aeons_crackshot

Annabelle has decided, after half a bottle of whiskey, that knowing the future is most certainly a curse and not a blessing.

Forgive me Lord, I know not what I do.

She hadn't thought that she'd come back alive from her last desperate mission to save Primoris's, now Michael's, life. She had believed that her own blood would be the last shed as a result of that particular Devil's bargain. It wasn't...

Midwife to an age both terrible and great. What have I bound, and what have I unleashed?

Annabelle had listened with growing horror and despair as Michael had told her of the events that happened after her death. Her death had spurred his desire to control the world, to make it be what he thought it should be. With the terrible clarity of hindsight, she could see how Michael's pride and desire to better the world had twisted into arrogance and a certainty in his own rightness...

Should I have known you'd scribe your name in blood and fire across the face of the world?

It was no surprise then, that it came to blows. AEon, after two of its founding members had betrayed it and one departed for parts unknown, had become the very thing it had long fought against. The Society had sought to control Inspiration, to make the world forget that it had ever existed. Then Michael had decided to create something that would be impossible to cover up.

He had found a way to create others like himself, more powerful than the Stalwarts of her own lifetime. The Novas were his children really, for all that they were not his by blood. The things his children would do....diseases cured, wars and famines prevented, unspeakable massacres, disasters and devastation...

We are too small to comprehend the consequences of our actions.

AEon had tried to control the Novas, even rendering them sterile. Michael had gathered Novas to himself and proclaimed them outside of humanity and unbound by its laws. Michael might not have ordered the atrocities some of his followers committed, but he hadn't tried to stop them.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Annabelle had asked him if there was anything left of the man she loved...

A monster can wear a beloved face.

quite forgetting that she'd never said those words to him before. Some small shred of pride had kept her from telling him for fear of being rebuffed. The look on his face... It had been answer enough.

That had prompted Michael to explain his own feelings. She'd known that her love was unrequited, of course. She wasn't blind. Michael was in love with Max and had been afraid to admit his feelings to the man he loved.

We were two damaged souls. The difference between us, in the end, was that you turned the knife upon the world, and I upon myself.

She supposed it was some small mercy that the rejection had nothing to do with her personally. She'd plead tiredness shortly after that, most likely not fooling Michael in the least. Annabelle had never been in the habit of showing weakness in public. Anger came to her far more readily than grief, but it was simply too much.

Tell me, would you pay the price again?

Yes.

Annabelle put her head on her knees and wept for her own broken heart.