t so much spread through the space but is the space—the silence and space Asher is intruding on—finishes his implication.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
Asher shrugs, palms up and held wide. He drops them behind him and leans back, disarming the whole concept of ‘shackled in a dungeon’ with a relaxed pose and the most sardonic smile on his face.
He who is not at all more or less shackled down here itches with the faint recollection of that sardonic smile, but he’s not sure if he remembers it or he’s seen it just now and is retroactively applying what is clear and in front of him now to all the memories of all the faces he doesn’t quite remember the exact shape of the smile he thinks was on them. It’s a familiar, uncomfortable feeling. “And what? Do I have to pass some conversation with you to be released?” His response to Asher’s repose is hiked shoulders of suspicion.
“Nope.” Asher is holding back so much and he’s doing a very good job at it. He knows this because the squint his answer earns isn’t calculating something that can be read—he’s not giving anything to read. “I just wanted to talk before you go.”
The squint squints harder.
“Assuming you’ll disappear into the world and all.”
The squint squints so hard that his eyes appear closed and, for a brief moment, Asher closes his eyes and transports himself to another time and place—several other times and places—where there was silence and conversation and just sitting with no animosity. When he opens them, he’s still opposed with tired and distressed but somehow less distrust and suspicion.
Asher is trying not to dwell on why. He’s supposed to being doing a very good job at holding back, which involves an air of uninvolvement. He’s sure he’ll be spending the rest of his life dwelling on this entire conversation and everything that lead to it, everything that will have lead to the disappearance of the person in front of him now.
“Naturally.”
“Right.” Asher had never thought it made sense to just leave everything behind after tearing it all asunder, but he’s holding back.
Hesitating from just getting up and leaving, he asks, “It’s really better out there?”
Asher looks up, at the supposed direction of out there. It hadn’t been easy sorting and settling things. After this conversation, he’s planning on helping sort and settle things in other locales—which, he belatedly realizes, is a type of disappearing into the world. “It’s a work in progress, but yeah.”
As though the wind were knocked out of him, he wheezes, “Fuck.”
They sit there like that, for a while, in the silence that had been his own, self-imposed punishment. Asher maintains his relaxed uninvolved composure while disappointed in himself for prematurely enjoying sitting together in the silence and missing the change of attitude. He who is about to disappear into the world is clearly processing and coming to terms with the alleged better world enough to get up and face it.
When he does, he brushes himself off and does that thing that always bothered Asher, with the neck cracking. He holds out his hand for Asher to shake.
He knows this hand. These calluses, the crick of the thumb as it grips him, the particular fit of the shape and size in his own. He doesn’t remember why, he just remembers a hundred moments and a thousand more connected to them—some false, some real but misattributed, and most of them making enough sense to create the net of an impression of a person he could maybe remember.
So he pulls.
Asher isn’t expecting it. His stance is broken with a step forward that is immediately pushed back by an uplifting embrace. He chokes. His hold on holding back breaks and tears well in his tightly shut eyes. “Did you remember?”
“No.”
Asher exhales a shaky, confused sob.
“But that’s okay.”
This is in a very non-descriptive style but please know the villain's hands are in fistfuls of Asher's jacket and, after standing there frozen with his arms awkwardly sticking out, Asher presses his hands against the villain's shoulder blades and does a very bad job at holding back sobbing wails. To the villain's merit, he's kinda alright at compassion and doesn't feel awkward about essentially a stranger just fucking soaking whatever he's wearing with tears while wailing right by his ear.
