by Philotas Parmeneides
Warnings: Rated PG-13 for random corpses and split personality
Notes: This is a vignette dealing with Saga's thoughts as he contemplates the Holy Father's body on Star Hill in the eve of the battle with the Bronze Saints. It's based on both the anime and the manga.
You will note that Saga often switches between talking about himself and Arles as separate entities to actually admitting that they are the same person. Hence the ensuing grammar slaughter ("We are a man…"). I'm sorry if it's confusing, but I don't think that split personalities worry about grammar when talking to themselves.
You will also note that Saori/Athena is mentioned only marginally, and Kanon or Aioros are not mentioned at all (well, the last is hinted at, to be honest). That is because, more than his guilt over his past actions, I wanted to emphasize his resolution to put up a fight against his evil half until the end. I hope I was able to convey that. ;
Forgive me if this is not the best thing I've ever written, but I needed a break from "Panpolemos" and another fic I'm writing for a contest. It's meant as half chara study / half past-time.
Ooops, I almost forgot. Italics is Saga speaking to Arles, dialogue between "" is Arles speaking to Saga.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be called Athena!
Like the most clichéd murder novel culprit, again and again I return to the scene of my crime, the first of many, as if searching for the tool that will break the door of the tomb he locked me into, the prison of my very own body and mind.
He is aware that I am the one to bring both of us here, and he lets me do it. He knows these visits drain me of all my energies and will to fight him for weeks on end. What he fails to notice, however, is that when I emerge from the painful lethargy these trips force me into, I am always a little stronger than I was before. In the furnace of pain and guilt I forged my determination, hardened my will, found perhaps for the first time the true understanding of what is right and what is wrong.
I am almost free, as a matter of fact. Soon enough I will make him remember that I am the source of our strength. I am the original, the first. I should have also been the only, and the fact that he exists in this form is my failure, but that is not important now. As hard as I can wish it, the past cannot change. What really matters, what he does not realize, is that he is only the avatar of all I never dared express… but I am the one in charge. I shouldn't have let myself forget that.
His personality, the very essence that drives him, is the sum of my faltering faith, my failures and fears, my rage and pain at the senseless suffering that so abounds in the world. He sought to turn unnecessary evil into a necessary one, one that in his delusional dream would in time bring peace to this tormented world. Peace through massacre? It would be laughable, if it wasn't blasphemy. He blames the gods for the wars that shake the globe, but I realize now that it us men who choose to partake in the carnage in spite of the consequences.
He is only my dark reflection, the twisted version of the messiah I wanted to become. For a long time my spirit was bent almost completely out of shape by this realization, but my spectacular failure to achieve that dream of grandeur had at least the beneficial effect of curing me of my arrogance. I though I had the necessary wisdom to be a leader of men, but he proved me wrong on any possible account. We only brought misery and despair to add to the already plentiful sorrows of the world. I choose to draw the line now. I will not be the cause of other pain. Tomorrow's battle shall be the last ever fought in the name of my twisted ideals.
I will stop him, and that will probably be the last thing I do, but I am beyond caring about myself now. I honestly don't believe I'd even have the courage to face life after this nightmare is over, but through all my weaknesses I am the strongest of the two. I have to confide in that if I want to defeat him, which I do.
In the name of the ideal which I have come to recognize as flawed and grotesque, he shed so much blood to make up for the lack of a Third World War. His folly has to be stopped. That is the only focus of whatever of me is left in the body he has used for thirteen years, perpetrating horror after horror in his insane quest for power.
Together he and I regard the face of the man I should have served in Her name, and that he killed in cold blood, freed by my misplaced jealousy of a fellow saint's success over me. After so much time, the corpse's features have not changed. Decay refuses to touch his body. What a hateful sight for me, corrupted before death, corrupted beyond redemption.
The face of the monster, which is mine, morphs into a sardonic grin.
"What do you hope to accomplish by bringing me here one more time?" he asks mockingly, breaking the uncanny silence stretching over Star Hill.
I want you to look at what we have done. I want you to remember every single act and thought that will inevitably lead us to the eternal torments of Tartarus.
"Such a place, if it even exists, is reserved to those who fail."
We have already failed. All your scheming accomplished nothing. They are coming. She is coming. You will not be able to hide from Her.
"I hide from no one. And my only failure is being unable to get rid of you."
You do not hide? Is that why you send assassins to do what you don't have the courage to? You cannot deceive me. We are one. I don't like it anymore than you do, but it's true. I made us, you will undo us, and the circle will be complete with our death.
