Pretenses

[Toaster]

January, 836 A.S.

It was a gorgeous late afternoon, the sun slowly setting behind distant, rolling hills casting a verdant landscape in golden light and painting the clear, cloudless sky deep purples and reds.

Or so the window screen claimed.

In reality, Sable knew, there was nothing on the other side of the room's outside wall than a view of overcrowded shacks, muddy streets, and a steady stream of tired, filthy laborers returning from backbreaking shifts in the nearby mines and factories, all beneath the overcast and dreary skies of Planet Sprague - or Nottingham, as the Bretonian authorities insisted on calling it. No light from Omega-3's blue sun broke through the heavy, smog-laden clouds today, and not a single blade of green grass remained where miles upon miles of prefabricated housing units and manufacturing plants had been erected to shelter and employ the millions of workers and their families who had been displaced by the war with Gallia. Going on nine years since the official cessation of hostilities, the loss of Leeds still placed a seemingly unbearable burden on the Kingdom and its people. Once, Sable had fought and suffered with them. Now she found herself living among them, some fourteen years later, housed in a barely habitable condominium, sharing a small apartment with three other families.

She sighed. It was a far cry from her old apartment on Manhattan, with its high rise view over vast forests and pristine nature reserves. It had been expensive, but Liberty had paid her well in those days to hunt down Rogues, Outcasts, and Insurgents. But what money Sable had saved had long since been spent.

Who would have known that a self-righteous vigilante crusade against all evil would be financially ruinous?

A flick of a switch replaced the false view on the window screen with a mirror image of the mercenary. She stood there, naked, regarding herself. Seven years she had spent chasing down the three lieutenants who had taken up Pedro's mantle and split his criminal empire between them. Seven years she had fought with no regard for her own safety or well-being, believing that only this way could she redeem herself for her own sins. It had left her body scarred. What once had been a canvas proudly etched with mementos and trophies of her past achievements before being wiped clean by benefactors she had never met, was now once more covered in burn marks, shrapnel cuts, and bullet wounds. But none of the pride remained. None of the satisfaction.

Doubt.

Doubt that she had lived a life not worth living was all she still felt at the sight of herself. The life of a mercenary. The life of a vigilante. The life of a killer. Oh, how certain she had been of herself when she set out on this crusade, assured of its righteousness, convinced that if she could just rid Sirius of enough criminals, enough murderers, rapists, traffickers, and slavers, it would surely absolve her of her own crimes. That she could finally find peace and a life that would not revolve around killing again and again and again.

But that was the problem with evil. There was always more of it. More than any one person could ever hope to defeat. As long as there were two people alive in the universe, there would be crime and there would be injustice. Expecting anything else was naive. No, worse than naive. Stupid.

Sable had realized this soon enough. That her mission was flawed, pointless, and ultimately doomed to fail. But she had carried on all the same. What else had there been for her to do, after all? She, who had committed terrible atrocities herself, should be doomed to this Sisyphean labor, never to find peace, never to find redemption until the day it finally took her life. Enthusiasm and hope had turned to despair and finally to resignation.

The mercenary regarded herself in the mirror and saw a broken woman. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually. Her crusade had been a sham. Her morals a facade. Others had warned her of her folly. Called her out on her hypocrisy. But she had refused to listen. She had ridden her high horse until it eventually collapsed under the weight of her own lies. And now all that remained of her was an empty husk, a shell of a human being, existing day by day, meandering from job to job, kill to kill.

Pretending to still be alive.

---

Olivia Sable