Hero

All disclaimers apply.



Trish asked me if it ever gets any easier. She wiped the blood of an innocent little boy off her sword and she asked me if the burden ever gets any easier to bear. Playing devil hunter, playing rescuer. Playing hero.

I didn't lie to her, or at least, I hope I didn't. I told her it sucks and it keeps on sucking and it's her choice whether or not she was going to keep trying despite how much it sucked. I said it in my best war-refugee voice, all grim, stalwart, worn out but unbreakable. I stood there watching tears run down her face and acting as if I knew the game, that I'd invented the game. But I know it isn't a game. She knows I was full of shit. I know I'm always full of shit. And in the end all we could do was pick up, go home, try to forget so it would be that less harder to get back up again and keep up the fight.

I like to think I've come a long way since a couple of decades ago, really grown up since that shaking kid afraid of everything that went bump in the night. Well, I've gotten bigger. Marginally smarter. Taken on bigger baddies than I knew I could and lived to tell the tale, and saved more lives than I could probably count by memory.

Despite all that, I know I'm not a hero. I'm not the kind of person she needs to give her some big gallant speech about the greater good and the means justifying the ends. Did everything you could, still didn't work out, at least you tried. At least you paved that road to Hell with every good intention you could muster.

I'd like to be the person who could say that and mean it. But I'm not. Guess I gotta live with it.

Growing up, every kid's got a hero, someone they want to be just like. For some kids, it's comic book studs who somehow manage to kick ass while wearing some ballerina's Spandex leotard. For others it's actual existing people blown up to superhero porportions, so invincible and perfect that they might as well have a halo around their head and a chorus of angels singing "Glory, Hallelujah" everytime they come into a room. You don't see a hero in life-size. If you did, that would take all the fascination out of it.

I had a hero, too. He was both a real person and an actual, literal superhero, with powers and the whole nine. His super, special name? The Dark Knight. Mostly, I call him Dad. Sometimes, I call him Asshole, but that's in my nastier moods. I have a lot of those.

Me and Vergil, we worshipped our dad. Wanted to be just like him. Well, Vergil more than me. I just wanted him around. We loved Mom, God, we loved her, but she was just our present. The guy who showed up every other Christmas and every birthday, he was our future.

Hah. Nice future. No, really, thanks, Dad. I couldn't have asked for a better hellhole.

All right, so I'm in a nasty mood right now. Can't help it. You see a couple dozen people chopped up into bite-sized pieces and it'll ruin your fucking day, too. Especially when you turned out to be the one to do the chopping.

No. No, I'm not going to think about it. Can't linger. The more I dwell the harder it gets. Depression's like a black hole, sucks you down and keeps right on crushing until there's nothing left but a useless little shadow that can't do anything but cry and remember. No good. No good to anyone like that, especially not Trish, especially not myself. Crack a smirk, grab a Colt, go blow some holes into some unsuspecting demons. Always makes me feel better. Tony calls it active therapy. Actually, Tony calls anything likely to kill you theraputic. I decided a long time ago that Tony Redgrave is not quite right in the head and that I like him anyway. No, I like him because of it. What's it worth being crazy when you've got to be crazy alone?

Sometimes I think it would be nice to be a little more human, little less devil. That way, I could occupy myself with something worthwhile, like patching up wounds and zoning out on painkillers. But I heal up like something out of a time-lapse nature video and anything not alchohol burns out of my system in less than an hour. I could probably find something stronger but I'm trying not to die this week.

So I've gotta sit here with whiskey in one hand and my balls in the other and deal with this three-ring circus that's my brain. At least until the next mission comes in.

My fucking life revolves around these stupid missions. Hunt this, solve that, slash here, shoot there. Not that I'm complaining, not really. During a battle, it's all good, all adrenaline and noise and enough sheer power to make your head explode. If I've got any drill, it's the rush of putting my ass on the line every other day of the week, and it's a high I wouldn't trade for all the coke and heroine in the world. Fuck you, morphine and Morpheus, Ares is my god, churn that war machine.

Oh, shit, am I drunk already? Nope. Still sober. Kind of scary to think psychotic shit and still be on the wagon. At least the booze gives you an excuse.

Haha, some hero I make. Lounging around some pitch-black office in the middle of the night getting faced and mulling over action thriller fetishes. Batman would be disappointed. Pointy-eared motherfucker never used a gun, so I guess I couldn't relate much to him. I live for Eb and Ive. When all is lost, all I've gotta do is pull a trigger and everything'll be all right. And they don't talk back to me with snide remarks about my technique - yeah, shut up, Alastor, Ifrit, I know we've got history, but you get on my fucking nerves sometimes and you know it.

Never gonna get used to talking to cutlery and handwarmers. Damn, when is this whiskey gonna kick in?

