Ashes

The rain tasted of ashes and blood...

Both men stood meters apart, facing each other under the crying heavens, like living paradigms of good and evil. There was a battle out there, not like the ones fought before.

This was the last one. The one which held all the answers.

They couldn’t care less.

“Why are you doing this?”

Burning emeralds tried to bore through him, reproach evident in the question. He shrugged.

“You always knew we would come to this. If you thought otherwise you were only deluding yourself.”

Cool silver returned the gaze and the two of them fell silent, the only sound was of the rain singing a last lullaby.

“Of course I didn’t think we’d end like this!” Indignation broke the other’s voice, laced with a heartbreaking helplessness. It only lasted a fleeting instant, but he could have reached out with a slender pale hand and brushed it with his fingertips. Then the feeling vanished and was turned into steel. “I wanted you to be free of all this...”

“Free?” He restrained a bitter laugh. “You say you wanted me to be free when you were the one who longed to see me under your sweet slavery.”

“That’s not…”

“But it is.” It came out harsher that he had intended, bitter. He didn’t want the other man to see the effect his words had on him, but it always seemed to happen. From the very beginning. “You fooled everyone, but most of all, you fooled yourself. Your great words of freedom and ability to choose… were you really listening to them? Did you really believe them? Do you believe in them now?”

“Of course.” There was not a single trace of doubt in his companion’s voice.

“Then you are still lying to yourself.”

“Why do you keep saying that? Why are you trying to twist my words and corrupt what only was intended to be for the best?” Raindrops dripped from black hair making him look like the child of years ago. But the gaze held no childlike innocence anymore, he knew that much. He had been the one to take it away, after all.

“Because you’re an hypocrite, that’s why.” This time the voice was softer, like if he would finally let go of everything that had once existed between them. ”You repeated and repeated that you wanted me to be free, but you never really ended that sentence”

“I don’t understand.” Genuine confusion touched by the hand of fear.

“Don’t you?”

The dark one shook his head sadly.

Gods. He really didn’t see it back then and he is too blind now.

“You always left out the last part of your wish: I want you to be free… to choose me.”

A flash of anguish told him that had cut deep and drawn blood.

“Freedom isn’t like that, you see. Freedom is not to be guided towards any direction but to make your own path. You never wanted that for me. You wanted me free to renounce everything I had been taught and lose myself in you and your ideals. Not for a single moment you tried to see that, maybe, my thoughts had been always my own.”

No trace of resentment or bitterness now in his voice and he was so proud of his self-control. Because he wanted to scream, to cry and to bleed. To kill him and to die and for everything to happen at once.

“Can you blame me for wanting you for myself?” Sincerity. At last.

“No. Never.”

Two words that held their story and their forgiveness, but that would dissolve away in the rain.

“Now what?” Such sadness in the green depths. A final understanding.

“Now we fight.”

And I die. Because even if I’ve thought myself in possession of my own decisions, I will never be free to kill you.

The battle they had been ignoring crashed into them with the harshness of the angry skies. And after all was over, the rain still tasted of ashes…

… and blood.

* Finis *