A Lack of Goodwill (Sam)

[Wolfe]

Battered, beaten, bruised, but not broken. The two figures standing side by side on the beach, now barren in the glow of the soft moonlight, were equals in every way. One had protected others from the killings; the other had killed to protect. Regardless, nighttime was the time for thoughts to wander, branching out into infinitely more strands of thought. It was now that Marc thought of his family - when he had one. It was strange, to hate those you never knew. To fight, and kill was easy when prey wasn't human. It was harder when you thought of them as people. But the demons Marc fought now were self-contained. There were too many things that he had done, necessary perhaps, but nothing short of atrocious. A younger, naive Marc was one who believed in justice, liberty, and equality, only to have those things shattered by the harsh reality of life. Nothing was fair in this world. And for all that he fought for, to throw off the oppressors of this world, no matter how many he hurt, maimed, killed, peace never lasted. It was the hard truth.

Marc's thoughts ware abruptly interrupted - his companion had tapped his shoulder, gesturing to the star-filled skies above.

Hey Marc, the sky is clear and the stars are shining. What do you see in that?

He scoffed, having disposed of his idle fantasies long ago. But he wanted to humor Tybalt. So Marc bit back a scathing retort and spoke, words with truth.

"The skies are proof to us that no matter what we do, how far we go, there are always things that will outlast us, outlast our legacies, our time, our futures."

The otter pondered this for a moment, somewhat mystified by the clarity in Marc's words.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Marc smiled, his lips bending into a curved shape that, in another time, might have held happiness. There were still believers in this world, the people who hold onto hope like parasites. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe there was still hope. But those were simply possibilities, nothing more. You could not assume the future, only to have your fabricated destinies fall apart in reality. His face once more a frown, he spoke:

"I suppose so. Why do you ask?"

The otter hesitated before speaking, this time excited.

I don't know if our world will be gone, torn apart by time and space. I don't know if the people yet to exist will carry on our achievements or abhor them. It doesn't matter to me. As long as I live, there's still things I can do about this world. Our world is ours to shape!

He finished with a flourish, looking up for any sign of approval.

This time, there was real happiness in Marc's eyes, dancing among the fire that burned so brightly. As he gazed into the sky once more, he thought of all the good things yet to be.

We'll just have to see what fate has in store.

[Sam]

Valedsea was a relief. West Wind had been so industrialized and a hard crack of a city. However, this beach-side place was just the thing that Rose had in mind when she had left on her adventure. It was nice to feel warm, open breezes on her neck again, even though it was night.

Rose strolled through the empty streets, her hands behind her back, staring up at the stars, not a spark of drowsiness in her eyes. The night sky was so alive here. It lifted her heart to see such beauty.

Behind her strolled Fate, who was sniffing the ground carefully, intrigued by its scents of salt and sand. At one point she passed a small seashell and stared at it with curiosity. She'd never seen one before, nor had she been to a beach. She was ready to go back to the hotel that they had left Brendan at and sleep the night away so she could play in the morning. Rose, however, had insisted that she took a walk and Fate, being the faithful companion she was, followed along behind her.

After some time, Rose noticed a faint outline of another person ahead of them. She didn't think much of it, she was actually surprised she had not seen many people as she was walking. However, as they approached and his features were revealed, Rose was stricken by familiarity. She felt like she'd seen him somewhere, but a long time ago. So long ago that his face was only a wisp of memory.

Curious, as they came close, she slowed her steps, flashed a casual smile and said, "Hello."

She looked up at the heavens, where his eyes were turned and commented, "The sky is very beautiful tonight."

[Wolfe]

Marc heard the girl before she was in sight. Footsteps that were steady, calm, composed. A companion, perhaps a quadruped Pokemon followed her. He was prepared to defend himself, but her nonchalant chatter was not something that Marc had anticipated. Thus, when Rose attempted to initiate a normal conversation between the two, Marc stood there, dumbfounded, like the idiot he was. Think!, his brain yelled at him. Lilly...what would have she said? It took Marc a full three seconds to formulate something that faintly resembled "hello". Social interactions, needless to say, were not the boy's forte.

