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There are so many other things for Dark to hate it for.
It takes no effort to remind herself of them. It would take effort to try and ignore them.
She doesn't bother, of course, she does the opposite. She revels in the hatred, buries herself in it, lets it drown out anything and everything else, digs her teeth into it and makes it bleed.
She counts every reason, every chance she gets.
One.
Night falls, inky darkness outside the windows. Clouds have rolled in, enough to blot out any stars but not enough to storm or even rain.
For a little while, Dark doesn't think anything's wrong. She goes about her business as she would normally, absorbed in the code she can't quite master. She's so close, so close to finding it again and crushing it once and for all, so close that she doesn't register the darkness or Chosen's silence as anything unusual, until she hears a loud crash behind her and remembers.
She twists around and locks eyes with Chosen through the dark.
His eyes are bright red, wide and glowing with his panic. He blends in with the night that's crept its way into their home, so much so that if not for the light of his eyes, she wouldn't be able to see him shaking.
"You are aware that you can turn on a light, yes?" she asks. Dark doesn't wait for him to respond, bringing up a hand and setting it aflame to guide her path over to the dusty lamp in the corner, flicking it on.
The darkness vanishes under the onslaught of golden light, and in the much better visibility, Dark can see Chosen shudder once more before going still.
"Right," he says, exhaling hard, a bit of smoke escaping from behind his teeth. "Sorry."
Dark hums and walks back over to her chair, settling back down in front of her computer. She doesn't say anything else and neither does he, the two of them just lingering in the remnants of the drowned-out night.
They don't need to.
Chosen never says that he's afraid of the dark, and he never has to. She knows it by the way he tenses up whenever the shadows start to loom on the walls, the way his breathing picks up whenever the power goes out, the way he curled so far into himself that she could almost hear his spine snap in half when she, in the middle of a minor argument, threw a thick black blanket over his head.
He told her later, in halting words, nearly taking an hour to get the whole ten-minute story out, about the chest on ALANSPC. About the way it was always so, so dark in there, the way his night vision did nothing to help him see.
So Dark turns on the lights and she makes sure the blankets stay well below his neck and turns the knowledge in on herself and seethes.
She hates it.
Two.
Dark watches from the doorway as Chosen hunches over their bed and tries to change the bandages on his ankle.
She's seen them before, of course. Whenever his pant leg rids up or gets ripped by whatever nobody manages to get close enough, whenever he starts rolling up the cuffs when it gets too hot before abruptly stopping and shoving them back down.
He's shown them to her, once or twice, looked ashamed about it every time. She batted away his pinched expression to poke at the bandages, as gentle as she could ever be.
They were dirty, stained and loose and torn, clearly serving to conceal far more than to help anything heal.
They're still dirty now, still just as loose, but still, she watches as Chosen struggles with them.
She doesn't know why. He has fire, he could burn them off. He could use his lasers or his lightning or his ice or his superstrength or anything else. Even a nobody could tear them off, he has them in his grip right now.
But he doesn't. He takes the time to unwind them carefully, trying not to tear strips of fabric already torn halfway to shreds.
Dark doesn't understand, but he's struggling and she's here. Instead of teasing him about it she walks forward silently, takes his ankle in her hands, and rips the bandages off herself.
"I wanted to save those," Chosen lies. Dark doesn't call him out on it, just watches the bandages blacken and curl as her hand flickers with flame.
"Not much point," she tells him. "They were useless, torn and hopeless and useless. Better to burn it to a crisp than waste effort trying to be nice."
He doesn't say anything, just looks to the side. She takes that as a cue to look back down, to see what he's been covering up all these years.
A deep, deep scar, wrapping around his entire ankle, uneven near the top and bottom like the skin was cut the worst there. It looks old, very old, but that doesn't make it look any less painful.
"What—"
"A shackle," he spits out before she has to ask. "A ball and chain."
And suddenly, the way Chosen walks sometimes, dragging one foot on the ground like he expects some nonexistent weight to be there, makes so much sense. The way he takes off into flight like he's compensating for being dragged down, the way he hates wearing shoes unless he absolutely has to, the way he limps—
Dark grits her teeth and turns around so he doesn't see the way her face contorts into something ugly, something angry, something furious, something that festers.
She despises it.
Three.
It's not Chosen, but Dark herself.
It's something that's burrowed its way into her flesh and had the audacity to dig its claws into her heart, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.
Whatever it is pounds and pulses and bleeds and burns far worse than any fire ever could, scrapes at the edges of every single one of her thoughts, twists her dreams, does its very best to make her a traitor.
They're sitting on the couch, relaxing after an exhilarating day out, and all Dark wants is more.
And not because it's fun, not against everyone who doesn't matter.
She looks at Chosen, stretched out and peaceful and half asleep in front of her, vulnerable in front of her, and all it wants her to do is take advantage of that vulnerability to tear into his exposed throat.
It wants her to kill him, howls every moment she spends not doing it, makes her fingers twitch and her fire spark and her mind leap ahead of herself, plotting out the fight, the beatdown, the victory, lunge and dig her nails into his throat before he can react choke him choke him choke him counter his flames with her own pin him down and swallow every one of the screams he tries to gasp out until there is nothing nothing nothing left but The Dark Lord with The Chosen One dead dead dead—
Dark does not gasp as she wrenches herself away from it, because she doesn't want—cannot allow Chosen to know about this ugly thing urging her to betray him, but every one of her muscles tenses, the computer in her hands creaks as her hands grip it tighter.
Chosen looks up, brow furrowing, but she just flashes him a grin, forcing her hands to unclench so she can wave him off. He sighs and obeys, his eyelids fluttering closed again and his expression smoothing back out.
The thing in Dark wants him dead, wants him destroyed. It sees this and rejoices, because she has an opportunity to get the job done.
Dark doesn't want him dead, so she lights her mind on fire and forces the urge back into the recesses where it should live.
It's never gone for very long.
Dark loathes it.
She loathes the cursor.
Four.
Chosen forgets to eat for days and days on end, tells her it's hard to break a yearslong habit of not getting to eat for weeks at a time.
Five.
An advertisement starts playing on the TV and Chosen's flinches hard enough to set the whole thing on fire.
Six.
He wakes up screaming.
Seven.
He can't go to sleep.
Eight.
He sees one of the scars Dark has from their fight on ALANSPC and spends two days holed up in a closet until she rips off the door to pull him out.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen—
Dark never runs out of reasons to hate it.
But right now, putting the last finishing touches on her victory, she can only think of the least important one.
It didn't even look at her, during the battle it sent her on. It put her up against The Chosen One, a stick with a name that guarantees an eventual triumph, and then it turned away to a new game.
It got bored of watching her fight for it. It got bored.
It would've let her die without a second thought, would've let her die without even noticing. The only reason she's still alive is because Chosen took pity on her, The Chosen One looked at her.
So this time, Dark makes herself more powerful than anything. So this time, she makes her weapons strong and dangerous and flashy, completely impossible to even think of looking away from.
This is for everything it did to Chosen. This is for his fear of the night, the scar he hides, the way it keeps trying to kill him even long after they escaped.
This is for Chosen.
But Dark doesn't think it's wrong if this is a little bit for herself too.