For the RvBRC 'A little bit of darkness never hurt none too much' Challenge.
…
"It won't help if you wait for me,
I'm a slave to the dark,
I know I'm not a saint, you see."
-Tarja Turunen, My Winter Dream, Damned and Divine
…
"We're the good guys, right?"
North's response should have been automatic. It should have rolled off his tongue easily and without regret, but instead it went reluctantly, more like a reassurance than a truth. It wasn't right at all.
"Yeah, of course we are."
That was a lie. In the back of North's mind, the real truth was abundantly clear. If he'd learnt anything from his comic books as a kid, it was that good guys were the ones who didn't get shot at by the authorities. They didn't break into buildings and steal whatever they wanted and they certainly didn't shoot at innocent people who were just doing their jobs. Good guys were the ones who did what was right in the name of the greater good, not in the name of some half-crazed man with a god-complex and selfish reasoning. Whatever they were, they were far from the good guys.
"You don't sound so sure of yourself."
North looked at York, poor York who had lost the function in his left eye for the sake of Maine and Wyoming's pride. He thought of Maine, decked out on an infirmary bed covered in bandages due to his animalistic urge to fight, and the cold, inhumane fury in Carolina's face whenever she entered into battle. He thought of himself in the midst of adrenalin-fuelled combat, where his singular instinct was survival, attained only through the death of his opponents. He thought of the sick relish he was beginning to feel every time he outlived some other poor bastard.
When had things gone so spectacularly wrong? Somewhere deep down, North knew that it really didn't matter anymore. What was done was done, and he was in far too deep in the Project to consider turning back. He was one of the bad guys, and there was nothing he could do about it. This he accepted quite readily.
The only twisted consolation he had was that in every comic book he'd ever read, guys like him had always lost.
"No… No, I suppose I don't."