Creed

Disclaimer: Black Lagoon and its characters © Rei Hiroe


CREED: PART II

She was back on American soil.

She should have been relieved. She should have been content. She should have been happy. But all she had really felt within the first moments of coming back to the United States was... out of place. She felt like a foreigner in her own country, disconnected from the land of her origin.

She had tried to shrug off. It was only an effect from being away for so long. No worries, she just needed to get readjusted.

So she told herself.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.

Not very much had changed at the headquarters in Langley while she was gone. It was the same scene she had remembered from so long ago: soft chatters and murmurs carried in the halls, various agents in busy offices going about their assigned tasks or talking amongst themselves during their "breaks." Even that idiot Stan Smith was still completing the chorus of his routine morning song as he stood in front of the entrance and saluted the flag.

As a field agent, she knew she wouldn't be doing much office work. Regardless of what she was assigned, steadfast and dedicated, she fulfilled the task in stride. She had encountered no problems... until one particular incident.

It was a foreign affair somewhere in Eastern Europe and she had been accompanied by several other agents. Some crap that involved interaction with a small syndicate branch, dealing with the more "expendable" members, lives that could afford to be lost if need be. Why her superiors wanted to send her half-way around the world and waste her time with cannon fodder was beyond her. Something about retrieving important documents.

The entire matter bored her, her mind only rendering the time spent in blurs and unfamiliar, unimportant faces. All she could really recall was that the trash that laughably thought of themselves as badass gangsters had tried to pull a fast one on her and other operatives. The entire affair ended in a bloodbath. No lives were lost on team CIA, but the gangsters had been annihilated. Countless bullet-ridden bodies were scattered throughout, pieces of brain and skull matter decorating much of the area, the ground was drenched and slick with blood. The only word that could aptly describe the scene was "carnage."

A grim breeze blew past her, the sky tinted a dreary gray, a suitcase with documents held in one hand, a smoking Glock in the other. Taking a final glance at the corpses, she scoffed with a mocking smirk as she lowered her gun to her side. Jackasses.

As she turned around, she was greeted with the sight of her fellow operatives. Their eyes were wide with terror as their mouths hung agape.

"What?" she drawled with a casual shrug and a coy smirk, "You've never seen a pile of dead bodies before? Well, soak it up while you can, boys. We're finished here. I'm tired and I want to go home. I have a bottle of Ardbeg Providence waiting for me." Her sly voice was laced with a harsh callousness.

If possible, the eyes of the other agents grew wider.

"Jesus Christ, Eda," one of them choked out, "You're a monster."

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.

She slowly developed a reputation in the organization as a person one would not have wanted to be partnered with. People grew wary, uneasy around her. Noticing everything from her alcohol addiction to her ill manners and behavior to her attachment to those odd pink sunglasses, everyone had come to notice something different about the woman, something dark, something wicked.

She would often refuse to acknowledge people's discomfort with her, not minding them in the slightest. If they didn't like her, fuck them. She didn't need anyone's seal of approval.

Despite the confident defiance, she still couldn't quite shake off the disturbing notion of feeling like a foreigner. It had been several years since she had returned from that wretched place, plenty of time to readjust. Yet she just didn't feel like she was home. She felt entirely different from the person she had once been so long ago, before the "monetary payments." She sometimes wondered if she was transformed, reborn when she had been living in...

She immediately drowned the thought with a bottle of liquor.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

Bright red streaks filled the sky as the sun set in the distance, the light gradually descending. A ship cutting its way through the water, she barely noticed the small speckles of water drumming against her skin and the calm wind weaving through her hair, her eyes focused ahead as she stood on the deck. It had taken every ounce of her mental strength to make this trek, to travel this far. It was a personal journey of sorts. She had spent the past several years in a daze, feeling distant and unfamiliar with the world around her.

The valley of death, the land of the wicked, the place of her conception, the land of her origin, the final destination, she both desired and dreaded where this journey was going to end.

As the light disappeared over the horizon, the day lost its grip and gave way to the night. A crumbling Buddha came into her vision, its eyes eaten away and nonexistent, blind. She recognized the glint of city lights in the background.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

A sudden feeling washed over her. Her strength was slowly drained from her being. Knees shaking violently and her heart instantly filling with a tainted pleasure, she grit her teeth in anguish and took off her sunglasses, dropping them into the water below. Her final ounce of strength leaving her, her knees hit the deck, her forearms and head lowered. A miserable smile gracing her face, she tossed her head back, screaming in lament at the midnight black sky. A small glimmer of light that had once been present faded into nothingness, blue eyes becoming dull and empty. The final remnants of her soul had been consumed.

He descended into hell.

She was home.

THE END


A/N: I suck at symbolism. Waaah...

I don't know what drives me to portray Eda in a tragic light. I really, really don't know.

Well, may I have some idea. It could have something to do with the fact that I think the one thing that separates Eda from everyone else in Roanapur is that she did not enter the city as a villain. She could have entered the city with a proud mentality, and probably still remains loyal to her CIA roots in the present day, but I can't help but think that she's probably become tainted over her time spent in Roanapur. (In Episode 17, even Dutch said that the city rubs off on everyone.) I think Eda must have had some level of innocence before she was sent there. She was a cheerleader in high school for crying out loud! Unless she was one of those mean cheerleaders that picked on the unpopular kids, then I don't know what to think.

I need to stop making these angsty Eda centrics. She's a badass, damn it! The next story I write centering around Eda, it's got to have an upbeat tone. Even if it has to end with her out-drinking a bunch of crazy sailors at Oktoberfest! ... Okay, perhaps I won't go that far, but the story won't be angsty.

This story was originally only going to be one chapter long and a drabble fic, but I got kind of carried away and felt it would be more appropriate to break it into two parts.

The seven headed beast in Eda's dream in "PART I" is a reference to the beast mentioned in Revelation 17, not the one mentioned in Revelation 13. However, instead of being a symbol of Satan (which was one of its original representations in Revelation 17), in this story, I used it as a symbol representing Roanapur. And I admittedly added a couple of my own details to the beast (the toxic spit, the sores and the swimming corpses in the wounds).

The prayer in "PART I" is "The Lord's Prayer" and the prayer in "PART II" is "The Apostles' Creed." I left out the "[For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.]" in "The Lord's Prayer" and the rest of line 5 and the last seven lines in "The Apostles' Creed" on purpose. The prayers were something Eda was reciting to keep her soul, but they are not finished because she is incapable of completing them. The first reason I did this was for symbolic purposes, the second reason I did them was because I do think that Eda's personal religion is genuinely Catholicism. In Volume 2, Chapter 11, Page 151, last panel, she has a tattoo of a crucifix on her arm.

Kudos to the people who spotted the "American Dad!" reference.

Cheers.