Fiction: This Is America

[kethni]

Name: This Is America

Character: Matt

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: Adult language, and imagery which some may find disturbing.

Word Count: 935

Authors Note: For aaang. This is more of a character study than a short story but hopefully it works.




Look out the window. You wanna know how I got here? Look out the window. You see those people holding placards demanding I get the electric chair or the lethal injection? Those are the people who stood by while people like me were dragged out of their homes, schools, and businesses, and herded into camps.

Don’t gimme that bullshit that people didn’t know. Of course they fucking knew. As soon as they started making us register it was clear as glass to anyone with half a brain where it was gonna end up. The same place it always ends up.

Angry? You bet I’m angry. I’m angry people like that think they’re better than me. I’m angry Mohinder Bitchface Suresh can spend five years going Mengele on evolved humans but somehow murdering Rene makes him a good guy. I’m angry Peter Petrelli bombed hospitals and offices but somehow he’s a “freedom fighter”.

Your freedom fighter, my terrorist. You don’t like the government then vote differently. You still don’t like it, start your own fucking party. This is America. We don’t blow shit up because we don’t like the President. We’re better than that. We’re supposed to be better than that.

This is America.

People starved. Kids and old folks mostly. The camp in Central Park wasn’t any kind of holding facility, that was bullshit and it was always bullshit. They walled the place up and they put us there to die. When radiation didn’t wipe us out they waited on starvation, sickness, and hypothermia to do the job instead. We weren’t worth the bullets. A couple of thousand people, in the middle of a poisoned city, watching each other die.

I saw a picture once from WW2. I don’t know if it was the bomb they’d dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki but it was one of them. People writing jokey messages on it knowing it was going to obliterate wherever it fell. Good laugh, huh?

The guards at the camp wore radiation suits. They didn’t come inside much except to chase off people trying to breech the walls. We saw them going past though, doing their rounds, them in radiation suits and us in rags. When winter came it snowed. Winter in New York. Most of the kids died and a lot of the old folks. Wasn’t anyone there much use for anything. All the dangerous ones, the strong, the firestarters and the exploders, the fliers and the shapeshifters and the rest, they’d all gone. Never saw them again.

Sure, they closed the Central Park camp down. It was always too visible. I was gone by then. Suresh came by looking for “volunteers” and saw me. Said they’d been looking for me. I told him I hadn’t been hiding. I’d registered like all the other trusting idiots and I’d been walked into the camp and left to it. I heard it was the foreign news that got the camp closed. Protesters tweeting and blogging, all that stuff, got picked up by The Daily Show and then the foreign news channels. It’s bad enough having that shit highlighted by your own people but when Al Jazeera news is calling you out then what’re you gonna do? This is America. So they closed down the Central Park camp. There were other camps in more secluded places. Places no protestors knew about. Sure I knew about them. Who d’you think told the “freedom fighters” where they were?

I wasn’t going back. No matter what anyone fucking said or did, I wasn’t going to a camp again. You don’t know what hunger is until you see someone ready to kill you for a scrap of meat. You don’t know what sickness is until you see tumours bulging like boils. You don’t know what death is until you’ve seen so much of it that you’re more surprised people are still alive. I wasn’t going back.

Peter and his bunch, they call the people who died “martyrs”. Bullshit. They weren’t martyrs. They didn’t choose to be there. They’d have lied or stolen or killed to carry on living, let along what they’d do to get out. There was nothing proud or glorious. It was fucking tragic. It was fucking evil.

No, I don’t think I’m a traitor. No more than anyone else. Bennet wasn’t some fucking saint. He wasn’t Schindler. He handed as many evolved humans over as he saved. Didn’t know that did you? He handed over women and kids, when he thought their power was dangerous, even toddlers. The man was no better than me. You think I couldn’t have shut down his little underground railway? Of course I could.

I killed Bennet to save myself. I make no bones about it. It was me or him, and it wasn’t going to be me. The President was shitting bricks because Peter was back in play and we’d lost Nakamura. He’d have had me back in one of those camps before you snap your fingers. I wasn’t going back. Not for Bennet, not for nobody.

Claire… well. I didn’t know. Far as I knew he was her father. I didn’t have any reason to believe he’d kill her. I didn’t have any reason to think he’d hurt her at all. She wasn’t a threat. Most abilities can be developed to have some defensive ability, but not healing. That’s worth jack shit for anything but keeping you alive past time you wish you could die.

I’m not talking about my family. That’s none of your business. They have a right to live their lives without my shadow. They have a right to live without me. This is America.


The End


Prompt: Five Years Gone!Matt - maybe how he got to the point we saw him at in the show

Comments

[dragon6593.livejournal.com]

I liked this story. In the show it was never really explained what caused Matt to turn so completely evil. I liked how you boiled it down to the most basic of human motivations: self preservation.

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Thanks hon :) Yeah the show was pretty vague about 5YG!Matt's motivations and what caused him to change so much unlike Hiro and Peter whose changes were clearly due to disillusionment with how specials had been treated.

<333

[angary.livejournal.com]

Woah, chilling! And an interesting look into how Matt might have turned out in the 5YG!verse. The talk about the camp and starvation and Mohinder being Mengele (I was like :O about that, but from Matt's POV, it would be apt. Woah Matt!) was all very shocking and harsh, but in a good way... if that makes sense, LOL.

You really made me think about how things could've turned out in this verse, especially about Matt and the other heroes. Thanks for such an intriguing and bold fic!

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Hi there,

The Mohinder situation always boggled me in 5YG. Mohinder is one of my favourite characters but he WAS working for the government all that time while bad stuff was definitely going down. It is Matt's perspective though and he's not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.

I did a series a while back that was about Matt turning into the bitter, vicious man in 5YG so I wanted to try something different for this. I'm really pleased that you liked it :)

Thanks for the great prompt!

[boudecia7.livejournal.com]

Awww. It makes me sad but I still like to see this hard-edged version of Matt, forged in the aftermath of tragedy as it were. You did a great job of capturing the feeling of resignation and resolve that has come along with the changes in Matt's character over the past five years, something I know isn't easy since one of my Matt-a-thon fics deals has a similar sort of premise.

You did a great job and this was an awesome (if grim, hee!) start to the Matt-a-thon! There's so many great sides of Matt's character that can be explored both in and out of canon, and 5YG is always one of my favorite ones for its complexity. Beautiful work! <333

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Thanks honey, it's difficult subject matter as you know especially to cover in something other than an EPIC.

<333

[leadaisy.livejournal.com]

I'm with everyone too, you did a great job showing how Matt became this harden shell of a man. For me it's hard but also very exciting to see Matt as the 5YG person. You did a great job!! <3333


*hugs Matt*

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! 5YG Matt isn't just pragmatic but rather gleeful at times so I figured there's some real anger or resentment there as well.

<333

[vivihanna.livejournal.com]

This was wonderful and sad at the same time. It really bridges the gap for those five years. Thanks so much for sharing this! :)

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Hi,

Thanks so much, I'm really glad you enjoyed it :D

Thanks for reading and commenting!