Anxiety
609 Words [SOLO12]
Alunite hated meetings.
They always made him nervous. The stares. Always the stares. He was an intruder. Unwanted by most, it seemed, for the sins he had committed – for the blood he had once spilled. He held none of these memories, perhaps for the best – would he really want to remember committing such atrocities ? No, not knowing was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
Always these uncertainties. Always them.
Matthew was home now, far away from the glares, far away from the accusation – a cup of green tea in hand, it's warmth comforting, as he started out the window at the stars above. He remembered being once like this – uncertain, tentative, uncomfortable. When he was younger, younger than Ashley even, fourteen and just entering high school and puberty. He was the nerd – never fitting, never chosen first in any kind of team, always overlooked. Back then, his computers had been his only friends, for a time.
Now, the situation seemed to be happening again. He didn't fit with the negaverse, being a senshi, having committed the gravest of sins against Earth in his past life. Sins he might perhaps work his whole life to atone. Perhaps he might never atone. The uncertainty was crippling.
He would never fit with the senshi – refused to, refused to even ponder that option, to give in and take the easy way out. He found the idea of... purification repulsive. Frightening, even, from what he had been told of what happened to Linarite. He never wanted to ever fit in with
them.
To be a shell of what you once were... a fate worse than death, really.
And the dark mirror... He wouldn't fit there, either. He wasn't sure if he wanted to, given who they once were, and what they had done, and who they were led by. Their most vicious enemies... suddenly turned allies. A blessing perhaps, but one that could as quickly become a curse. Still, he could not deny his curiosity of these new dark senshi – other senshi that had seen the wrongness of their actions, but in a much different way. He wasn't sure he could trust them... But he wouldn't mind talking to one, at least.
Just like when he was fourteen and in high school, Matthew Desmond did not seem to fit in anywhere beside shoved in a locker, where most might argue he still could fit in just fine with a little bending. But with time, with experience, he'd risen above that, above his crippling fear and anxiety, had found his place.
And now, at twenty years old, history was repeating itself. Hadn't he risen through this ? When had he become so scared again ? Wasn't he a different person now than he'd been seven years ago ? What had changed ?
It came to him that night, when he was holding that cup of tea and staring up at the stars, and at the tiny disk in the sky.
Who would ever respect someone who clearly didn't respect themselves ? Yes, he had done something wrong in the past. In the far away past. Something horribly, and utterly wrong. But he was working on fixing it. He was doing his best.
He'd surmounted the fear and anxiety once – he could do it again. He had to, or this time, he would likely get swallowed whole.
In a way... Azurite had been right. It wasn't by lying down that he would gain respect. He needed to work with those willing to work with him and... steer mostly clear of those who wouldn't.
It was just like that.
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