A/N: Written for the WIXOSS bingo – the non-flash version, #067 – evil.
Through the Other Side of the Glass
How were they the evil ones?
They were the ones ostracised, the ones forgotten about? The sort of neglect that led to non-existence. That didn't even allow their corpses to fill a room with their decaying stench… For Mayu, there was a cat flap. Food was pushed through it, food that would disappear entirely and whatever wasn't was swallowed up by the garden she could see from her window…and what a useless garden it was, forever out of her reach.
For Apocalymon who didn't need to eat but required something else as sustenance instead, he was forced to feed on the scraps tossed away from others. That was the place he lived, the place he existed. There was no land. No form. He had a different sort of prison. Both theirs had windows to something they couldn't touch.
Their bitterness was a simple product of staring through that window but being unable to ever pass through the glass.
And why should they be the ones to be trapped on the other side of the glass?
They were not sacrifices that took on the sins of the world. The world didn't know them. Their eyes passed the darkness in which they existed and then just passed them by. They were non-existences as far as those worlds were concern, except for whatever maintenance was needed to keep their bodies nourished, keep them alive.
But there was no fruit for the soul to be had that way. The wasted away, and they wasted away to bitterness.
It was no wonder, then, that went the gate out of their small cells opened, it was just that bitterness that filled the gap between clothes and bone. A product of the world that had locked them out. A product of the world that had abandoned them.
It was no wonder that the bitterness was what spilled through, powerful enough to create beings of beings of darkness, beings of despair.
But, for both of them, there was a little sparkle of light that spilled out as well. For Mayu, it was the one called Shiro – Shiro who was eventually rechristened as Tama when the flare found the right candle to light. For Apocalymon, it was the one called Gennai who eventually found the right seeds to nurture and grow.
Both of them became the masterminds, buried beneath other enemies, distracting enemies. Even in such a state, so close to death, almost beyond despair, they were disregarded. They weren't noticed. And so they forced the remembrance. Mayu created a detour in the cycle of despair that served no more purpose but to introduce herself as the mastermind behind the Selector Battles she'd birthed, and Apocalymon wrote himself into the books of that world, so someone may open one and acknowledge him. He would meet them face to face but that would end the cycle. She would write her existence somewhere but that would also end it. They could only take these different paths, despite the similarities in their circumstances, the kinship across the worlds.
And they became the enemies. The final bosses to beat once the players rose and entered those otherwise endless cycles. Kominato Ruko was the one who grabbed the flame of Shiro and named her Tama, who grabbed the cold Kuro and named her Yuki, who gave birth to a Mayu that was the Mayu she would have loved to be, who she'd wanted to be all that time she'd been on the other side of the glass… But it was too late now. She was already dead.
Still, Ruko took away the bitterness, let her empty shell crumble from the world in peace.
And for Apocalymon, it was Yagami Taichi, and the other Chosen. The Chosen who told him in those innocent voices that it was okay to live. That it was his right to live. And their will. They rebuilt themselves when he'd turned their very existences into dust. They brought out hope and light and love when he gave them only darkness and despair and hate.
They were forgiven. Their spirits were reborn in that final moment but it was still too late to live, to pass into the gardens they'd looked at through the other side of the glass.
And despite that forgiveness, they went down in history as the evil ones.