As she climbed the stairs to the hospital rooftop, Esther was overcome with a sort of sadistic glee. She was smiling in spite of herself, in spite of the horrific nature of the situation. Yes, yes, of course Joel Rotierre was behind it all. From the very beginning Esther had never much trusted him, this random interloper, in the empire they had spent building together for a full decade. It was, in the end, Joel that had ruined everything. Who had made a mockery of their work. Who had killed Esther's sister.
That particular thought was, of course, the one Esther had long been trying to avoid. Jill Okerye. How Esther had hated that name, the obscene ethnicity present in the moniker of the cutest, most inoffensive white girl on the entire planet. Esther still remembered the way Jill had stubbornly resisted Esther's efforts to force her to use her maternal surname. Jill Smith. That was the kind of name that wouldn't inspire unconscious revulsion from college recruiters who had never seen her face. Not that this much mattered in the new world that had been created after the Great Blackout. But then, wasn't that always Jill's fate? Taking meaningless moral stands that were vindicated, even worked out to her advantage in fact, thanks entirely to external factors no one could reasonably predict.
Jill was everything that could be hoped for in the hands of...these people. Esther had long known the extent to which the whole world as they knew it was being manipulated. Jerry Shankar, Cassidy Jones, Joel Rotierre. There were others to be sure. And Esther would kill them all. She would kill everyone. That was the only action that had offered her succor upon realizing that Jill was dead. This was Esther's power. She could make people hurt. She could make people suffer. They all deserved to suffer. Some more than others. And it was just as Cassidy said. Esther's own fate was to destroy.
So it was oddly inappropriate to come out to the rooftop, in the clear starry night sky, and just see Joel Rotierre standing there, waiting for her. Esther had quickly scoped out the area for possible traps, for possible strategems, for any pathetic attempt to get her out of the way. And yet there was nothing. Just one small diminuitive man, looking at her, trembling, obviously expecting her arrival, yet not having the slightest clue what he was even planning to say to her.
"H...hi..." said Joel, staring at his feet, while idly moving them around. "I know that um...this probably...isn't as bad as it looks...but um..."
Esther, by contrast, barely even had to think at all to figure out what she had to do next. In a swift dashing movement, Esther charged to Joel's location and delivered several light but highly precise blows to arteries near to Joel's heart. His eyed widened, and he started to slowly collapse, wincing in horrific pain.
"Well!" said Esther, smiling, very lightly walking, almost in a whimsical manner, around Joel's weakened body. "How was that? This is what a heart attack feels like. More severe though. And also not as lethal. I'm not done with you yet. Not by any means no."
Esther strategically grabbed Joel by some obscure joints in his legs. Over the course of mere seconds, she tossed him all the way back to the wall next to the stairwell. Holding on to his stomach, Joel, tried to get back on his feet, but only succeeded in vomiting. Esther observed that Joel had not had much to eat that day. All that came out of his mouth was some sickly looking yellow liquid. Esther deduced that it probably wasn't slippery enough to be a serious combat hazard.
What bothered Esther more than that, though, was that Joel was making no apparent effort to escape. She had, after all, tossed him to the stairwell on purpose. After all, Esther now understood Joel. The Gods of Lies. Every kind pretense he had ever extended to Esther was a matter of falsehood. He had, in the end, simply destroyed everything she had ever cared about. So it was, that Esther reasoned, she could trust Joel to simply make a run for it once it became clear that she wasn't going to allow him to leave the stairwell alive.
"Well!" said Esther approaching, attempting to maintain a smug visage. "Had enough?"
Esther could see in Joel's eyes that he was utterly terrified. Eveyr part of his inner self was screaming at him to run. And yet in a sheer act of defiance, Joel gritted his teeth and simply rose to his feet, one eye closed and still clutching his stomach in pain, limping even, just from the incidental damage.
"No."
Something about the way Joel said this drove Esther into an immediate rage. She grabbed him by the shoulders and took him overhead. She slammed his legs into the hard roof, brandishing Joel's body like a rag doll. She then did it again on the other side of herself, proceeding to gently toss him off to the side. This was a very relative term of course. Nothing about what Esther did was gentle. It was, in theory, non-lethal for Esther to attack Joel like this. But in practice, Esther was not motivated by humanistic principle. Her only objective was to make sure that Joel suffered as much as possible.
Esther looked at Joel's battered, broken body with an expression of satisfaction. Yet this was nothing compared to the sheer glee she had felt only minutes ago. The cumulative experience was starting to make Esther angry.
"Look," said Esther, trying to put on a concilatory air. "You don't want to do this. I'm killing you no matter what. But this will be over a lot quicker if you just admit that you made a mistake. That's all. Humility. You're capable of that, right?"
