Epilogue: Vanity Decay

Gasp!

I sat up, gasping for air as I panicked at my encumbering surroundings.

"Where is he?" I scurried against the backboard of my head. "WHERE IS HE?!!!"

"Venus! It's us!" A woman was by my side. She looked at me with worry in her eyes. "It's okay, it's just us…"

My eyes were widened with fear, as I looked around and regathered my senses. I noticed I was in a bed, though it felt unfamiliar to me, unlike the comfy futon I'd always worn.

"It's not blue…" My hand trembled as I picked up and observed the brown blanket draped over me. I then saw hand that wasn't mine, hanging along the bottom side of my bed. It was big, and lightly colored—not like the one I knew personally, which was covered with black leather gloves, and that held sharpened scissors.

"It's me, Venus." I looked up from the hand, towards the face of the man that spoke. He was tall, and big, but looked at me with the same amount of concern as the woman next to me did. Suddenly, a hand laid itself upon my shoulder.

"—AGH!" I immediately slapped it away out of fear.

"Oww… What was that for…?" I realized I'd hit the woman next to me, who rubbed the now reddened mark on her hand.

I was still static with fear, unable to properly process my envvironment.

"What happened, Venus? Why are you like this?" Another man to my left asked with curiosity. As I connected the sights of these three people surrounding my bed, I slowly began to recognize them again. Veronica, Gian-Luca, and Ian.

"I-I… He…" I couldn't do more other than mutter inaudible words under my breath. Eventually my face dropped into my hands, and I sobbed with the realization that I'd finally escaped my dream of infinite purgatory.

"It's not cold anymore… Are we…?"

"Yes, we're back at base, Venus. Metatron Tournament is finished."

My body slowly found familiarity in this warmer environment. It wasn't cold, like the winter air that circulated my bedroom in the manor, nor was the air tight and made it hard to breathe. I felt like I was finally in a place of comfort, surrounded by people who looked at me with warmth instead of dead-cold stares. This realization broke me, as I began to sob, pouring tears and cries into my hands.

I had finally died for the last, and one hundreth time, in that dream.

As my sobbing slowed down, and I raised my face from the puddles of tears that'd formed in my palms, I suddenly saw tints of red that stained my hands. It was blood beginning to reemerge.

"No… NO!!!" I began to shudder and flailed my hands away.

"IT'S OKAY VENUS!"

Gian-Luca suddenly reached out to me, grabbing my wrist and pulled me towards him. He enveloped me with a hug. "It's okay Vens… I don't know what happened to you while you were alone, or why you've been asleep for so long, but you're here now. It's okay…"

My chin hung over his shoulder, and as more tears began to swell in my eyes, I couldn't help but return the hug as emotion overwhelmed my consciousness.

"Venus, baby, I've never seen you cry like this, ever… What happened? Was it something that happened at the tournament…?" Veronica had approached me and asked. I looked up at her, and with my eyes reddened and puffed with sorrow, the memory returned of what had truly transpired before my purgatory began.

~

On a raging rooftop soon after Phase 3 had been initiated, screams echoed outwards.

"MIDAS! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE, NOW!" I yelled to catch his attention. Finally, Midas snapped out of the trance he'd fallen into. By then, Reed was already just a distance away from killing his comrade. I couldn't let that happen, so I decided to take it into my own hands to deal with the beast.

"Imbecile!" I raised my hand in an unfamiliar stance. "Prepare to be deceived once more by my Deception!" I clenched my palm tightly, and instigated the ability in his direction. Soon, the soared invisibly towards Reed.

"Reflection." Reed raised his palm.

"Huh—?" I was suddenly overtaken by a wave of nausea. "What…"

Slam!

I'd fallen to the floor, and gotten knocked out unconscious. It was at this point that my mind began to swim in a delusion of its own.

~

I put my hand over my mouth. "Deception…"

"What?" Veronica listened closely. "Deception?"

My face strained. "That was the ability I'd retrieved from Specialized Phase D…"

This stole Ian's attention. "Specialized Phase D?"

"Yeah…" I replied. "The ability would… impose a delusion on whoever you targeted… When I was fighting Reed, I tried to use it on him, but he used Reflection, and the ability was directed back towards me. I've been under Deception this whole time…?"

"You were fighting Reed?!" Ian stood up. His quick reaction startled me.

"Hey," Veronica sat him back down. "Let's hear him out first. Is that the reason you seem so traumatized, Venus? Because of your battle with Reed?"

For a moment, I hesitated to respond. I would have normally replied by lashing out that no one could go as far as to traumatize me, probably. But that old self of mine felt tucked away now. I'd unfortunately come to understand the real me, and remember the real me.

"Not because of that," I replied. "The delusion… from Deception… My purgatory… Again and again and again and again…"

"Hey, hey, Venus, it's okay. None of that was real, right? It was just a delusion from Deception…"

My eyes widened with fear. I backed away from the rest of them and their attempted closure. "No, no… Even if that's what I want to believe, even if that's what I'd been trying to believe all this time, I can't… After seeing what I saw I can't reject it anymore!" I began to tug at my hair with the panic that rose. "It wasn't me, IT WASN'T ME! THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE, BUT I CAN'T ANYMORE! I WAS SHOWN EVERYTHING! THE BLOOD, THE SCISSORS, EVERYTHING! I'M SORRY!"

I yelled and I screamed. My trauma was as clear as day, settling violently within my mind. These old and new memories alike encumbered my spirit, my pride, and drove me to complete madness. Screeching guilt etched its way back into my heart and it pained me to think back on anything from my past. I could only scream in anguish, sensing the pain I'd experienced worth a hundred days straight, which tormented my soul and traumatized my mind; I was losing sight of reality again.

"AGHHHHHHH!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GO AWAY—!!!"

"VENUS!" The three of them pulled my hands away from ripping shreds of hair off my head. "Calm down! We'll hear you out! We'll listen!"

Gian-Luca looked me dead in the eye. "We've all been in this together, haven't we? We're all Sins, and we've all come from the same tragic fate given to us by A.X.A., right?!"

In hearing these words, my spasm finally ended with sobs. I continued to cry as my emotion settled down once more. Once I'd finally taken some deep breaths and arrived to a calmer state, Veronica tried speaking with me again.

"Venus, baby, we're here to help you. You're not in danger anymore, and that's why we want to know what happened in your delusion so we can assure you that you're not in that danger anymore."

The images of my 100 different deaths reappeared in my head, bringing me a feeling of nausea, guilt, and regret to form on my tightening face.

"So much happened, so many times. The same thing, over and over again."

I bit down through it. I took a deep breath. I was ready to share my delusional story from start to finish. What felt like an eternity of purgatory and endless agony to me was about to be shared and revealed to my fellow Sins.

"I saw my irregularity." I covered my face with guilt. "I found out where my pride was born."