Chương 531: Day Five Hundred And Twenty-Nine

Dear Diary,"I'm here to Champion your Free Will, To fight for your right to be, Your own person, free of Gods." Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Closure Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I realize everything I've done since I got here has wound up, one way or another, removing or reforming Deities or those who act like them.

I mean, if you take away the whole 'able to rewrite reality' part of gods, which frankly just seems like Mana Shaping on a whole 'nother level, the problem with them isn't that they have power. It's how they choose to use it. I mean, shit, I didn't ask for this power. Don't get me wrong, I'm not setting it aside and saying 'oh, no, I'm gonna be a good little peon from here on out'.

But I'm also not gonna think that just because I can beat any given anybody in a one vee one fight that somehow that makes me better at making decisions than them. Or worse, that somehow I'm morally better than them. Seriously, I've gone over that before. Like, my fuckin' Moral Compass, when it's functioning at peak capacity, points unerringly to 'everybody gets a fortune cookie before the meal is over'. I'm pretty sure Conrad would be all 'thank you, Mother Dearest, but what am I to do with this' or some shit.

So I am definitely not gonna say I'm a better person than somebody like Siobhan, who dedicated her life to healing Heroes in training, or shit, Anna, who stood up to a fuckin' squad of armed and armored Spartans with nothing but bare fists and attitude. I mean, I'm not gonna go around executing gods for, y'know, 'being gods'.

Shit, my whole thing with Saffron the other day is so that maybe I can get some of them to sit down and talk rather than rolling in and throwing shade and death spells around, forcing me to put them down hard or keep them alive even harder. Just to be clear, if one of them starts killing the people I'm trying to protect, I will definitely throw down, and if they're a walking WMD like Balor, I will absolutely end them right there and then. But for the rest... I guess I come by my 'Redemption' Domain honestly.

I want them to learn better. To do better. To be better than they were yesterday. Because I honestly think people can be better. Not in some kind of weird eugenics way, just in the whole 'learn, grow, improve' way.

With 'doing better' in mind, I spent the afternoon doing railing railing related things with Saffron, not to mention Marie and Siobhan, who totally managed to avoid commenting for at least five minutes, but once everybody else went to bed, I Co-Located to M-Space, then stepped to where The Morrigan hung, a foot thick tentacle reaching for clear sky a couple dozen feet above her, another pair attached to her legs and pulling her down. I sighed, Healed her arms, and grabbed them with another pair.

More to keep her from doing anything with her hands than to pull her down faster, but things crackled and she groaned as she slipped just a little further down.

"Hey Morrigan. Blink if you can hear me." Her eyes rolled, and she closed them.

"Yeah. I'll take that as a 'yes'. Look, you killed my kid. Right in front of me. I am, as you might have realized, a little protective of my kids. I kinda figured that if you had some kinda beef with her, me announcing that I'm the local Patron Deity and she's my kid would have been enough to get you to at least explain shit, y'know?" I sat there, waiting, until she made a kind of grunting noise.

"Yeah, well. I guess that ship has sailed. But I really don't like leaving things like this. I mean, unless you've secretly discovered that this is your happy place, and you just wish I'd stop disturbing you and let you get on with living your best life as a tentacle sleeve." She opened her eyes just to roll them at me, then close them again. She might have groaned a little as she slipped the tiniest bit down again.

"Okay, yeah, I didn't think so, but I am the last person gonna judge somebody for their kinks. So, y'know, if you wanna stay here forever, just becoming an ever wider tube, I'm cool with that. But I guess I'm not cool with putting somebody in a box, even a metaphoric one, locking the lid and throwing away the key. So, ways out. You listening?" Her eyes opened, and she glared at me as best she could with her face spread across the side of a foot thick cord of muscle through her mouth.

"So. Two other possibilities. First, if you do shit that gets other people killed, and by that I mean anybody, even your own people? I'm gonna fuckin' eat you. I'll reach inside you, pull in every little trace of you that might have survived me sucking all your Avatars into you, you'll go into Mimic's Maw, and that'll be the end of you. No more Morrigan.

I'm not gonna say I'll be sad to see you go, but other than some execrable judgement about attacking people I care about right in front of me, with no provocation I could see, I can't say I'm eager to see you go, either." I waited, and eventually she blinked and made some kind of grunty noise. Not sure how. I guess she could still breathe, sort of. Not that she needed to, that Boon still kept her from suffocating.

"The other one, and I'm not sure you deserve this, but I'm not sure you don't, is a path to Redemption. I'm sure you've still got Clergy somewhere. People who have you as Patron. Somebody you could, eventually, convince to come to me and apologize. Maybe even explain. Dunno. But if you get someone to speak on your behalf, and they convince me that you're genuinely worth giving another shot at existence, I'll give you one. You'll be on parole, with limits and guards, but I'm not..." A laugh forced its way out of me.

"I was gonna say I'm not cruel, but," I waved at her.