He looked up at Rose, noticing her features for the first time. There was an uncanny resemblance to a certain . . no, what would she be doing here? Wasn't his sister too busy being pampered by their father, who Marc thought might possibly be the biggest egomaniac he had met. No, it wasn't Rose, he thought, just another ghost from the past haunting him. But...there was a certain roughness to the girl's features, from which flowed sadness, loss. And of all things, misery was the one thing he knew better than himself.

Upon hearing the second of Rose's comments, he almost sneered. Sure, Tybalt wanted him to be nice..but there never came any good from opening up to strangers. So when he spoke, his eyes were narrowed, not hostile, just cynical. In a tone as flat as his dreams, he lamented:

"Beauty is an illusion. Just another one of man's fabrication's to distract us from the darker things in life."

Just then, something hard hit his leg, and when he looked down, barely suppressing a curse, he saw the otter, arms crossed, wearing a stern expression that perhaps Lilly might have worn.

Hey! Be nice!

Seeing that Tybalt still held his scallop in his hand, ready for another strike, Marc gave in. In an apologetic tone, this time he choose his words carefully:

"I'm sorry. Can I get your name?"

[Sam]

Rose almost giggled at the boy's social awkwardness. Giggling...that was new. As soon as she had walked into his presence, Rose had felt a strange sense of emotions that had been lost for years pouring around her. It was strange, like this boy had caused them.

Fate curiously walked up to Tybalt, staring at the small otter. She gave a little sniff and was intrigued by the same salty smell mixed with Pokemon and definite water type. She tilted her head to the side as he hit his master's leg. She wondered why he would do that...whatever. Widening her eyes and putting on a big smile, she barked, <Hello!>

Rose, meanwhile, listened to Marc's strange words. His formal, mysterious tone was starting to put her on edge. She didn't like his tone or choice of words. Beauty was not a mere illusion. There was something wrong about him that made Rose uncomfortable. This guy could easily be very dangerous. She decided to play it safe as he asked her for her name and she lied easily, "It's alright. My name is Serena. What about yours?"

[Wolfe]

Okay, the girl wasn't Rose. Marc had spent too much time deciphering the emotions of those he condemned. Still, it seemed the specters from his past would continue to haunt him..? For what seemed like the umpteenth time, he beat the thought back into his brain. The stars were really addling with his brain tonight, it seemed. He also saw the signs of her tensing up, her movement into a more defensive stance, the careful caution in her words. She might not be Rose, but there was something dangerous in the way she carried herself.

No, there was definitely something wrong about this girl.

While Marc was pondering Serena's identity and hypothesizing how best to kill her without making too much of a commotion, Tybalt was chatting with Fate, in a cordial tone.

Hi! I'm Tybalt! Sorry about the boy, he's one of the strangest I've met.

Marc shot a glare at that, but the comment went otherwise unheeded.

After yet another lengthy pause, he started once more, this time his voice filled with the pride of being a survivor. Whoever this girl was, he wasn't afraid of her. He had not gone this far, suffered so much, to be ended here.

"They call me Markus."

He waited, there, not knowing how next to follow. If this was fate's version of a blessing, nothing was out of the equation.

[Sam]

Fate chuckled. <Rose is an odd one two, though I guess I haven't seen enough. She and her friend are the only two humans I've really met before.> Her lack of socializing with humans up to this Pokemon was a bit embarrassing, but she hoped to learn from it...soon.

Markus...Markus...Rose couldn't forget the name of her brother, but was this really THE Markus? Was this the boy that she had once played with and lived with and fought with and parted with? She doubted it though. There was no way she would bump into him here, fate couldn't be that ridiculous.

She decided, however, that she'd make sure anyways.

"So," she said casually, once again. "You come to Valedsea for anything? Family to see?"