Once again Joel rose to his feet. Esther couldn't figure out where he got the energy. She knew that Joel didn't have any pain reduction augments. The physical agony he was in at that point must have been excruciating. Joel's breathing was slow, and his knees kept buckling over his own weight. Joel held his hand to his own chest as if he was afraid his heart would fall out. Yet for all that, Joel looked at Esther straight in the eye as he spoke.
"I don't think you want to hurt anyone," said Joel. "I think you're a good person, and I will never give up on you."
Something about Joel's entire manner really set Esther off. But at the same time she felt that the more explicitly miserable pain wasn't having its intended effect. Esther recalled the old fable of the sun and the wind, and how the wind proved utterly incapable of forcing the traveler to willingly remove his cloak. So it was that Esther decided the superior approach, for the moment anyway, was a bit more subtle.
Esther walked up to Joel, smiling once again, but this time in a decidedly more fake and artifical way. She took a hold of his shoulders. And from there, Esther just released her own pent-up energy straight into Joe;l's body. Strictly speaking this was an augmented ability, although Esther typically only used it to add an extra punch to, say, a punch. Without physical force, the main effect of the move was to force Joel to undergo a painful fever. Esther could see the physical illness unravel in Joel's pained eyes as he once again collapsed.
It was at that moment that the fireworks show started. It was, perhaps, overly confident of Esther to turn her back on Joel at such a moment as this, as she wandered off to look at the fireworks from the edge of the ceiling. Even a weakened Joel could find enough energy to lunge at Esther and possibly push her off, saving himself at the expense of any pretense that he possessed moral character. But Esther was confident of her ability to anticipate such an attack. And if not, so what? At this point Esther killed mainly so that she could feel alive. The fireworks display made her feel alive, with the sounds of cannons bursting in air. Esther could only imagine how she looked to Joel right at that moment. Tall, standing, imposing, flanked by the bursting skyline. Truly, Esther really was the Goddess of War.
Yet the minutes passed far longer than had at all seemed reasonable. Esther grew impatient waiting for the inevitable counterattack, but was reluctant to turn away from the fireworks, knowing that it may well be the last such display she would seen in her lifetime. Esther had been thinking like that a lot lately. What if she didn't live past the next day? Would she have lived her last moments doing what she loved, or just wallowing in regret?
It was at the tail end of one such thought that the fireworks display ended and Esther turned around. She saw Joel leaning against the wall, right next to the stairwell. He could have attacked her. He could have escaped. Yet with every nerve ending in his body screaming for relief, his adrenaline begging for a fight or flight response, Joel, stubbornly resisted, pursing his lips in preparation for this moment.
"Jill was worried about you."
"Excuse me?" said Esther.
"She told me everything about you," said Joel. "She talked about how she wqw your soul in turmoil. How she wanted to bring peace to your suffering. Jill knew that you were a good person at heart. And that's why I'm here right now. It's what Jill would have wanted me to do."
Esther could feel it. There was powerful emotional manipulation in Joel's words, trying to worm theur way inside her. It was an obvious trap. It had to be. Joel was the God of Lies. And Esther knew what a liar looked like. The first time she had a serious conversation with Joel, she could tell right then that he was a liar. Yet deep in the pit of her own heart, Esther was frustrated. At a time like this, her body would practically move of its own volition. So why was it that Esther's first response was word? Useless words?
"Don't you talk about her like that," said Esther, snarling, making her approach. "You didn't know her. You don't know me."
"She was lonely," said Joel, never daring to break eye contact, even as he could no doubt see the rage brewing inside Esther. "So were you. Neither of you ever understood it. How you needed teach other. You pushed each other away, and for what? Think of what you could have done, together. Jill always thought about the wonderful new world you could have made, if you had only joined forces."
Esther was at the end of her patience. As she got close to Joel, she started bludgeoning his muscles. Esther gave them the feeling of soreness. Of unearable heaviness. As she tossed him to the side in a crumpled heap, Esther had decided the last thing she wanted to see from Joel was more defiance. She could leave him on this roof to die long term if she had to. This whole process had gotten too repugnant. Esther didn't care if he screamed anymore, begged for mercy. Yet even as she thought over all this as logically as she could, Esther failed to notice that all of a sudden she had become much more reluctant to kill Joel outright. This was by far the easiest solution to her problem.
And Joel himself seemed to sense this. As the pain he felt no doubt had advanced to excrcuciating, his arms too limp and weak to even offer a pretense of support to his failing body, Joel stubbornly stood up. Once he had the energy necessary to do so, he stared at Esther right in the eyes.
"She never stopped believing in you."
For Esther, this moment held the strangest sensation. Out of nowhere, she felt like she was melting. How else to explain the drippiness of her face, in this humidity, this moisture up on the rooftop. It was only when Esther deigned to actually touch her own face, never breaking furious eye contact with Joel, that she understood what was happening.
