Work Text:
Somewhere on this planet, the Revenant thinks, there is a dog left in its master’s house for the day.
When one is left to his own devices, the true nature of his soul is bared to the world. The Revenant has learnt that time and time again. It’s a lesson for the ages - no Gods and no Masters will have anyone going stir crazy. It’s in the nature of pawns to seek leaders, it’s why ants have queens and it’s why humans have dictators and it’s why someone will always rise above to crush those beneath them. Cogs do not function by themselves.
Will it lie patient and waiting to be ignored after its master returns, or will it tear up the couch cushions, to get scolded and kicked?
He’s out of that loop. There is nothing in the “nature” of the Revenant. He’s the dog that’s been kicked so many times that it has no reason to listen to its master’s screams and simply doesn’t, lets him scream until his throat is hoarse and tears are streaming from his face and the couch cushions are shredded, because the Revenant is so terribly bored and emotionless that nothing means anything to him anymore and he’s forgotten what the loving touch of a hand feels like and it makes him want to die.
Maybe that’s why he’s pushing food with his fork, staring at the plate in boredom.
There’s a handful of peas, maybe. A steak from some foreign animal. Strange-looking mushrooms. Had they invented new food since last time? He’d never given much attention to it before. An egg - the centre of it is red (the yolk, he thinks), it bursts when he pokes it with his fork. He wishes he could eat it, and vaguely he feels an adjacent table’s eyes crawling on him, and he gurgles in annoyance and stands and looms over everyone within a ten-foot radius without meaning to. Sometimes he does things without thinking twice about them and coming into this bar is one of them. The signage was appealing.
He leaves the bar, then, wandering aimlessly. He’s chewing the couch cushions, alright, just waiting until someone recognizes him and he’s got to go again. That’s fine. He has no direction and no-one to please and that’s just what’s so mortifying and he knows it; he’s the mangy mutt with the deadly gleam and the battle scars and the mawl that the neighbourhood kids are scared of. He killed his master years ago and nothing can hold him down anymore but the limits of his own morbid vengeance. He’s slipped through the cracks of fluttering Hammond authorities trying to rectify their grave mistake once before and he’ll do it again, and the next time, and the next. No Gods, no Masters. He’s bitten through the couch cushions and torn through the wall. Humanity is a terrible Pestilence and so are all of its creations.
The street he’s heading down is fairly wide, and it’s paved with cobblestones that make the shoes he’s wearing tap tap tap. He picks up on the sound because he can’t feel the sensation - a dog like him doesn’t need to. Why be able to feel the loving touch if the loving touch never arrives? It’s a foreign concept; love has become compartmentalized, stuffed into a cube that makes the matter of the man he once was. It makes him wonder if he felt love once upon a time. A partner. A pet. A child. A human to call his own and not just a commodity - someone to be equals with, as two ants in a nest. Sometimes he wishes that he could be happy on a lower plain of life - to wipe his memories and become blissful once more - but the thought of it makes him feel sick to the stomach that he doesn’t have, and he’s revolted when he keels over and feels himself starting to cry (but he can’t, of course, because dogs don’t need to and they never will). His “life” has been spoilt. Tainted by the masses. Maybe he deserves it, maybe he was born unto evil and bred unto evil, and then he can’t bring it in himself to care. He’s a broken tape.