Mea Culpa
One-shot. Sometimes...all the apologies in the world don't make a difference when they come too late. It's a Dan drabble, what else? T for death and violence and...stuff.
A/N: Is it bad that I got the inspiration for this fanfiction after watching Lilo and Stitch? Seriously, I was struck by this line and it all snowballed from there: "626 was designed to be a monster, but now he has nothing to destroy. You see, I never gave him a greater purpose. What must it be like to have nothing...not even memories to visit in the middle of the night?" Well...there you have it: an insight to my crazy line of authorly thinking. Please read and review!
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters that belong to Butch Hartman (namely Dan), nor do I own that piece of dialogue from Lilo and Stitch that I quoted in my Author's Note. Please don't sue me.
Dawn streaked the horizon with bands of golden fire. For most, it was simply the customary sign that day had begun, the beginning of morning, and the commencement of the usual daily routine. Nothing special.
For most.
For others, dawn that day was something quite different. For them, the dawn's gold fire was overshadowed by the much closer hellfire of destruction that raged through their city. For them, this dawn brings only night, and the mourning is just getting started.
They are the first to fall today...but certainly not the last. Why this specific town was chosen does not matter. Eventually it would have fallen; if not today, then someday. The devastation that feeds here is still spreading.
It didn't come without warning. Rumors had been trickling in, after all: stories of whole cities razed, people slaughtered by the thousands. Of the terrifying catalyst of this destruction, the one they simply called "the Phantom"—with merciless blood-red eyes, a greenish, macabre cast to his skin (as one of the dead), and hair of silver hellfire. They called him the Angel of Death, the green horseman of the Apocalypse; they said that to look him in the face was to see Death itself.
Of course, it becomes very easy to ignore what "they" say when nothing bad is happening to you. But it's happening now. The Phantom is a whirling dervish of obliteration. Edifices crumbles, and buildings are torn apart by flashes of viridescent flame.
The destruction is real, and it is terrifying.
The Phantom lays waste on a massive scale, raining fire and slaughter in a terrorizing saturnalia of blood. Initial resistance soon degenerates into chaos, and from there into silence. He lands then, and surveys the carnage.
One or two smaller houses still stand. He smiles.
He'll visit them personally.
Debris crunches under his feet as he walks, slowly, as a predator stalks before the kill. The raging fires don't seem to bother him at all; on the contrary, he seems to take a perverse pleasure in watching the flames feed on the slaughter, like living things.
He charges up an emerald burst of energy in his palm and shatters the front door of the house into cinders. He walks in, almost negligently throwing another blast into the far wall as he does so. A woman lies huddled under the couch. A younger male, probably seventeen or eighteen, holds a double-barreled rifle before him. He fires twice at the terrifying specter before him.
Both bullets lodge in the far wall. Two neat holes in the ghost's chest close over like they never were there. The Phantom smirks, and gestures at the young man. Green lightning blasts a smoking cavity in his torso.
The Phantom then proceeds to tear the room apart. One flare takes care of the other inhabitant; the rest he saves for the building. Surgically precise detonations reduce the walls to rubble, the ceiling to ashes and dust. He moves on to the rest of the house, taking time to enjoy the destruction.
Finally, he stands in the doorway of an as-of-yet untouched part of the house. He lifts a hand, ready to demolish the final room and move on. Viridescent flame plays around his fingers.
Unexpectedly, he stops. The green light fades.
Standing five feet away from him is a small girl. She gazes up at him with clear blue eyes, unafraid—perhaps only because his massive frame in the doorway blocks the devastation of the rest of the house from her view. The child cannot be more than six or seven.
"You're him, aren't you?" the little girl asks. "You're the Phantom. They talk about you on the news a lot."
He lowers his hand, confusion and curiosity fighting for room on his face. The little girl seems encouraged by this.
She continues, "My mom doesn't believe in you. She says you're made up by people who just want to scare everyone. But you're not. You're here. I hope your feelings aren't hurt because I didn't believe in you at first." The irony is sickening, but he doesn't interrupt her. She intrigues him.
"You're probably busy," she admits, "but I just wanted to ask you something." She seems to screw her courage up in preparation, and asks one question.
That one question strikes closer to the truth than any other has in years.
"Why are you so angry?"
Some shadow of reflexive shock must be visible in his hellfire eyes, for she adds quickly, "I know that's why you wreck things, and hurt people. You're angry...and sad too. Maybe something bad happened, something so bad that all you can do is feel mean inside. And you hurt everyone you find, because you don't want to be hurt by anyone anymore. I felt like that after my dad died when I was little. One day, I was feeling bad, and I yelled at my friend so bad that I made her cry."
He hasn't said a word during this exchange. She looks up at him imploringly. "But...you don't have to be bad because you feel bad inside. That's what my big brother told me. After Daddy died, he said that it was okay to feel bad sometimes. He said that I shouldn't have acted like that, but if I said I was sorry, I'd feel a lot better. And I did.
"So maybe...Maybe you just need to say you're sorry," the little girl finishes.
The Phantom still stands in the doorframe, looking down at her. She can't see around him. She doesn't know that her brother and mother are dead. She doesn't know that her home is in flaming ruins less than ten feet from where she stands, and that the rest of the city is the same, if not worse.
She doesn't know that she has nothing left.
He places his right hand gently on her head. If one didn't know who he was or what he'd done, one might call the expression on his face saddened, regretful, or even heavy-hearted.
"I'm sorry," he says. Green lightning plays around his fingertips and blasts her life away faster than her nerves can tell her she's in pain. She crumples to the ground.
He stares at her body for a long minute. Finally, he bends over and brushes his hand across her face to shut her eyes. He stands up again, looks up, and flies into the red-washed dawn.
Sometimes...it takes more than just saying you're sorry.