Work Text:
Susie never wanted to be a murderer.
When she was younger, hanging out with Julie at her place or going to the ice cream shop--the really nice one, the one with the rainbow sherbet, the one that’d closed down just before Susie’s sophomore year--and she thought of the future, she thought of maybe going off to college sometime in the future, following a path even she didn’t know yet.
Maybe she’d become a botanist. She’d always liked flowers.
When she joined the Legion, those plans changed a little. She still thought of going off to college, of getting a degree and getting a cool job--maybe she could get an art degree! She’d had no idea one could get a degree for just
drawing
; it sounded perfect!--but she also thought of taking a really long road trip once they all graduated, maybe even taking a plane somewhere across the ocean and seeing the world with her friends.
And then… and then everything with the cleaner happened. Frank had stabbed him in the back, and she had watched, and she had helped, and she had failed them, in a sense.
They’d reassured her that she hadn’t, but she couldn’t help but feel that sense of crushing doubt and guilt--that sense of
failure
, because, in the end, she couldn’t deal the killing blow herself. Frank had had to help her.
Susie was an empathetic, kind person, really. She didn’t want to hurt anyone at all. She wanted to
help
people--when she was younger, she’d wanted to be a doctor, before she realized how much blood and gore was involved in patching up injuries, how she felt queasy at even the sight of blood and knew it wasn’t for her.
But she disregarded all of it, every single one of her morals, for the Legion.
They were her friends--and friends came first. She’d do anything, anything at all for them. She had, before--she’d broken into stores and stole things for them, had taken spray paint to blank walls because she found it fun to ruin stores with her friends, even if it hurt the owner. Her friends came first, and she found it to exciting to commit crimes for them.
Her friends came first, and that meant when she had to kill the man, all she was focusing on was how she couldn’t get her hands to move, how she couldn’t make herself stab him through the throat, no matter how much it felt like letting them down to be unable to.
It made her stomach
churn
to kneel over his body, to feel the too-warm blood soaking through her leggings. It repulsed her, to even see that much blood in the first place. The sensation of flesh parting before her knife as Frank guided the blade into the man’s neck was sickening.
Everything about killing, about hurting,
disgusted
her. She never wanted anything, anything at all, to do with hurting people. Her knife was made for
self-defense
. She remembered Julie making it for her, snapping a ruler in two and sharpening it to a point after what had happened to her, after she had her mask shattered.
But, yet, Susie wanted nothing more to be able to kill. She forced herself through Trials--forced herself not to shudder at the sensation of ripping through clothing and muscle, forced herself to keep going. She
had
to, for the Entity--for the
Legion
. Because if she didn’t kill well enough, if she didn’t
do
well enough, she would be punished.
She would fail the Legion again.
So she pressed forward and she tore people open in Frenzy and she hurt them and she hooked them and she sacrificed them and heard them scream.
Because she had to.
Because she would not, would
never
fail them again.
(but what she had heard but never truly believed
is that she was never a failure at all. not then, not ever.
because she was their closest friend--
--and because she was one of them, no matter what. )