He used to be a man, dreaming himself a butterfly, and sometimes his dreams reflected his other life. Sometimes he dreamed things no human should ever see or hear, and sometimes those things would follow him into reality. He called them his demons, and they hid in the night. They ate his face and his life and left him a soulless shell waiting for a purpose.
Or so he told himself in the night, as his thoughts revolved and shifted and changed into what seemed to him comprehensive studies, but were in fact utter nonsense. He knew this, but he couldn't stop himself from the act. It was as integral to his life as was breathing. There'd once been a time when he could have fled from the thoughts, and regained his identity and a life that once belonged to him. He could have lived amongst the ignorant and been quite happy, or so he told himself.
He'd lived this way, a stone figure within chaos for so long that he doubted what he considered real was what it was. He doubted that if he tried he'd ever find his former life, and so he consoled himself with dreams. Slowly, the dreams took on new forms, new ideas, new visions, new people. His madness a gift, to the world, and he didn't regret the things he'd lost in accepting it.
He gained as he lost, he changed as he grew. He accepted what was around him, and took all that came with a smile. It was his pathos. It was his ethos. He took what came, he didn't interfere, and he didn't change what was to come. He was a Watcher. He documented. He connected the dots, but he didn't involve himself.
Then reality changed around him again, and he didn't truly see it until it was too late. Circumstances took him places he'd never been before, gave him access to things never sought. New people, new situations, new problems. He separated, and watched, knowing that such organization could only bear fruit of chaos.
Then she came. She, who would tear down his walls and provide sanity to the whirlwind in his thoughts, She became the anchor. She didn't even realize it. She smiled, and his thoughts slowed, just enough for him to stop and look around at what he was doing. She touched him, and they stopped completely, and for the first time in many years, he Felt. Emotions, making him stumble and say things he doesn't intend to. Making him search for connections, not between insubstantial points, but between himself and others. How had he become so isolated? He'd become the theories he perpetuated, a living library of obscure facts and stories. The man who was once a butterfly found that he'd crawled from his cocoon still a caterpillar, surrounded by predators searching for dinner. In the end, She saved his life.
Before the end, She almost ended it. How could he stand so aloof from the big issues when they threatened Her? She who he Loved. She who kept him alive, and He couldn't. Even though it violated the Rules, the edicts he passed for himself when he gave into the chaos, when he dedicated himself to making sense of the abyss, he let all past ordinances pass by the wayside and gave in to what he Felt. Fear. For Her. For the World. For himself.
It was in Fear that his crusade had started. Victor Sage had been born of Fear, Fear of faith, Fear of life, Fear of the dark. Faith had taught him that Fear dissipates in the face of knowledge, and thus it began. To know the dark, to be the dark, to dispense the dark. He hid from his life and confronted the things that go bump in the night, and eventually Fear went away. He had no life to fear, and no dark to tread in. He'd gone so far into his mission that he couldn't find the way out, and something died in him, worse than Fear. Worse than many things.
She made it live again, that thing. He Feared again. So he did what he had to do, and confronted that Fear. His Fear for Her. She didn't even realize.
He wonders if when the Fear overtakes him, if she'll realize then. If maybe, she'll let her own Fears go, and give herself into the chaos. She once was a butterfly, who now dreamed herself a man.
"Once upon a time, I, Chuang-tzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, flittering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly...suddenly I woke...Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." -Chuang-tzu