"I think we both realize how bullshit that statement would be." I sighed.

"But I'm not an idiot, and I'm not petty. Diana Redeemed herself by being the kind of Deity I'd be willing to be in a Pantheon with. I can't tell you right now what that would be. Shit, I don't even know that much about you. But if you get somebody to convince me, and then you convince me? Well, shit, Diana's released on her own recognizance now, so I guess you would be too." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I kinda slumped as she just stared at me.

"Look, I know you're more likely to try to con me than anything. I'm not even gonna say you can't. I'm kind of a dumbass. But here's the thing." I put one hand on her cheek, then increased the pressure pulling her down.

"I don't need to do any of this. I could just eat you. Or leave you here, destined to be a one yard tall, hundred yard wide cylinder. But that's not who I want to be. So I'm telling you what your options are, and leaving it up to you." I swallowed a chuckle as I realized what I was about to say.

"Where we go from here? Is up to you." I stopped pulling, took my hand away, and collapsed back to the snuggle pile in Lancaster House. Dreamt of my High Clergy doing the food thing. Weirdest part of the evening had to be Tallulah. Also the saddest. Because she floated a Tallulah cloud toward the Maw, and it drifted down in, and I expected, like, cotton candy or something, but it hit like angel food cake. Y'know, that super dense chewy cake stuff.

At least I think that's what angel food cake is; I've only ever had convenience store variations on it. Weird. The sad part was... the lack of joy. I'm not sure why, but she just seemed... obligated. Woke up realizing I needed to talk to her, but really wasn't up for it after the previous night's conversation with Morrigan. So I went looking for something else to do and realized I needed to work on today's Verse. The first of what looked to be three verses of 'Closure'.

So I sat down, shuffled through all the pages, reminding myself what I'd said, what I'd written. Trying to remember exactly what I'd meant. That's when a single folded up piece of paper caught my eye. I... didn't remember writing it, or folding it up. I mean, not really. I did, I think, but I couldn't tell if it was an 'I remember that' memory or an 'my brain is filling in what I think I ought to remember' memory. So I opened it up and read it.

Dear Future Me, I realize as I'm writing this that you'll remember me writing it, and won't need to read it. Or at least you probably will. You're me, and I forget important shit all the fuckin' time. Then again, I'm really not sure this qualifies as 'important shit'. Not to you. To me, yeah. But that's the thing. You're me. But I'm not you. I never will be you. Not really. If they never figure out a way to bring you back, I'll be all they've got.

I swear to you, even though there isn't and won't be any you to swear to in that case, that I'll do everything I can to be everything they need. Everything they want. Everything you would have been. I'll fail. Because I'm not you. But I will fuckin' try. I will never stop trying, until I die, or you come back, which is kind of the same thing, or time itself comes to a fuckin' end. I'll fail. But I won't stop trying, and maybe, just maybe, if I try hard enough, they'll forget that I'm not you.

Maybe, if I try hard enough, I'll forget that too. But I've got a favor to ask of you. If they figure out how, and I step aside so you can come back, just do one thing for me. All I can do is ask, and hope. You know why. We saw Red versus Blue season thirteen, all the way to the soliloquy at the bitter end. So all I can do is ask you, please. As a favor. Just one thing. Be that better me. Protect them better. Lead them better. Love them better. All of them. You don't have to. You don't owe me anything.

And I sure as fuck will never know if you don't. As the man said.

'Ain't that a bitch'. I sat there with that letter in my hand for... for a while. I'm not sure how long. I'm not sure if I fucked that shit up the moment I arrived back on the scene or not. But... Try. Fail. Get back up. Try again. I carefully flattened that letter out, folded it up, stepped to Dad's cave, and held it out to Mom.

"Can you please hold on to this without looking at it?" She took it from my hands carefully.

"Of course, Daughter. May I know who it's from? Or to?" I shot her a crooked smile.

"From me. To me. Just..." When she realized I'd petered out, she asked, "so you'll remember, and have it here if you do not?" I nodded, and she hugged me.

"Of course, Daughter. Is there any time you might need it in particular?" I shrugged.

"Maybe at some point when I've gone totally off the rails." I laughed a little.

"If you're still willing to get close enough to me to deliver it."

"If she's not, I will. And we'll know when." Sigyn laughed.

"I suppose I will. Did you need anything else?" I thought for a second, then realized that I sure as shit knew what I needed to do right at that moment, because Yule was coming up, and while I'm well aware that 'gift giving' is not my core Love Language, there's not a fuckin midwinter holiday that doesn't have some kind of gift giving attached to it.

"Thanks, Mom. Dad. I've got some shopping to do. You guys gonna be there for our first Yule at the new place?"

"Of course, Daughter." So I spent the rest of the day off in M-Space, hunting shit up and pulling it across, then hiding it in spots I didn't think folks would look between now and Yule. I even remembered gift bags!