I posted this before and took it down. I suppose I shall post it again.

Antihero

We all draw from the same deck. Just as you all do, I shall draw mine, and hope that this hand is better than the last. But I wouldn't plead for better. Time passes; people are never seen again; victory, like a poker hand, is switched for defeat. We all know the drill.

I do not claim to be a hero. It's a nice feather to add to my cap, though. The first man to be lauded for thievery.

Aria told us we could fly if we let our hearts be our wings and if we fell thinking it was a blessing. But I do not believe in hearts and wings and the idealistic babble our holy Empress built her foundations and pillars out of before they turned traitor and collapsed beneath her.

I do not believe in many things, because many things have a tendency to betray you. Just like sweet Aria's gullibility did her. Just like the Black Mage's complacency did him.

I believe in engines of fate. I believe in machines. Machinations. I believe we only fly when we defy laws crafted to chain us.

Where were we? Why am I a hero, when all I've done is steal, ah, ever the deadly vigilante? I am not here for some Great and Shining Cause I believe in; in fact, I am not here for any medal of virtue that the others claim for themselves.

I think I am here for a reason far less honourable than they.

I am not Freud the Martyr; I'd never die for a cause greater than myself, or indeed for any cause at all. I'd never fight for my people, like good Queen Mercedes (if somehow I came to be king or chieftain took or some overblown seat of that sort, which I'm near perfectly sure I never will, and never want to).

The cards of chance have verily been lain, for I and for all, and whatever I am—King or Ace or Three—whatever lies on the other side of that formalised, unyielding back design, no power of this world will change.

Each to his own; there's no changing fate, only riding it, and I cannot ride if a hundred people are hanging onto my cape.

You know, perhaps in times of darkness, "heroism" expands to encompass anything done in the way of good. So he has done good—or so the people say. It was not for himself, they say. He was selfless for Empress Aria, and by virtue of my selflessness, they dishonour me with the accolade of having done good.

Ah, the world and all its fools. Many men were selfless for the Black Mage. I suppose you all suddenly think they were all doing good.

So be it: she's my good, then, my Goddess and my morality and my ideology, for whom I will bleed and let myself fall to a blade if self-sacrifice is the last way to protect her world.

Aran had the four kings of Righteousness, Freud the royal flush of Life. Mercedes dealt hers, a people to protect. Luminous held on his cards the Innate Good of All. They were all idealists. I am not an idealist. I would stoop low, lower than the earth itself—I would do things unthinkable, things the rule books would damn to hell—I would steal, deceive and backstab for that which I love. As the world has proven recently, heroes are made by the things they fight for, not the methods by which they do—and that which I love is the constant that sets me apart from the petty villain, I suppose.

But I will cling to it till it kills me, oh yes I will, as much as Queen Mercedes would die to guard her people, as much as Freud did.

Love is my hand. Fate, let us play.