Chapter Text
Someone’s knocking.
“You should go answer that,” Grandma says, and Miriam rolls her eyes but obliges, trawling over and opening the door.
In front of her is the Hero. What was her name again?
“What the heck are you doing here?” Miriam asks, stepping back from the door.
She doesn’t have her sword. She can’t hurt anyone.
“I want you to kill me,” the Hero answers, her gaze serious as it could be.
Miriam shuts the door.
A few minutes later, there’s another knock. This time, Miriam steps out to meet her.
She looks pitiful. Pathetic. Nothing like the Hero Miriam had seen before the now-averted end of the world.
She’d been a little pathetic then, if Miriam’s being honest with herself, but here she’s just…
Really, really pathetic.
“I’m not going to talk about murder in front of Grandma,” Miriam says.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted you,” the Hero answers.
Is that the first time she’s ever apologized for anything? Miriam didn’t think the Hero could ever regret.
“I don’t think you are.” Miriam crosses her arms.
“I’m serious, though. I want you to kill me.”
And, well—
For all the cruelty the Hero’s done to Miriam personally and to others, Miriam’s not a murderer. Not like she is.
“No.”
The Hero blinks. “It is someone’s duty to kill me. I thought you would be eager to. I hurt you. I hurt your companion. I killed those Overseers, and I didn’t look back. It was my duty to, since the Overseers could no longer fulfill their duties. And I’m not able to uphold my duties as the Hero anymore. Nobody needs me.”
“Yeah, but it’s not mine. Get out.” Miriam taps her foot. “I’m not like you. I don’t owe anything to anyone. And I’m not a murderer, either.”
“Not like me?” The not-Hero smirks. “Don’t pretend you’re any better. Your friend might get off on pretending like they’re high and mighty, but you’re vicious. I know what you can be. If you were just brave enough to do it.”
“What are you going on about?”
Miriam just needs her to leave. Pick up like it never happened. It’s just like she says. It doesn’t matter that she was the Hero anymore. There doesn’t need to be a Hero.
“And here I thought you actually had a spine,” she spits. “Kindness won’t save you, you know.”
Miriam huffs. “Sure. But I’m not saying no because I care about your life or anything. I just don’t want to be like you.”
“You don’t understand,” she growls. “You’ll never understand, I guess. You’re never going to understand our real duty to this world. It’s not murder. It’s what I deserve.”
“Maybe it is. But not from me. I don’t owe you anything. Even if it might be satisfying to see you die…I’m not going to be the one who kills you.”
“I tried to do it myself. One last duty to the world. But I didn’t die.” She sighs. “So I need someone to do it for me. So I can be sure it happens.”
“You’re pathetic.”
She doesn’t respond to that, which is probably the weirdest thing she’s done throughout this entire conversation — which is a weird bar for a conversation that began with her begging Miriam to kill her.
“I don’t care about your baggage. Go have your crisis somewhere else.” Miriam turns back to walk inside.
“So you don’t care, then?” There’s a new gleam in the not-Hero’s eye. “You don’t care about that broom of yours I broke. You don’t care about the Overseers I killed. You don’t care I nearly ended the world.”
“It’s still here. Why should I care anymore? Don’t get me wrong. I still hate you. But I don’t care enough about that to want to kill you. You’re not worth the effort.”
“Fine, then,” she says, turning to face Miriam directly. “I’ll make it worth the effort. You. Me. Until one of us dies. Bring whatever weapon you want. No magic.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Miriam looks at her incredulously. “No way.”
She knows the not-Hero can fight disarmed, even if she doesn’t want to. She’d seen her friend get kicked in the ribs enough to verify that. And even though Miriam can fight dirty, when it comes down to battles, she’d rather keep her distance from the action. She wouldn’t even get what she wanted from a duel like that. Miriam doesn’t think she’d be able to kill her with her bare hands.
(She’d certainly thought about it before, after the second time her broom was broken. She’d been exhausted and done and she’d just wanted to end it, then and there, consequences be damned.)
(She wouldn’t have been able to then if she wanted to. She has more energy and strength now — but she’s still not strong enough.)
“I don’t get it,” she admits.
“Do you want to kill everyone you hate?” Miriam asks in response.
“No,” she mutters in return, kicking the grass at her feet. “I didn’t hate them.”
“I find that pretty hard to believe.”
