Solo - Ex Memoriam - 551 words
There was a sailor senshi with green hair like sea foam. Quartz didn't want to remember her name.
There was another one with downturned eyes and a scratchy voice like it rarely saw use. Quartz didn't want to remember his name, either.
It was difficult. Remembering their names had been paramount, the exact thing he'd been trying to accomplish.
Names.
Descriptions.
Powers.
Patrol routes.
Weaknesses.
All these were tidbits of information he'd assiduously gathered, forcing each one into crystal clarity in his mind so he could preserve it till the end of an encounter, writing detail by detail down in reports for Schörl to look over, and then carefully typing each one into one of the little computer terminals that fed the Negaverse database. Name, rank, date of encounter, threat assessment, recommended action.
He knew these people. He'd told them the truth (though not the whole truth). They'd believed in him and trusted him.
He had sold them, word by word, in exchange for his own continued existence. Their kindness and pity hadn't saved them, hadn't even saved him.
But it bought him a few days. It bought him a slight verbal commendation; good work. It bought him some sham affair that they called a promotion.
They made him a captain. Captain walking across innocent bodies to get there, captain without wanting it, captain just for sheer consistently good behavior.
That really was the worst of it. He'd been made a captain not just out of caprice, not out of a sheer lack of good candidates, but for the worst, most sickening reason of all:
Because he'd earned it. Because he had done nothing in any recent months but behave himself, perform up to expectations, and show the right initiative at the right times. Quartz thought he could've lived with himself more easily if it had all just been yet another joke promotion, one more idiot ******** kid being thrown a bone to keep them convinced that this was The Life and they were deeply important to the organization just for the sheer ability to wipe their own a**. It was nothing like that.
It was a girl with hair like sea foam, probably dead in some alleyway along her canning district patrol route. She'd thought he was sad and kind and desperate, and that he needed someone to take a chance on him. (Quartz was desperate, but he was nothing kind.) It was a boy with lonely eyes and a quiet voice, probably corrupted because he always stopped along his way to feed the ducks in the park. He'd thought Quartz was hopeful and afraid, and that he might someday be brave enough to consider purification if he knew he had a place to land. (Quartz was afraid, but he was entirely without hope.)
They had names. He knew their names. It took a constant stream of wine to drown them out, to blur them away from memory -- but even so, when he woke in the morning, he swore sometimes he felt the lingering touch of a gloved hand, the scratchy whisper of a soft voice in his ear, just beneath the buzz of the alarm clock.
He didn't look up their files to see what had happened to either of them. That, at least, he didn't want to know.
There was a sailor senshi with green hair like sea foam. Quartz didn't want to remember her name.
There was another one with downturned eyes and a scratchy voice like it rarely saw use. Quartz didn't want to remember his name, either.
It was difficult. Remembering their names had been paramount, the exact thing he'd been trying to accomplish.
Names.
Descriptions.
Powers.
Patrol routes.
Weaknesses.
All these were tidbits of information he'd assiduously gathered, forcing each one into crystal clarity in his mind so he could preserve it till the end of an encounter, writing detail by detail down in reports for Schörl to look over, and then carefully typing each one into one of the little computer terminals that fed the Negaverse database. Name, rank, date of encounter, threat assessment, recommended action.
He knew these people. He'd told them the truth (though not the whole truth). They'd believed in him and trusted him.
He had sold them, word by word, in exchange for his own continued existence. Their kindness and pity hadn't saved them, hadn't even saved him.
But it bought him a few days. It bought him a slight verbal commendation; good work. It bought him some sham affair that they called a promotion.
They made him a captain. Captain walking across innocent bodies to get there, captain without wanting it, captain just for sheer consistently good behavior.
That really was the worst of it. He'd been made a captain not just out of caprice, not out of a sheer lack of good candidates, but for the worst, most sickening reason of all:
Because he'd earned it. Because he had done nothing in any recent months but behave himself, perform up to expectations, and show the right initiative at the right times. Quartz thought he could've lived with himself more easily if it had all just been yet another joke promotion, one more idiot ******** kid being thrown a bone to keep them convinced that this was The Life and they were deeply important to the organization just for the sheer ability to wipe their own a**. It was nothing like that.
It was a girl with hair like sea foam, probably dead in some alleyway along her canning district patrol route. She'd thought he was sad and kind and desperate, and that he needed someone to take a chance on him. (Quartz was desperate, but he was nothing kind.) It was a boy with lonely eyes and a quiet voice, probably corrupted because he always stopped along his way to feed the ducks in the park. He'd thought Quartz was hopeful and afraid, and that he might someday be brave enough to consider purification if he knew he had a place to land. (Quartz was afraid, but he was entirely without hope.)
They had names. He knew their names. It took a constant stream of wine to drown them out, to blur them away from memory -- but even so, when he woke in the morning, he swore sometimes he felt the lingering touch of a gloved hand, the scratchy whisper of a soft voice in his ear, just beneath the buzz of the alarm clock.
He didn't look up their files to see what had happened to either of them. That, at least, he didn't want to know.
