195: Heroes vs. Villains
Heroes and villains, hmm? The things you kids come up with.... sounds so absolute, you know? So definite. You're the Good Guy or you're the Bad Guy, not a whole lotta middle ground there.
If there is one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is that people can change. And do. The noblest, the most perfect, the brightest beings in the universe, can fall. If you had told me, back in the old days (and I mean the old days), that someone would turn against the Name, I could have thought of a hundred of the host who I would have called traitor before the Morningstar.
Or myself, for that matter.
And yet, we both did, lost our footing and tumbled on down. For different reasons and at different times but the whys and wherefores and hows, these, these don't matter because the blood that we both brought about has obscured all questions of motives and justifications.
I have been the villain. Murdered and slaughtered and tortured, without regard or regret (at the time). Done things that, looking back, now, I... would find it hard to believe I had done, that it was me, and not some stranger wearing my face, if not for the fact that I can recall each act and remember, not just committing it, but how rational each one seemed at the time, how reasonable, how utterly justified. What I did was righteous, because I was righteous, just because I was just, good because I was good and how then could my hands commit evil? It was clear to me, then. All that I did was in the pursuit of a worthy end, and so all was acceptable and sanctified before the Throne. So I believed. I fought to bring peace, after all (the irony lost on me at the time); to destroy the lies and make things as they should be once more.
I thought I was the hero.
Michael called me, with more justification, a walking tragedy.
Heroes, now. For whatever given value of the word you wanna assign. Those who do right, and do it quietly, in a hundred small ways every day for each time they save the world, heroes tend in my experience to be humble. Confront them about it and you get a shoot, just doing my job, or it wasn't a big deal or well what else was I supposed to do? I met heroes, in Los Angeles, in my time as one of you. Those who worked the soup kitchen and the clinic on Sepulveda Drive. Those who loaned rent money to the single woman downstairs with the three kids, and let it go when it didn't get paid back. Those who did nothing more than offer a moment's smile, a kind word, a hand at the door, for another. The acts can be tiny, can be simple and small, but each one is watched, and recorded, even when there's no one around.
Mind you, same guy who popped a dollar into my cup could have gone on to his office and screwed someone out of a thousand, because that was my point to begin with, that the terms aren't absolute, that you guys are more complex and ever-changing than black and white. People change. And thank you-know-who for it, because we change and are transformed and we don't have to be anything forever, neither saviors of the world nor wearers of black hats. Because there is choice, because He gave you that, and every day you can pick, every moment, whether you are making the universe just a little bit better or not.
But try not to think about it too much. About being a bad guy or a good guy and which you are. Because as I learned?
It's thinking you're the one on the righteous path that takes you places you don't wanna go.
The villains always think they're the hero of the story.
______
gabriel * the prophecy series (movie) * word count: 666 (oops)
If there is one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is that people can change. And do. The noblest, the most perfect, the brightest beings in the universe, can fall. If you had told me, back in the old days (and I mean the old days), that someone would turn against the Name, I could have thought of a hundred of the host who I would have called traitor before the Morningstar.
Or myself, for that matter.
And yet, we both did, lost our footing and tumbled on down. For different reasons and at different times but the whys and wherefores and hows, these, these don't matter because the blood that we both brought about has obscured all questions of motives and justifications.
I have been the villain. Murdered and slaughtered and tortured, without regard or regret (at the time). Done things that, looking back, now, I... would find it hard to believe I had done, that it was me, and not some stranger wearing my face, if not for the fact that I can recall each act and remember, not just committing it, but how rational each one seemed at the time, how reasonable, how utterly justified. What I did was righteous, because I was righteous, just because I was just, good because I was good and how then could my hands commit evil? It was clear to me, then. All that I did was in the pursuit of a worthy end, and so all was acceptable and sanctified before the Throne. So I believed. I fought to bring peace, after all (the irony lost on me at the time); to destroy the lies and make things as they should be once more.
I thought I was the hero.
Michael called me, with more justification, a walking tragedy.
Heroes, now. For whatever given value of the word you wanna assign. Those who do right, and do it quietly, in a hundred small ways every day for each time they save the world, heroes tend in my experience to be humble. Confront them about it and you get a shoot, just doing my job, or it wasn't a big deal or well what else was I supposed to do? I met heroes, in Los Angeles, in my time as one of you. Those who worked the soup kitchen and the clinic on Sepulveda Drive. Those who loaned rent money to the single woman downstairs with the three kids, and let it go when it didn't get paid back. Those who did nothing more than offer a moment's smile, a kind word, a hand at the door, for another. The acts can be tiny, can be simple and small, but each one is watched, and recorded, even when there's no one around.
Mind you, same guy who popped a dollar into my cup could have gone on to his office and screwed someone out of a thousand, because that was my point to begin with, that the terms aren't absolute, that you guys are more complex and ever-changing than black and white. People change. And thank you-know-who for it, because we change and are transformed and we don't have to be anything forever, neither saviors of the world nor wearers of black hats. Because there is choice, because He gave you that, and every day you can pick, every moment, whether you are making the universe just a little bit better or not.
But try not to think about it too much. About being a bad guy or a good guy and which you are. Because as I learned?
It's thinking you're the one on the righteous path that takes you places you don't wanna go.
The villains always think they're the hero of the story.
______
gabriel * the prophecy series (movie) * word count: 666 (oops)