[Wolfe]

Family. His mother, dead. A father who didn't want an abomination. And a sister who just didn't care. It didn't matter who they were, or how they had done. To Marc, they were as good as dead. Being with Lilly, with Caesar, even Tybalt had maybe reignited his far-gone hopes. But like the former two had been so cruelly ripped from his life, so was the hope he once carried, ruins of something that, in a kinder world, blossomed into something greater. If he hadn't been rejected by everyone he met. If he hadn't had to hurt people to make them listen. Maybe that would be a world worth living in. And maybe he would have people, real people, to share it with.

To Tybalt, it was a chance to talk with another of his kind.

Yeah. He really doesn't like mankind and its machinations, though his anger may not be entirely unjustified. There's something deeper in him that hurts.

Turning down his voice, he whispered:

I really, really want to help him, but I just don't know how. You can fix all the wounds in the world, but some scars are forever.

But the Oshawott wasn't the only one who had heard Fate's words; it seemed to him that this Serena had been living a life of solace, with only a single companion. But compared to his clothes - the torn-up jeans, still stained with the blood of battles past, the scars carved up his face like the tears in his outfit - Rose appeared untouchable, her hair dangling naturally down, wearing some brand of clothes that Marc did not care to recognize.

Pathetic, he thought, that while she's been living her perfect world, I've been bloody and beaten by my destiny. But life wasn't fair. And Marc knew that more than anyone.

Marc nodded back to Rose, still somewhat shell shocked by her simple question.

"Family. An interesting word. Mine abandoned me long ago, and now I care not for their fate."

Monsters aren't born; they're made. And what was once a noble soul was simply the empty shell that burned with the fire of hatred.

[Sam]

"Yeah," Rose sighed, folding her arms across her body. She was beginning to form the thoughts. "The same kind of thing happened to me, but I was on the other end of the scale. I watched it happen. After that, things just went wrong. I don't have a family to go back to anymore. I'm alone."

Meanwhile, Fate was nodding and glancing at Marc. Turning her voice down, she whispered, <It may not look it, but Rose is...well, she's very traumatized. Something in her past is still haunting her. It's like a shadow is following her and tearing her up withing.>

[Wolfe]

No. It was Rose.

Anger, long sealed away in a dark corner of Marc's mind began seeping through his mind, poisoning his thoughts. Outrage that she dared to complain. That she could even be talking to him. He..he was a survivor, forged by hardship and shaped by misery. Marc was sadness, he was hatred, he was anger. It him ten seconds to calm down, even then, his agitation was apparent.

And here it was that Tybalt knew of Marc's plight; his abandonment, and why he shut out the world, fearing that it would only hurt him more. It was why he hurt others, to distract himself from the pain that was tearing him apart. Like Marc, he felt pity for Rose; some people just care.

Hearing Fate talk of her misery, her suffering did not help Marc. The monster he had sealed, one of many, was literally bursting at the seems, begging to be let out.

But killing her would do nothing. It would accomplish nothing, only make things harder. Marc had killed so many, but those deaths weighed heavily on his conscience. The anger subsided, if only for a moment, and a solitary tear fell from his eye, tracing a scar from long ago. It was not shed of misery, nor of elation. The words he spoke were empty, dehumanized, so far gone.

Felix wished he could stop Marc from speaking. He really did, out of fear that someone else would get hurt. Please Marc...just..stop...you don't need to hurt anyone else.

But Marc was beyond the point of no return. Nothing could stop the words that came out:

"Destiny took Liliana from me and gave me you. Oh, fate can be so cruel."

Anger rising, his voice took on fury the more he spoke.

Destiny took away the person I built, the Marc I made, the person who suffered through it all and lived. Destiny has taken everything from me!

What remained of his compassion, his pity now burned away in the fire that raged over his words, the venom palpable.

"The best thing that I ever had, the closest I ever had to a real family, was stolen away from me! And it gives me my sister, who never cared that I was sent away because I was a freak!"

