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Many thanks to MugaSofer for fact checking.

From the Journal of Annatar (3)

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

I find myself returning here once more. I am… affected, I find. Undeniably so.

Oracle. The very name makes my blood boil. How dare she take a name that should imply truth and wisdom, yet spout such blatant, poisonous lies? May she choke on her forked tongue.

And yet I cannot put her words out of my mind. They linger, like the seed of some vile parasite, ready to sprout at the slightest sign of frailty and feed on me until I am drained of life. Her words were false, and yet she spoke with such conviction.

Why? When she called me 'hypocrite'—how could that ring true? When she said that I had enslaved my teammates, my dear friends—why can I not convince myself that she was lying, rather than merely wrong?

I know I have not mastered the other Wards. I will not be convinced otherwise. I know my own powers, I know my Rings, and I know the Seven. I do not—cannot —control them. And I will never be able to, for as long as the Sun still rises over this eastern shore.

And yet, unless I sorely misjudge her, her power grants insight. So how can she believe these things? What can I draw from this? What can I learn?

I know that this introspection, this self-questioning, this damnable uncertainty is exactly what Oracle intended. I know that her whole purpose was to shake me, to affect me. Even so, I cannot deny she has succeeded—and, like a moth drawn to flame, I cannot help myself. I must seek to understand why.

To my credit, I have been patient. I have waited until the stakes are lower, until I returned home, where no one depended upon me to be the unyielding warrior I have become. Now at last I am here, sitting at my desk, pen in hand, and I can wait no longer. As it was after Leviathan's attack, so it is now: I must understand today before the morrow comes.

And yet, is not self-knowledge a good thing? Should I not thank Oracle, despite her lies and malice, for giving me this opportunity? It is an opportunity for growth, after all.

Enough jest. Hypocrisy: how does it apply to me, if at all? If I assume Oracle is not merely deluded, what can I learn from this?

As if by providence, an example makes itself apparent. I was beset, before the forging of the Three, by three primary tormentors: Madison, Sophia, and Emma. And I have not treated each of them in the same way.

I can scarcely remember Madison's face. The image in my mind is hazy, barely visible. She, I have ignored. She has no part in my life any longer. And this is entirely right. I desire no retribution, though I hope she learns the error of her ways—for her sake, and the sake of any future victims. I see nothing I might gain by her penitence.

Sophia, of course, I extended a hand to. I cannot easily think of any better decision I have made. Sophia is dear to me, now. She is loyal, steadfast, supportive—in short, everything I could hope for in a friend, and everything Emma was not.

But to Emma I was less kind. Emma attacked me—cruelly, viciously—and I retaliated in kind. It does not escape me that I was also instrumental in Sophia's rejection of her, several weeks later. Where to Sophia I have extended a hand, to Emma I was nothing so much as a Montresor. Nemo me impune lacessit.

What was the key difference between these two? Was it mere whimsy? Caprice, that made me help and teach one broken soul, and leave another to rot? Was it timing? Did Sophia come into my life as Annatar at the right time for me to seek to help her, and Emma at the wrong one?

No. It was indeed utility, as Oracle said, and I know that perfectly well. I can use heroes. Sophia represented a tool which I could turn to my advantage. A hero on the streets, whom I could use to better my city. Emma, on the other hand, was a small girl in a small school, with small ambitions, desires, scale. She was useless to me, and so there was no purpose in helping her.

And yet I refuse to believe that I ought to have forgiven Emma—or Sophia, or Madison, for that matter. After all they did to me—after the eighteen months of hell, after destroying any hope I may have had for the future, after crushing the light out of my world, I refuse to believe that it was my responsibility to forgive them. The saint may turn the other cheek, but failing to do so cannot of itself make one a sinner. There surely must be a grey area, or God is truly cruel.

But I mean to be a hero. To do more than the bare minimum. To go above and beyond.

This is the task I set for myself. The objective is to protect the innocent, not to punish the guilty. I do not feel that I acted unjustly with Emma, but justice, while noble, is not the ideal to which I aspire. Justice is a punisher of the guilty. I sought to be a defender of the innocent.

Have I lost sight of this? I killed Bakuda, and she deserved it. I cast off Emma, and she deserved it. I do not feel guilty over either of these things. But do I not fixate upon them more than I ought? I am no judge, no executioner. I am a hero, and the punishment of the deserving ought not to be my primary concern.

And punishment comes at a cost. Oracle knows me. She hates me not as Annatar, but as Taylor Hebert. And I cannot imagine why, except for what I did to Emma. Justice or not, I have created a powerful enemy.

I feel no need to hate her in the same way. I am certain, if Oracle would side with Emma against me, that she has long since done me wrong. That she, too, would deserve my justice. And yet I feel no need to lift her mask, nor even much curiosity as to what I would find there. It feels almost irrelevant, trivial now. Instead I will hate only Oracle, the silver-tongued supervillain who has placed my father into danger.

Kaiser knows my identity. By extension, he knows my father's. Oracle—for I am certain it was she who told Kaiser my name—has placed him in incredible danger. Kaiser may have been against the murder of Fleur, years ago, but things have changed, and so has he. If nothing else, his taunts tonight, his flagrant use of my civilian name, makes that abundantly clear.

I love my father. I may not be with him as often as I would like, I may not embrace him as often as I should, but I do love him dearly. To lose him would be devastating. And yet to betray those ideals for which I stand would be no less so.

What will I do, should it come to a crossroads? What will I do, should it prove necessary to weigh my father's life and happiness in one hand, and my identity, my very soul, in the other? What will I do if I am forced to choose? I never dreamed that such a choice would ever come before me, not in my darkest nightmares, and yet here it is.

Kaiser, you have made an enemy today. Take comfort: I do not think we shall remain enemies for very long.

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