Fate's Laughter

Fate's Laughter

Someone once said that any romantic situation would entice Fate, and they were and still are right. More right than they could possibly imagine. There is just something in the situation, the dramatic desperation of the people that makes it irresistible. Drawing Fate's attention and her designs. And after the ordeal, she would laugh, laugh horribly and merrily at the scurrying mortals. There is a cruel irony to it, when one really bothers to sit down and think about it. But then, Fate has no feelings. She does not cry when someone is killed. She does not love anyone or anything. She is not human. And when all is done and over, she has another opportunity to torture and play with the stories.

It is so amusing, to take a life and turn it upside down. To watch the person suffer for things he has not done; punished for acts not committed; killed for all the wrong reasons. It is even more so, when that person's sworn friends abandon him, leaving him to face nightmares alone, break his dry, withered heart. One does not need chains to break someone. All of this is so vastly amusing.

Ah, to be one of Fate's chosen.

One by one, they are extinguished, and the greatest irony lies in that they all die in vain. The world is not fair, and life upon it is not any different. The world's heroes, all given up to the darkness, trying and failing to save everything they had loved, cared for, all the ordinary things they had taken for granted. There is a lot of chuckling to be done. Noble, courageous, persistent, shy, selfish, loving, rebellious. She swallows them all up.

It is now his turn. He lies in his cell, half rotten and starving, but awake and enduring the pain. For the world. Because, had he not existed, the world would have fallen to the ashes; had he not existed, the world would have been by dominated an insane liar; had he not existed, he would not have to give up yet another thing to the cause he had served and loved. His life. It is a small price to pay, for the 1000 years of peace they will have. Very small. After all, what is one life balanced against those of the innocents that would have been killed in his place? Even a hero's life is not worth that much, and he is a hero.

The prison smells. Even when he's careless enough to want to sleep, he would have been kept awake by the smell of the dungeons alone. Part of it was himself. He doesn't exactly resemble a model proper young man after spending three weeks in a wet, damp, shackled cell. His robes had been shred and cut by people. Followers of his arch nemesis. It doesn't affect him as much as he thinks it should have. Too bad. He's beyond caring now. He could go out like this in front of a crowd and not notice.

The cuffs on his wrists and ankles barely hurt anymore. He can't feel them through the layers of dead skin, scars and rotting scabs. He doesn't have to look to know that they are still there. What once were eager and reaching out to grab anything, a fork, a bun, a snitch, now stays limp, encased in dull rusted steel. What once could run faster than anyone in his year, could be used for pushing off, could kick with destructive force, now lay motionless, weighted down with the heaviest lead on earth. They stay still, caged. He feels none of the rebellion from the beginning, none of the despair upon realizing that as long as he stayed inside the cell, he would live.

He licks dry, cracked lips with an equally dry tongue. He doesn't have a mirror, but he's sure that his untameable mop has finally been suppressed. Where glasses rested, there's space. He's left half-blind in the dark. Impressive of his enemy to play mind games, but there's no cause. His spirit had broken long before. Still, he's no blinder than he had been his entire life. That, he supposes, is compensation, once he'd thought of it. Rarely do the eyes open. They don't have to open to see. Because darkness creeps inside even beyond your eyelids. It festers and stays. It also gives him apathy. Light gives hope. If he doesn't have hope, then he won't be disappointed in the end.

He once basked in that light, giving voice to his happiness. The next time he sees sunshine, he will also see the masses of people. The people who will kill him so they could live. To save the world. Again. For the last time. And who will come to save them when his enemy comes to his senses? But he's nothing, has nothing, can do nothing. He's only a butterfly ground into the dust.

How his captors long for his eyelids to drag open, dark lashes brushing against rare unmarred skin. His eyes, so vivid and striking that his enemy resolves to take them out and make a decoration when he's dead. How exquisitely macabre. There's irony in his eyes too. For they are the same colour of the tool that is to be used as a final stroke of doom. His killer. Merciful, quick, and infinite.

He would chuckle, but his lungs have long been devoid of any extra air. It takes all he has to take one wheeze after another, to keep alive. To think that death is merciful. If anyone told him that a year ago, he would have laughed himself silly. But it is. It is an ending. An ending that signifies loss of feeling. Forever. What a relief it would be, not to feel. It saves him and condemns him.

Likely his enemy doesn't know that death has long ceased to terrify him. The enemy cannot fathom how a seventeen year old can stare right into what he spent a lifetime escaping. But, as a wise man once said, there are many fates worse than death.

Fate.

Love.

Friendship.

Laughter.

Thoughts grew jumbled in his head. Tomorrow it will end. Tomorrow is his execution. Tomorrow he will escape.

How Fate laughed.