1.5) Her Two Worlds

Abigail Kovacs, the Leviathan. That’s what the public knew her as. The Leviathan who always worked overtime, running around trying to fix everything.

But at the end of the day, all that work wasn’t actually enjoyable; she hated it. She only worked so hard because she wanted to try and make things better, clinging tightly onto the ideals that she had developed in her adolescence.

But nothing seemed to change. At first, she found it strange: she possessed otherworldly power and the support of eight other Leviathans, yet even with all of their combined might, they seemed to never make a lasting difference. As the years went by, she began to truly understand the gap between the real and the ideal.

It was like trying to plug all the holes in a sinking ship.

Abigail Kovacs looked out the window of the limousine. As her chauffeur drove them through the underground streets, she could see the inhabitants of the city watch the vehicle pass by. Even if she leapt out of the car now, she wouldn’t be able to do anything–she couldn’t tell the innocent apart from the guilty.

Or perhaps they were all innocent at their very core, she quietly amended her inner dialogue.

Oneiros was a broken city. There was no way to tell the righteous from the immoral, the victims from the offenders. The system it ran on was broken, perpetually creating more problems as she solved them. There was an overwhelming presence of despair and futility that lingered as she stayed in the city, even as she was trying to get a few hours of sleep at her hotel.

There were some good memories she had of Oneiros; she was happy with the small moment of peace she shared with the boy at the prison. But even in those small moments, there was always a voice in the back of her mind that told her that all the people she momentarily saved will eventually fade into the permanent darkness.

Admittedly, a part of her was quite relieved when Victor gave her a reason to leave Oneiros and focus on something less so daunting. Yes, it was a matter of "saving the world", but it felt as if she was taking a break. She was almost treating it like going on a light-hearted adventure...

... Because Victor would be there. To her, he was the one of the only things that connected her to the past. He connected her to the world where reason still existed, where hopes and dreams felt real and achievable. A world where she could stress about lesser things, like what flavor of tea she should drink or what the color of a wall should have been.

In that sense, Abigail felt that she lived in two worlds. It was her time in that illusionary, gilded world in the past that allowed her to continue her struggle in such hopeless environments.

But every time she opened her eyes, she was faced with the grim reminder of her role on this Earth. Even now, as her limousine drove her toward the exit of the city, she could see that they were all afraid of her. They didn’t think that she was here to help; they thought that she was here to strike them down. It was as if even the most innocent residents of the city had a sin to hide. They were afraid of her, the Leviathan, one of the supposed heroes of the world.

Abigail put her elbow on the armrest. Her eyes adjusted away from the city and onto her own reflection on the window.

The Leviathans were people chosen to fight internationally for the wellbeing of the people. They were warriors who were given the power, by the people, to enforce rules and justice upon the common folk and the elite, but mostly for the common folk.

But it didn’t seem like these people trusted the Leviathans very much. Sure, they were well-liked and honored in countries without much conflict, but in places such as Oneiros, it felt that most of them were horrified by their existence, as if the Leviathans were somehow making things worse.

In a way, what Cillian said made sense. Perhaps all those people she had combated in this city for the last few weeks were just victims turned criminals. Had they just been born in a better place, a better time, and with better luck, perhaps they would have never done the things they did. And in reverse, perhaps the “innocents” who lived peacefully across the globe would have been criminals if they were simply born in Oneiros. And perhaps she herself could have found herself in such a similar state, had her childhood trauma not been undone.

The world is arbitrary, she concluded once more. And I am just lucky.

She closed her eyes. All she had to do now was fall asleep. Then, she would awake on the surface, where things were just a little bit better.

In a way, this trip to “save the world” was no different from a mandatory leave of absence for her. A vacation. She and Victor would journey close to their hometown, and she would inadvertently distance herself from all the Cillians and Jack Moores of the world.

Just for a while.

Still, she could never bring herself to forget that this world existed. This world, where evil could never be vanquished–where lines were never black and white, and everyone wore a shade of gray. Where people dying was an everyday occurrence and no one batted an eye.

It’s enough to make me wonder if the world is even worth saving.

Abigail opened her eyes, mildly surprised by her own thought, then sighed.

No. It’s not about whether or not it’s worth saving. It’s about what I want.

Abigail Kovacs understood the arbitrary nature of humanity. She accepted the idea that people were allowed to pursue anything they could conceive, no matter how horrific or valiant it was. There was little point in trying to make sense of everything.

The only thing she could do was pursue her own ideals. If people decided to obstruct her path to that goal, she would eliminate them; if she encountered people who needed help on her path, she would save them. That was her role, as a Leviathan, but it was also the identity she had chosen to represent Abigail Kovacs. And until her death, she would fulfill her role as an ally of the righteous.

The reason she did this was nothing logical. She desired utopia, knowing it was not achievable. In the end, maybe preventing the apocalypse wouldn’t be terribly difficult, compared to what she dealt with in her efforts to try and truly save everyone.

Abigail closed her eyes, adjusting her posture to get more comfortable.

All she had to do now was fall asleep and wake up from this nightmare.