Judas
Yugao
Summary: It's me, sweet Megumi, your little Judas.
Author's Note: I know that I haven't written for this fandom in quite a while. I think the last fic I uploaded here, I took down two years ago. Go figure, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Now that I bought a DVD of Gatekeepers I can finally put something up that I'm somewhat more proud of, thank God. Anyway, it's Megumi-centric, focusing on the part when she was turning Ruriko's gate into the gate of massacre or whatever. Don't get me wrong, Ruriko is my favorite character on the show, but I thought it would be more meaningful if I put this in Megumi's point of view.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gatekeepers and am not making any financial or material profit from this story.
You are everything I want, because you are everything I'm not.
Shush now. No, I can't quite guarantee you'll be all right. That isn't my job. In fact, I'm even supposed to show you those small, horrible things that let you know that no, nothing's all right. That this world is just a cesspool of people who will never see you, me, or us as what we truly are: powerful, special. Come now. What more can you expect from them? They're just maggots after all. Not the kind you can really classify as human beings.
That's it. Stay still as I probe into the deepest darkest recesses of your black little heart. The black little heart I know you have.
Come on. Did you really think your little Miss Perfect façade would win everyone over? You can fool the rest of the world, but you never fooled me for a second.
Is that murmur on your lips a question as to who I am, as to why I'm doing this? You make me laugh. Don't you remember me, Ruriko? It's me, sweet Megumi, your little Judas.
From the beginning, I never liked you. The moment I saw you – when was that, huh? Kindergarten, maybe – I knew that you would only make life difficult. You monopolized everyone's attention, befriended everyone but me. Hah. Even as a little girl you were always like that – fake, insincere. You probably never even saw me. I was a small, fragile child in need of attention, but that same attention was denied me. Why, you ask? Because when people see you – the glowing Ikusawa child destined to be Miss Top Honors, Miss Student Council President, Miss I Am Good At Everything – they could no longer look at me and be impressed.
Do you know how difficult it is for a star to shine when the sun is out?
That's how I felt. I grew up perpetually in your shadow. How could I not? This was and still is a world of appearances. I was that small, mousy little girl, with a face that really could have belonged to anyone, and dull brown eyes that I had to hide behind glasses just to feel safe, just to feel secure. On the other hand, you were always the tall, pretty one, loved by all because of your smile and your inability to look absolutely horrible in that ridiculous yellow ribbon you always wear in your hair. In appearances alone I already lost to you.
But don't worry, I'm not that shallow. I don't hate you for being prettier than me.
I tried not to let it bother me. After all, I had no right – or at least that's what they told me. Who was I but the daughter of the middle class whom you look down on? What was I the heiress of if not a tiny, almost pitiful ramen business? You with your wealthy family, your grandiose house, your expensive wardrobe – I suppose you were born to make me feel this way. Pathetic, as if I were worth no more than the dirt beneath your feet. If you wanted, you could have probably bought out my family's business, take every little insignificant yen we had. You didn't, of course; getting by had always been easy for you, and it would have been unnecessary. But still, the knowledge that you could have done so made me shudder.
At school, I tried. I tried to study hard, to show every teacher that I was capable of doing what I had always wanted to do: excel. I strove to do well on every test, but every time the results came out the teacher would always announce you as better, as more intelligent. Why do you do this to me? Make me feel as if nothing I do will matter? Of course you make it look as if it was never your intention to do so, but I can see past your pretenses. You're a liar and a fake, despite all your plastic smiles and insincere words of concern.
So big surprise: you climbed up to the top of the class, leaving everyone in awe of your – what did they call it – superior intellect. Hah. Those comments always made me laugh somehow. You're an airhead despite all your efforts, and that's not exactly something that's about to change. But not only did your grades rise – so did people's trust in you and your judgment. They trusted you. They believed in you. They put their faith in the fact that whatever your decisions may be, they would be for the better. Barely ever did they question your thoughts, your opinions – they trusted you too much to rely on themselves anymore. They did to you everything I had wished they would do to me.
Until Mr. Fukuoka.
He was the only one who ever understood. He was the only one who saw me that I was special, that I was better than you. But you just couldn't accept that, could you? You had to come along, you had to mess everything up, and now… and now… he's gone. The only person who had ever acknowledged me as being special, you had to take from me. You should have given it some time, and he would have gone back to normal. Back to his usual crabby self to the rest of the world, but also back to his compassionate, understanding self to me. But you couldn't do that. And because of your inability to accept that I am better than you are, Mr. Fukuoka is dead.
So I joined the Gatekeepers. I joined your fancy little Earth Defense club because I knew that if I didn't, you'd get so far ahead of me that I could no longer reach for you and pull you down. I pretended to be on your side just so I could get a better chance to clip your wings and keep you from becoming more of what I had wanted to be. You just couldn't help it, though. You still managed to stand out, even under Captain Ukiya's leadership. Though you lost the election for team captain, you still won in the end – everyone else looked up to you too much to forego giving you any sort of authority. So even though you were just an ordinary member like the rest of us, they never treated you as just ordinary.
Typical Ruriko Ikusawa.
So no; I don't hate you for being prettier than me.
I hate you for being better than me in every goddamned thing we do.
So you ask why I sided with Reiji? Isn't it obvious yet, my little martyr? No one had ever looked at you, the stellar wonder-girl who captured everyone's hearts with her impossible innocence; and me, the weird bookworm who somehow just couldn't get anything right… and still chose me.
Author's Note: That's it, my 1137-word one-shot for this section. I actually had quite a lot of fun writing it, so I hope it was okay to read, too. Please leave a review, I'd love that a lot. And credit for the Judas line goes to Neil Gaiman. In one of the Sandman books (I can't remember which though) Barbie had said it of Luz when she was betrayed, though of course it was the other way around.