Esther was crying.
Esther knew what crying was, of course. One of her soldiers actually had a fairly gimmicky augment that could induce crying. It was pointless and stupid. Yet even as Esther formed this thought, she understood that she was trying to change the subject. Get away from the enormity of the situation. Esther didn't cry at her own mother's funeral. Jill did. Jill had real human feelings. Jill was-
"Oh no,' said Esther, whispering, breaking down.
...Jill was caring. That was the thought Esther had somehow never arrived at until now. Jill cared about the world around her. That was the part about her that Esther never understood. The hero-worship...that, Esther had long figured out. Esther was the real provider in the family. Not their hopeless drug-addicted mother. But Esther had never really thought about anyone aside from herself or her sister. Esther had known plenty of discrimination in her time, but had always understood that the world she lived in was miserable. Did it really matter that much that Esther was black, when every other possible advantage..?
The pain was getting worse. Esther could tell from the almost hostile way her face was reacting to the moisture of the tears that this was an unheard of event for her, that even as her body understood the underlying mechanisms, physically she couldn't handle it. For all her best efforts, Esther fell to one knee. That was why, then...that was why Jill had come to beg for help...when she never had before...
Joel continued to stand in front of Esther, not looking, not approaching, not doing anything. In that moment Esther truly despised Joel. She could understand now why she let her guard down, playing billiards with this loathsome man. Joel was just like Jill, in a lot of ways. His stupid, naive romanticism, his idiotic willingness to crash into a disastrous situation, risking his own death in the process...could that really be called a suicidal impulse..? After all, Joel wasn't dead. Jill was though. Jill was dead. She was gone forever. In the end Esther had failed to protect her. Failed to provide her little sister with the life denied to Jill. And all Esther had left was her...power...the joy she felt at destroying, just for the fun of it.
Was that really...all there was..?
Esther fell down to the ground completely, smothering her face in her hand, enraged by the moistness but unable to respond. Esther had subjected herself to all sorts of extreme pain training. She had just subjected Joel to some of that same misery. Yet somehow, throughout it all, he was still standing, still defying her. Just like Jill. No matter how much Esther exhorted her otherwise, Jill had always stubbornly insisted on doing what she believed was right. Jill had always argued with Esther about the importance of making a better world. Yet Esther had never seen it. How could she have been so blind? How could she make sense of how Jill saw the world...when Esther herself...
For all her internal turmoil Esther could feel Joel approach. Esther understood the tactical value of a situation like this all too well. Esther knew that a single concealed weapon, properly aimed, could end her. Esther knew that Joel knew this, because she had taught Joel all about the importance of carrying a concealed knife. As Joel got close, Esther couldn't stop thinking about how this was the perfect excuse to end all the pain, invalidate every vile statement Joel had made, to just kill him in a single brutal counterattack and then move on. To kill everyone else who had ever deserved to be hurt in turn.
Yet Joel had no concealed knife. Though his own body was breaking, Joel instead chose to use the last of his strength to clutch Esther in a warm embrace. Joel was, however clumsily and incompetently, attempting to comfort her.
"It wasn't your fault," said Joel. "You aren't a monster."
As it happened those simple words did more piercing damage to Esther's psyche, her very soul, then any knife ever could. Esther finally understood what Cassidy meant by Joel's power. Even as Esther understood logically the implications of what it meant for the God of Lies to say such things, she chose to believe them. The pain was too much to bear of attempting to draw any other conclusion from what had happened, to fully grasp, wittingly or unwittingly, the true depths of Esther's sheer usefulness.
"I should have told her," said Esther, whispering through the tears. "I should have told her how proud I was. It would have meant so much to her..."
"I knew you felt that way," said Joel, weakly tapping Esther's back.
"Idiot," said Esther, laughing in spite of the pain. "It would have been a lie. I never understood her. I still don't. But still...it would have meant so much to her...if I could have just pretended."
Esther looked into Joel's bloodshot eyes. She saw the pain she had inflicted on him, on so many other people. It haunted Esther, finally understanding now, that she did not regret anything she had done to anyone in this world, save for Jill. This was the person who Esther was. There was no honor in the life Esther had lived. Every good deed she had ever done was only by accident. And even now, Esther planned to live fully selfishly right until the very end. This moment of extreme emotion would pass, and Esther would soon return to her natural state. No beliefs, no convictions...just the unerring desire to destroy, until she met someone powerful enough to destroy her first.
"I wish I could do what you can do," said Esther, clinging to Joel's warmth, realizing it would be the last genuine human warmth she would ever feel for the rest of her life.
"What's that?"
"I wish I was as good as you are at lying to myself."