Blank Slate | ONC2023

Chapter Fourteen: You Are Not Evil

The ceiling is a boring, blank white. It's fitting, I suppose. Blank white ceiling, blank white walls, blank white sheets, blank white cell for me, Blank Slate. Maybe my past self would have seen it as ironic but all I can think of it is how sad of an end it is.

After all I did, after all this time, I still ended up here, in this cell, pumped full of so much power suppressants that I hardly have the strength to sit up. I am defenseless. Completely, utterly defenseless. Normally the thought would strike fear, but it doesn't, only regret.

All the things I did, all the people standing in my way I...I killed, was for what? This cell? A legacy of blood and destruction? Now that I am here, lying on very well might be by death bed, it seems worthless. Pointless. A horrible, bloody scar on my supposedly blank slate. This can't be what I wanted. It can't be my purpose. It can't be my end.

And yet, it is. I am captured. My secrets, my lies, are out and I have no allies to bail me out. Even the Villain Rehabilitation program, open for every captured villain, is gone. Or at least, I think it is. Why would they bother rehabilitating me? They can't make sure I won't hurt anyone without completely compromising my immune system with a constant flow of power suppressants like they are doing right now, and that is no way to live. In their eyes, it is easier to kill me. Better to kill me, even.

The contents of my stomach curdle and ferment. With a sigh, I close my eyes and stare into the darkness of my mind interspersed with static. Two faces stare back. One is my younger self, around twelve, who still has hope and determination gleaming in his eyes. The other is the picture on my file: me in my villain costume smirking in a confident and almost cocky way.

These faces were me. Are me. And yet, they are strangers. I do not remember being them like I should. Who were you really? I ask them. What did you want? Do you regret anything you did? Was the choices you made worth it?

We are you, they reply. We did what we thought was right.

And I suppose that is the problem. I did what I thought was right. I thought being Deception's exception was the right move. I thought believing her word that she would come back was right. I thought doing all those bad things to make her come back was the right choice.

I thought but I didn't know. How could I? How can someone know good from evil? Lies from truth? A good choice versus a bad one? Each can be twisted into the other, made please to the eye in the moment when all that lies behind it is rotting roots and thorny embraces. I, as me and only me, can't tell.

But there is a difference between them. There is truth, lies, good, and evil. There has to be—so many proclaim to believe it. So many people act like there is. Perhaps...just no one in the world can tell—truly tell—what it is. Or Perhaps people do know the difference and I am the one in the dark.

I don't know. And at this point, it doesn't matter. I won't find out before the day the heroes come to kill me instead of feeding me.

The door to my cell beeps and swishes to the side. Footsteps approach, stopping near my head. The chair placed beside my bed scrapes against the floor as it is pulled closer.

Opening my eyes, I turn my head. Citizen sits beside me, a crease in his brow. His curls are smoothed back from his face and he wears no mask. Up this close, it is obvious that we are brothers. Same curly hair—though his are darker brown than mine—same angled face—but his is sharper—and same smattering of freckles across his nose.

How did I never notice? For that matter, how did he not notice that I was his brother? He must have known for a while and just...didn't tell me. Why? And for how long? I squint, an ache blooming under my ribs.