“You do realise you dragged me out of my own moody self-loathing for this, right?”
Arkadin tutted as he sat on a narrow ledge next to a clearly disturbed Rethavok. This Rethavok had uttered a prayer to the Thantophor, practically begging for a calm, peaceful, painless death. Of course, this idiot was about to decide that jumping off a building was a good way to do that.
“You… are moody and self-loathing?” the Rethan asked.
“Yes. Very. But frankly, if I can put up with myself, there’s no fucking reason why you shouldn’t be able to put up with yourself.”
The Rethan stuttered. Arkadin eyed them up and down. Grey skin and blue and yellow plating, slightly more orange than Arkadin’s own yellow armour. Weirdly, Arkadin couldn’t immediately work out how old this one was.
“I… I did a lot of bad things. I am a bad being. I should not be here.”
Arkadin rolled his eyes. “That’s a load of piss and you know it. You’re not a bad person. You haven’t done a lot of bad things. You were probably made to do most of those bad things by a person who was genuinely bad. Killing yourself like this though WILL make you a bad person.”
A flicker of panic appeared in the Rethan’s eyes. “I… what?”
Taking a deep breath, Arkadin began to explain, calmly and slowly, and with less anger and sass.
“First off, you are not a bad being. I am a death god, I am a bad being. But you’re fine.”
“I killed someone.”
“In self-defence. They would have killed you had you not killed them, I assume?”
The Rethan nodded. Arkadin tutted, then continued.
“You’re not a bad person. I am a deity, I know a bad person when I see one. But the more important thing is, if you jump, you will fall and most likely kill whoever you land on. That’s assuming you just land on someone who happened to be underneath you. There’s a high chance you could land on the roof of a vehicle and heavily damage the vehicle’s occupant, or cause them to crash into someone else. Or perhaps you just land on the ground, your armour and bones shattering and cutting into anyone nearby. Either way, it’s not exactly a painless, peaceful way to go.”
The Rethan sighed, but remained silent.
“Why do you want to kill yourself, really?” Arkadin asked. “Because I don’t believe that you believe yourself to be that evil.”
“It is… hard to explain.”
“I have nearly a trillion years on my hands. I have time to hear you explain your reasoning.”
“I… I have… abilities beyond natural means. I fear that I… I will be locked away. A curiosity to be kept in a cage and experimented on, forever.”
“What sort of abilities?”
“Electric ones…” the Rethan muttered.
“Is there anyone you can trust?”
“A… a handful of beings. Really just Retvik and my therapist.”
Arkadin paused. “Uh huh… And what’s stopping you from just, well, leaving?”
“Leaving?”
“Yeah, leaving. As in, fucking off and going and living your own life?”
“I… I am currently under investigation!” the Rethan stuttered, slightly panicked.
“You were about to kill yourself and there’s no one here to help you. If you wanted to, you could just leave and go and live a life of freedom. I mean, I’d tell Retvik of your intentions, because the last thing he needs is a heart attack at his age, but you could just leave.”
The Rethan blinked, then fell silent again, staring off into space. After a moment of thought, they opened the window behind them and began to climb back inside.
“Thank you…” the Rethan smiled slightly, as they made their way to safety.
“No worries. Now don’t do that again!” Arkadin grunted as he locked the window from the outside. “And be thankful for the fact that you prayed to me. Because the other deities would not have helped you…”