Work Text:
‘I never meant for this to happen. Any of it. But, looking back, I don’t think I could’ve stopped it. Becoming this.. this thing . It was inevitable.
I can see everything. Everyone. All their suffering, everyone who has ever lived and died and everyone who ever will. I can see their fears, their loves, everything. It feeds me. I thrive off it. It’s.. addicting, knowing so much.
...
It’s all my fault, isn’t it.
I should have done better. I was picked for this, after all. My destiny. If there even is such a thing for anyone anymore. Not with the web being how it is. If it truly was, I should have done better, I should have-
No. It’s no use beating yourself up about the past, Sasha. They’re gone. Nothing you can do about that. I guess you’re gone too, in a way. Or maybe you’ve just evolved. For this new world you created. That they created. You always were extremely adaptable, weren’t you.
...
It’s odd. Knowing these things that weren’t meant to be known. I fear them, yet I have become them. I understand them, I see them, like I see everything. And so they fear me.
Good.
Let them understand how it feels, let them become the victims to the trap of their own design. Maybe it’s all I can do, maybe it’s all I should do.
...
It’s what Tim would do.
He’d storm in, in a blaze of glory, not caring what happened next.
[laughter]
I suppose that’s how he always dreamed he’d go out. Like in those action movies he loves, or those stories he writes. I hope he never found out I found those. I think he would’ve smothered me in my sleep.
I still keep them with me. They’re all I have left.’
-------
Sasha sighs, and leans back against the rubble of the building she currently takes shelter in. It’s been a long time since she’d seen anyone else, and the hunger was so strong it felt like stabbing. She hated feeding from the statements of others, it felt too predatory.
The landscape could feel it, sense it. It would shift around her, bringing her into yet another domain, filled with plenty of people with plenty of fear to feed from. But she ignored them all. Every time.
“The Archivist”, they all called her. She no longer had a name, not to those stuck in this hell because of her actions. Everywhere she went, everyone she saw, she couldn’t escape the feeling that they all Knew this was her doing, and that they all blamed her for it. All the voices, all the screams and begging for mercy, it all echoed in her head. It called to her like a siren song.
There were times where it felt less like hunger, and more like desire. These feelings know how to shape themselves, beckoning and making themselves seem all but easy to chase for those wicked enough to allow it. Those who recognize the path they’re walking down and embrace it, rather than run from it. People like Jonah Magnus.
Sasha was not like him. Not if she could help it. She saw the path laid before her, the one he set her up for, and she tried. She pushed, she refused to take from others, those stuck in this world of her creation. Oftentimes, like tonight, she gave statements of her own. Fed on her own fear, on the knowledge of all she’s done. It was never enough, it never would be, but she would rather starve.
It will not take her.
Never.