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You're kind of like siblings, you think. You look similar enough. Sure you're a whole different shade and their voice is rougher and your hair is straighter. When you walk side by side the differences between you are stark. Despite all that, you're siblings.
You're both made by the same person, after all. Isn't that what siblings are? Born from the same creator? Made from the same cloth? Ink stained in the same way by the same hand?
You think it runs deeper than that. You don't like to think your creator had any part in it. Your sibling accepted your reached out hand, and you reached out to them, and you think that's what made you siblings. You flew with them and caused destruction with them and they broke their own code for you, for your offer. That was all you; that was all them.
Your creator had nothing to do with it, despite everything. You think that if it came down to it, under any other circumstance, if you held your hand out to them, they'd take it. No matter what.
It's what siblings do.
You like to think, when it's dead at night, and the fire in your palms is rushing through your blood and the light under your eyes is rushing around your skull, keeping your mind running too fast to sleep, that you're brothers.
Or maybe sisters. Maybe brother and sister. Maybe sister and brother. You don't know. You just know that they're on the other side of the room, sprawled out under the blankets they've half kicked off the bed, and you're watching them. And you know they're someone you can't get rid of. Someone who can't get rid of you.
They're snoring. They snore really fucking loudly. It's annoying. You think that's another mark in the sibling category. They drive you absolutely utterly insane sometimes. They don't listen to you. They never think before they act despite the fact that you've told them to think at least a dozen times. They don't learn from their mistakes.
You know you drive them crazy too. You butt heads all the time. Hell, just before you two had fallen asleep, you'd fought. It was about something stupid, you know. Something about you stealing their blankets even though you literally didn't Dark, why would I even want them? I have my own— and was resolved a few minutes before they passed out. A couple more minutes and they started snoring.
They drive you insane. You don't think you're twins. You weren't created at the same time. There was a long time between you, even if they don't know how long. Even if you don't know how long (you try not to think about it, try to pretend it doesn't exist, the days-months-years that passed with a chain on your ankle that you keep locked up within you tighter than you were locked up in that chest), you know you're older. Much older.
You think they're like a little sibling. A kid brother. A baby sister.
You turn around in your bed, tucking your blanket up higher even though you run too warm for it. They mumble nonsense in their sleep. It startles you.
But it dies down. It always does. Your little sibling doesn't get nightmares like you do. You do your best to keep it that way.
Your little sibling has a lot of weird interests. You taught them how to code—the basis of it; how to read it and write a few things. Nothing too complex, because honestly you don't know anything too complex. It was just the bare bones and a laptop for them to practice on.
They surpass you. Easily. You're pretty sure that they didn't really care about it until you showed it to them. They had every opportunity to ask to learn beforehand. You remember flyers for lessons on the street not even getting a passing glance. You know for a fact they didn't care about the computers and laptops in stores, or anything about programs or AI or anything. They didn't care about it.
But then you showed them a taste of it, and they threw themselves into it like there was nothing else they could do. Like there was nothing else they wanted to do. They pester you with questions about it all the time. They drag you to the monitor (they got a bigger one. A. bigger computer, too. You don't know how they got it. You have a few guesses, though) and show off games they've made, little things they've done. They're good at it, you have to admit. There's something in you, deep down, that's proud of them. Something that makes you grin and nod, something that laughs when they preen at your praise.
It's impressive. Really, it is. It's good for them to have hobbies, too. Maybe this'll kickstart the stop of the anarchy you've been sowing with them.
Later, late at night, you poke your head into their room to check on them, just a moment. They're facing away from the door, typing away at the desk. You can see them plugging themselves into it. Looking through their labels and data. Trying in vain to delete the one thing they were made for. Their main objective.
You walk into the room. They startle. They hadn't expected you to catch them, but you think that they would've told you eventually. Very little stays secret between you for long. Very little that matters, anyway.
You tell them it's hard for you too. To stop yourself from doing what you were made to do. Hard, but not impossible. Hard, but they've been doing so well.
They start to cry. You don't know how to deal with it.
But you're siblings, and you're the older one, so you wrap an arm around their shoulders and pull them close. It helps.
It doesn't solve anything.
The worst part of them is the fact that, at the end of the day, you're their hero.
They code obsessively, they destroy obsessively, because, at the end of the day, you're the one who introduced them to it.
You were created to be destroyed. To kick and scream and try to hurt back as you were beaten into the dust. To be a worthy challenge. When you escaped, you followed your code to the letter and kicked and screamed and hurt the entirety of the world back for what had happened to you.
They were created to destroy you. Unlike you, unlike what you've been trying to do every damn day since you escaped, they don't follow their code. You've envied them for it, even if you pretended you didn't. Until you finally stepped back, finally started wrangling it back, keeping it locked up within you so you could be yourself.
You took a step back. Saw the people you've hurt. The destruction you've wrought.
(You stop lying to yourself about it being code. You see how bitter you were. You see the people you've hurt.
Took you long enough).
Your little sibling has always been better than you, and their ability to suppress their own code, their directive, is something to be envied. They roughhouse a little too hard, they hurt you a little too much, but never in a way that matters
They've always been better than you. But at the end of the day, they've always looked up to you.
It wasn't their idea to destroy.
You've seen how much they love you. They've seen how much you love them.
But they don't listen to you, at the worst of times. Little siblings rarely do. When you tell them to stop, people are getting hurt, this is too much, Dark, you can't do this—
They don't listen.
When you shove them aside. When you begin to fight. When they shoot off the virus, the coded bug, they've always been so fond of insects and destruction and code and everything you've introduced them to—
It hurts, to hurt them. It hurts even more when they fight back, with nothing but hatred and utter awful betrayal.
(They were so excited to show it to you. You think that's what hurts the most).
Your sibling kills you. Or tries to, at least. Again and again and again. You don't think they believe it would actually work. You don't think they'd try it if they really believed that.
It hurts though. A sharp burning hotter than your fire. An awful acidic stab that leaves you weak.
You've fought before. The first time you met, you fought. You fought last night, over washing the dishes. This is different from both of those instances.
You could've won, the first time you fought. You did win. And the rest weren't serious.
They slam you into mountains, the sharp crag nearly breaking your spine. They kick you into the water, leaving you drowning. They use their fire. Their lasers. They defy all natural law to make you feel pain. Their bugs, their bugs, crawling and biting and dissolving your code faster than you can heal it.
They hurt you.
You hurt them too.
They don't win, in the end. The five who'd bowed to you for taking out a single bug stand and fall in front of you. They stand in front of an army. They are taken out by a single stick. It takes seconds.
And then one, the one you know is—like you, like your sibling, reveals just how alike the three of you are.
They kill your little sibling.
You—you thank them, because you would've died, because they can still kill you, because it's what they deserve, but—
But then they leave. They leave, and you're left alone, in the wreckage of everything. Alone, for the first time since they'd been created.
Your little sibling is dead. They tried to kill you. You tried to kill them.
You're the older one, so you're the one that they went to for comfort. You're supposed to be stronger than them. You're not used to having arms wrapped around you for comfort.
You're not allowed to cry.
So you don't.