"You know nothing. What can a girl and five boys do? Should they fell all of Sanctuary's defences, they'd still have me to deal with."
Yes, I think, they'll have to deal with you. And that's precisely when I'll step in.
He frowns at my silence. It's wondrous, really, that I can have this privacy within his mind, but that only testifies for my renewed strength. Or it could simply be that he doesn't want to dwell in my thoughts too much. I suppose he doesn't like to look into my psyche any more than I like looking into his. Either way is fine by me. Unfortunately for him, I have come to the point when I am willing to do just about anything to fight him. Even face the dark side of myself I always pretended I did not possess.
They will do it, and you know it. They will defeat you. They are not even alone! The Gold Saints already doubt you, when they don't openly stand against you. How can you still trust your own judgement? Is the mirage you are chasing really worth the life of thousands, of millions? How many more will you sacrifice on the altar of this foolish dream!?
"I have no dreams, only ambitions. And those who fall are weak, unworthy. It's as easy as that."
Oh, he is good, really. Good at pretending to be completely evil and unfeeling just like I was skilled at making everyone believe I was kind and benevolent and devoted to duty. But he is no more the incarnation of a demon than I was one of a god, as so many people called me in the good old days when my soul walked the thin blade of fake virtue that would in time split my mind beyond repair.
No, we don't have the luxury to call ourselves after the fanciful extremes of philosophy. Good and evil are too epic terms to describe us. We are only a man, a foolish and misguided man who thought he could become the next Prometheus, leading humanity to a new level of understanding and enlightenment. What a pair of fine actors, what a couple of utter fools. But, again, the weaknesses I know too well, the same as my own, play in my favour. We, he and I, have this habit of failing to live up to the expectations we have for ourselves.
Then you are empty handed, for your ambitions are about to be vanquished. You are the weak one! The goal you seek cannot be attained! The world is not ready for the sort of freedom you want to give to it. It won't be for another millennium, with any luck. And the means you use taint the gift you want to bestow. Or was all your philosophising just another way to hide, to conceal what really drives you? The quest for power!
His knees bend as he crouches to look at the corpse's face. I suppose he knows more than a few of my own weaknesses as well. I detest the sight of the dead man's peaceful expression. It's the portrait of the serenity which will be forever hopelessly beyond my reach. He is dead, but truly he seems to be sleeping the proverbial sleep of the just.
"Do you mourn the loss of this man?" he asks derisively. "He was nothing but a fool, slave of out-aged ideas so and narrow-minded as to actually enjoy his servitude. He failed to recognize your worth. That is how I was able to kill him, remember? It was your resentment for him that freed me. He shaped you into what he wanted, then he finally rejected you. And that's probably the only right thing he ever did, you know? That's history, however."
Ah, a direct strike. I mentally cringe, like he expects me to. In truth, however, he can't make the Holy Father's death any more painful to me than it already is. But I have to stick to the elaborated script of our endless struggle. I have to pretend he can still affect me with his games.
But Athena is not! I remind him vehemently. She is real, she is the present. She is the future, and you know it.
"She will be nothing but a corpse in the turn of a day."
A corpse like this one, a corpse you can't bury. Don't you see? Corruption will not touch him. Though he is dead, there was something you could not kill. The same will hold true for Athena, tenfold! You will not win, and you know it. Maybe you don't even want to.
"You're quite the orator, I can grant you that much, but it won't do you any good. I don't care what you think anyway. By next nightfall, you will see the truth."
What truth? Even if you kill Athena, what will happen then? Will you move against Heaven itself? Do you think you can strike down the Olympians? Are you really so delusional?
"Do not accuse me of being delusional. These ideas are yours, aren't they? The only difference between you and me is that you are too much of a coward to act on them."
At this point, I pretend to crumble. I mentally scream and retreat in the far corner of our mind that is mine and mine alone. He will think that I brought him here tonight to try and convince him to give up, and that failing in this I would choose of shut myself from reality completely. Truth be told, at this point I'm not even sure that I would want him to give up. We are too far gone, he and I. There is only one option available for us at this point.
What is more important, however, is that he will think that I have been broken once more, that I will leave him to act undisturbed when tomorrow the Bronze Saint come to reclaim the throne of Greece for the true Goddess.
Yes, Arles, hold on to your utopia of freeing the world through perfect evil. Tomorrow blood will be spilt and in the aftermath of battle corpses will be buried. But Athena's won't be among them. Tomorrow I will break free of my grave, and then return to it forever.
End note: Waaa, it turned out much longer and messier than expected. The title sucks too. Oh, well, things can't be simple with Saga, can they? C&C craved and welcome!