Marc was screaming now, unable to control his anger, which now flowed through him like a rising tide.

"You don't even know how much I suffered, how much I bled, cried, for my life to be normal! You don't know how good of a friend Lilly was to me, how good of a companion Caesar was, how much I feared that my life would fall apart again!"

The tears rolled down his face, for the first time in forever. Now, his anger spent, he fell to his knees, looking at the night sky, and all Marc saw was the darkness.

He whispered:

"You don't know anything."

[Sam]

Rose was taken aback. This really was his brother. This was Marc. This was the boy that she had watched been forced to leave in front of her. The moment that started the decline. The moment where everything began to collapse.

Fate turned to see the anger in Rose rising as well. She sighed and sat down to cover her ears with her paws, ready for the wrath of her mistress.

"I don't know anything, Marc? Maybe I don't know as much about killing people as you do, but that does not mean I have not suffered! That I have not been miserable! That I have not cried or bled or screamed with the emotional agony that the world punches you with."

"I never wanted you gone. I was scared. Scared because our parents didn't like you and I was scared that they would not like me either if I sided. So I kept my distance. Kept my quite, believing that they would some day accept you, but be forced to turn us both away if I supported you."

"But I was wrong. Wrong because our father could not bear to see someone spoiling his 'perfect little daughter'." In her building fury, Rose could not help but put a high-pitched spoiled type of tone on the last three words. "And you know what? He died! He died in his arrogance! You weren't the only one he has caused pain to. He threw you out, he sent an all-powerful legendary Pokemon after me because he was too stupid to realize his mistakes!"

"After all this, I would have been HAPPY to see you! My soul would have lifted with joy at the mere SIGHT of you! Even with what you have become, this ragged, battle-scarred ruffian that I could never imagine out of my half-Ralts brother. I would have been over the moon with joy to see that you were at least safe from the curse our father has brought!"

"And I know more about love and loyalty and compassion then you think. I once had a friend as close as this 'Lily'. I loved her like no other. She was the sibling I could never have. She was the only thing that I could pretend was you for all those years without you. She was taken from me...as was our mother. And out home. And all of our friends. That curse? It burned our birthplace to the ground and took off with Destiny, the only thing I cared about!!"

"So don't you go feeling like I don't understand misery."

And then Rose burst into tears and threw herself onto her brother, wrapping her arms tightly around him and hugging him like a sister long lost would give.

[Wolfe]

The tears fell once more, this time incessantly. He let himself be embraced by his past, feeling the last drops of misery fall away to the ground. He moved away, slowly, sitting, eyes still red, scared of the future more than ever. The black veil around his heart had weakened, but it still remained strong. The world would have to try harder to find a way in. He sighed, looking once more to the crescent moon, to the sea, and beyond, where this mess had all begun.

"I...I don't know whether to love you or hate you....maybe I still have a family..but I've been running from the past all my life, and I still don't want it to catch up to me."

Looking back to the stars, he began anew in a quiet tone:

"All I've done my whole life is hurt people. Would you so easily welcome the killer, the murderer, the brute back into your life? I've caused enough misery in my lifetime."

In his words were the sorrows of many a life lived wrong, concealed regrets, and mistakes aplenty. In his words was the weight of a world, one that scorned and hated him at every turn. Marc didn't see any use explaining what had happened to him. Maybe in another life, they could have fought, cried, laughed alongside each other. Marc had foregone that long ago. There was no kindness to be found anywhere. You weren't doing yourself any favors by dreaming of better times. All you had was the present, a broken one, but one that you could try to fix.

"Please...I don't hate you, Rose...but..I don't want to hurt you too."

He sat there, eyes closed, trying to calm himself. Rose had found his weakness, and hit it hard. Not even the pride of a million disasters averted could save Marc from the burdens of his past.

Taking Tybalt's hand in his own, he whispered.

"Come. There are still wrongs to be righted."