I'm not a hero. I'm not some fucking superman come to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. I'm just some fuck-up born with fucked-up powers in a fucked-up world. I have no idea what I'm doing. Never did. And it's funny, everyone seems to think I do. Slice the hell out of some demon determined to tear some throats out, shit, everyone'll think you're the second coming of Christ, a savior, a fucking messiah. The minute you screw up, though, you're the anti-Christ, demon, devil, evil to beat all evils. Double standard. You're only as good as your use. Once you stop being useful, hey, hi-ho, bring on the crucifixtion.

Yeah, I'm jaded. I seen how easy it is for people to turn on each other. Turn on me. I don't really blame them. Oh, sure, I get pissed off like you wouldn't believe when some douche I thought was a friend punches me in the jaw with the same hand he just used to shake mine. But I don't hold it against him. I wouldn't trust me, either. As much as I don't like to admit it - as much as I'm never gonna admit it, outside my own head - I'm dangerous. In an on-the-edge, could-bat-for-the-other-team-at-any-second kind of way. I mean, I'm only half of either side, right? I'm straddling a line. Hell, I'm living on that line, I'm raising livestock on that line.

Tony trusts me. Plenty of humans trust me, and a fair number of devils, too. Hell, I'm living with one. But the reason they trust me is not just because I'm good for my word, but because I'm not completely delusional. When and if I cross over, they all know where to stick the sword. They all know I'd want them to even when I don't.

I figure, you know, that shouldn't happen, I pretty much chose my side. Go, humans, ra, ra, ra! And yet . . . and yet. Just a little inkling in the back of my head. Usually when I'm full form and moving fast enough, hard enough, high enough, to leave any human in the dust, or when I just seriously handed some underworld emperor or demonic deity his unholy ass. It's like my proscience or my antiscience, or whatever you call the opposite to your conscience starts yammering away. You know, that little demon on your shoulder that tells you to push people you don't know into oncoming traffic or stick your hand in fire for no reason. Mine is about a hundred times bigger and louder and it's always telling me: Look at how fucking awesome you are. You could own this town. You could trash on any devil this side of Jersey, turn this whole level of Hell into your own personal playground, get whole armies of demons and devils to do what you say when you say it, whether it's to scratch your nose or take out the Pentagon. You want to make a real difference? Better start thinking bigger than some little urban shithole with a neon sign.

The real fucked up thing about evil voices in the back of your head is that they make a lot of sense. They speak to the cold-blooded, logical part of your brain. People seem to think evil is some psychopath who likes to stab random people and rave about the CIA. Nah. That's not evil. That's just animal insanity. Evil is sharper than that. Evil is savagery, ruthlessness and brutality hidden under something that looks civilized.

I can forgive demons for being demons. Hey, we all gotta eat, shit, piss, fuck, right? That's pretty much the whole of a demon's universe. The higher ups are more malicious, but in the end, they got no souls. No choice. I kill 'em by the dozens, but I can respect demons for one thing: They are what they are, and they don't fuck with my head. Kill or be killed, it's simple with them.

Now, devils - different story. The worst of them look the best, absolutely human. Dear old dad, what I remember of him, didn't stand out much, he stood out, but not like a guy who could take out Mundus and all of his armies and lived thousands of years. He passed, and he was decent for the time he was here, but I can't help thinking - I can't help trying to figure out what he was like before he got his big revelation, his ray of light that swerved him towards the path of righteous or whatever.

Big mover and shaker like him . . . he could have been anything. He probably was. He was probably the worst motherfucker of them all, because see, it's too easy if he was all knight-in-shining-armor even when he was at Mundus's right hand. It's too easy, and nothing about people like him, like me, or Verg, or Trish, or Lucia, none of it is easy. We gotta fuck up before we fix it. Gotta make the mistake to see the wrong.

Some of us never do. Some of us get sucked up and never see the light again.

Watch my hero shrink to realistic porportions right before my eyes. Sucks.

I can say I never gave into the voice completely. I've come pretty goddamn close. Crossed the line a few times. Done things that always seem to overshadow everything I do to make up for them. People die - they're gonna do it anyway, but I never want it to be because I got there too late. Or because I was too far gone getting off on a fight that I didn't see . . . didn't see what I should've seen.

I like people, the decent ones, and there are a lot of those. I like saving them and I hate losing them. I hate it so much it drives me insane and I can't stop avenging them. Like I avenged for years a mother who was dead and wasn't coming back and a brother who wasn't dead and didn't think he needed avenging. I avenged them anyway. Then when all was properly avenged, I took a good long look at myself and asked, "Was worth it?"

Don't know.

Anyway, I've done some shit in my day. Stuff I'm not proud of. But probably nowhere near the calibur of what dear old Dad did in his hey-day. Probably nowhere near as much as Vergil.

I am not my fucking brother's keeper. I am not responsible for him. No jury would convict me for doing what I had to do . . . but no jury would have to. I make my own noose when it comes to Verg. I knot it and hang it, stick my neck into it, close my eyes, kick the chair out and hope my neck gets broken before the strangulation sets in.

