Suffer

Author: Amaranth Adanae

Disclaimer: I do not own Ergo Proxy; this is a fanwork written for entertainment, not profit.

All I ever wanted was for my grandfather to love me.

In retrospect, I suffered from the same ailment that plagued everyone else in our world: unrequited love. I wanted grandfather's love; grandfather wanted Ergo Proxy's love; Monad Proxy wanted Ergo Proxy's love, Daedalus wanted Monad Proxy's love; and Ergo Proxy just wanted out.

The autoreivs, infected by the cogito virus, wanted to feel loved and appreciated by their masters, but we, the masters, could never see them as more than machines, conveniences. Appliances, like glorified toasters. The immigrants wanted to be accepted and valued by the citizens, who scorned them. The citizens of the domes, incomplete humans that we are, wanted to feel loved and valued by our gods—whether the Proxies, or the administrators who stood in their place-but we were never more than disposable cogs grinding away in a vast machine whose purpose we didn't begin to understand.

A vicious circle; a wasteful cycle whose end result was an entire planet full of miserable, incomplete beings living sad, stunted, maimed lives. Seen from outside the dome, the whole drama wasn't even a tragedy—it was just a travesty. A pointless, tangled morass of misunderstandings and pseudo-emotions caused by the fact that none of us were ever able to appreciate what we had, we were too busy dwelling upon what was missing.

Older and wiser now, I'll accept what's offered, even if it isn't quite what I thought I wanted. The love of a god is no small thing, after all—even the love of an imperfect god with a patchy memory, a quirky personality, and a twisted, wicked smile.

And if I dwell a bit too fondly upon the fact that my grandfather would eat his heart out, knowing that I had what he always wanted—well, I guess I can accept a lesson learned from Proxy One, too. If you can't make them love you, at least you can make them suffer.

-End-