“I had to kill them. You’ll never understand, because you’re refusing to kill me. You’d never understand what a true duty looks like.” Her gaze hardens. “We are all designed for something. You were stopping me from doing what I was supposed to do.”
“And what, you’re the type of person who just jumps when someone tells you to jump?”
Miriam has trouble believing that. She never seemed like the type of person who was just following orders — no, she enjoyed killing them. It might have been her orders, but she liked carrying them out. And even now, Miriam doesn’t think she actually regrets having killed them. Just that she couldn’t finish the job.
“When a goddess tells me to jump, sure,” she fires back. “It really was a bad idea to ask you. I should’ve known nobody would understand why I need this.”
“Nobody needs to die. That was the whole point.”
“You’re an idiot. Everything dies. That’s how nature works,” she spits. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I don’t have to save anyone,” Miriam answers. “I don’t owe you a thing. I don’t care about whether you live or die. I don’t need to kill you, but I don’t need to save you, either.”
She doesn’t owe her anything. Killing her, letting her take up space in Miriam’s mind — she refuses. No longer will she allow it.
She turns away and goes back inside.
“Wait.”
In spite of her better judgment, Miriam does.
“What now?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just thought you'd be angry enough to do it, and smart enough to understand why it's necessary.”
Is…she apologizing? Again? Did the world actually end this time?
Miriam doesn’t have anything to say in return, at this point. She just goes back inside.
What the hell was all that?
Miriam can’t sleep. She still can’t stop thinking about the not-Hero, begging for Miriam to kill her.
She’s pathetic. It is pathetic. To think someone like her could be reduced to begging for her death…
It’s kind of satisfying to see her like that. It’s good to know she’s really human. She always tried to show off that she was better than anyone else. And Miriam has never liked arrogance. Now that there isn't a world to slaughter, she’s just like them. Ordinary. It feels good. Like she’d seen a side of her that no one was really supposed to sea.
Eya, she really hadn’t expected to live, had she? It would explain the whole “you have a duty to kill me” thing. She’d expected to die before. Miriam can’t really reconcile the idea of the perfect, poised Hero not wanting the glory that would come from living.
Or maybe that was the point. She’d wanted the end of the world so she could kill herself.
Ugh. Why did she have to bring the whole world into it? And that whole world included Miriam. And that’s how she got wrapped up in all this in the first place.
Miriam’s not a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. Not like them. But the idea of murder doesn’t really sit right with her. She can fight, okay? She’s not against fighting. But even then murder, in cold blood and premeditated? She can’t really handle the idea that someone died because of something she wanted to do.
She’d wanted the Hero dead at a certain point. She’d felt that level of hatred, from the bottom of her heart. She’d been tempted to repay cruelty with cruelty. But the difference is that she knows she’d regret it later. The Hero is a cudgel for cruelty. Someone chosen to hurt Overseers-turned-monsters. Someone who helps people in the short term and eliminates the world in the long run.
Is there a punishment for trying to end the world? Should there be? Ending the world was the “right” thing to do. They were supposed to just let her do it.
But neither of them wanted the world to end, so now they’re all here. And clearly, the not-Hero hadn’t taken it well.
It’s kind of sad, imagining someone that never expected to live past a certain point. Miriam kind of gets that. She’s cool with the way things are now…but there had been a point before they came singing into her life that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand day-to-day life before doing something drastic.
Not as drastic as what the not-Hero wants to do. But still, something drastic. But she’d gotten the shake-up she had been asking for…and she had gotten two brooms destroyed because of it. Among other things.
Miriam thinks she understands. Which might be worse than confusion. She’d always wanted to die. She just expected the world to do it for her.
Did they know that at the end? When they made their last stand, tried to hold off against her for the sake of the last Overseer? Were they trying to save her, too?
It sounds like the type of thing they would do. “Saving the world means saving everyone, Miriam! Even the people we’d rather leave behind. Someone out there has to care about her too, right?”
Miriam said that she didn’t want to care anymore about the not-Hero. Her fate doesn’t matter. She could’ve gone and threw herself off a cliff after their conversation and Miriam…
Well, it would kind of suck that someone died, in the way that someone dying is usually pretty bad. But it wouldn’t really matter that it was her, just that someone in general did that.
It’s out of her hands now. Whatever the not-Hero does, Miriam doesn’t have any influence on it.