And even that wouldn't kill me. I'd hang there kicking forever, black in the face, and Verg would be laughing at my ass-backwards attempt to fix what I didn't screw up.

I can't say I did what I could for my twin, and I damn sure won't say I'm sorry for taking him out. Someone had to. It didn't have to be me, but who else was gonna do it?

True sign of a hero, huh? Doing what everyone else is too pussy to do.

Yeah. Give me a cape, some gay-ass tights, and off I go to save Lois Lane's stupid ass. Nah, I wouldn't make a good hero, because I'd let the dumb bitch fall. At some point, you gotta stop depending on heroes, 'cause they're just human, even when they're not. They fuck up, and they don't care, and goddammit, sometimes they just want to sleep in. Fact of the matter is, heroes don't make good heroes, not for shit. But they're all you've got on short notice, so they do.

For awhile, I hated him. Vergil. I hated him for having my face, my hair, my fucking eyes, dad's color but mom's lashes, and doing everything it would have killed them both to see him doing. I hated my father for making kids that could screw up so badly, and I hated my mom for loving him in the first place. Hell, I hated everyone, not just the devils who took my happy little rug out from under me. Cause and effect, you know? If I never had it, it never could have been taken away. If I was never born, it wouldn't hurt to begin with.

Self-pity's a bitch, but what can I say. You watch your life go up in flames and see how fucking valiant and unselfish you turn out to be. We can't all be Princess Dis and Mother Theresas and Ghandis.

Maybe they were real heroes, maybe they were fucking frauds because they never had to get their hands dirty. I don't know. Don't care. They're all dead and gone. I'm not. Gotta keep trying.

Gotta keep making up for crimes I didn't commit.

I feel like a dipshit representative. Like some idiot shoved over onto the opposite side of a war and told to "show the other side we're not so bad." Yeah, right. I'm no diplomat. I make a crazy devil and a lousy human. I like blowing shit up with my super kick-ass powers and reading Playboy. Not exactly a shining example of either side.

So what the fuck do I think I'm doing, trying to show a devil how to be a good and honest-to-God human? Trish is . . . she isn't the a-typical devil but she doesn't have a drop of human blood in her. I don't care how she looks, don't care what any one says, it helps to claim human in some part. She can't even do that. And I want to believe she's above that, I really do, she seems to care, genuine, neck-on-the-line want to go all out for humanity and goodness and all that crap, but . . . But.

Always but.

Verg was half and he couldn't even do it. Dad was full and God help me if I even know if he was really good himself. And me, I'm sitting here screaming at little voices in my head trying to get me to kill, kill, kill, conquer, destroy, it's so easy, you should, you need to, you'd better or they'll come and take you down in the end, just like your father, you gotta be evil to take evil, you have to do what you have to do no matter what you have to do.

Fucking hero. Motherfucking hero, my ass. Who the hell am I going to save? After all my slashing and ass-kicking and bravado, does it do anyone any good? I keep stopping the Apocalypse until it stops me, and for what? And if I give in, would I do more good or more bad or is it all moot anyway? Does any of it matter? God. Jesus fucking Christ of Nazareth, what the hell am I doing here?

People die, they're gonna die anyway. But somehow all the blood's on my hands. Mom, Verg, fuck, even Sparda. All on me.

I care about her. Trish. In weaker moments I think I love her. But I have to be ready to kill her, and you wouldn't believe what that does to your head when it's late enough, dark enough, and all you've got left that makes sense is a sword and a half-assed purpose.

And she's good, she is, I believe that. But I can't live on faith alone. Can I?

It's easier to play the badass. Easier not to think, just to do it. I stop for more than five minutes to examine this lunatic asylum that's become my life and fuck it all, I'd turn and run screaming for a pit and not come back out until one side was the winner. One side I could get on and stay on. This balancing act is no fucking good. I'm going to fall. Can't see the bottom.

Maybe there isn't one.

Phone rings. Set down the whiskey, still not drunk, guess I won't be. Turns out to be Tony. He's got a few hits on something real nasty stirring up a ruckus not too far away. Some millionare wants us to clean out his infested mansion before he loses any more of his sanity. Easy money, good cause. We've got to keep the infection from spreading.

Grab Ebony and Ivory, pick a sword - eenie, meeny, mienie, it's Vendetta tonight, appropriate, 'cause I've got a fucking bone to pick - pack up the shotgun just in case, sounds like it's gonna be a real party. Call down Trish. She wants in, could use some action to help her forget the bad stuff. She's not the only one. We grin, trade jokes, take the motorcyles. All recklessly, all carelessly, like the killer devils we are. Usual.

I'm not a hero. I'm not out to save everybody, the world, Heaven, Hell or anything else in between. Hell, I can't even save those closest to me. I don't know if I can even save myself.

But it's a nice night, and like always, a good time to risk death and stay alive to try, just try and keep trying, all over again. That's pretty much what people do, whether they're heroes or not.

-end-