Despite what many people may have thought, Fury Caraway was not a monster. Nor was he the typical megalomaniac villain seen in many stylish Mas Jodben movies, fingers steepled and doomsday button at the ready.
He was just a man, and a weak one at that.
He sat down at his desk, straightened the stack of paperwork, made sure all pens were in their correct spot.
It was hard not to think of the picture in the second drawer of his desk, of Julia's smiling face staring up at him through the polished oak. It was even harder not to open the drawer, even as his fingers rested against the handle. It would be easy to open it and take solace in her crooked smile, in the slant of her cheekbones, in the way she seemed to gaze out from the frame and smile back. But if opening it was easy, closing it and rejoining the world that he actually lived in would be damn near impossible.
Even weak men had to do their jobs, he knew. Throwing himself in his work for the past ten years had kept him in luxury--only the luxury wasn't what most people thought it was. In truth, most of his money had been steadily routed to Rinoa's trust fund, to be bequeathed to her on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, or should he be killed in duty, whichever happened first. The mansion was also deeded to go to her after his passing, to do with it what she will. No, the luxury was the distraction, the day to day tedium of paperwork and orders and the fact that he still could answer to the title of General. It was easier to forget his weakness, his folly, his inability to hold on to anything that really mattered when he was General Caraway, confidante to President Deling.
In the six years they had been together, everything had shone brighter. A world without Julia was lesser than a world with her in it. She had been briefly immortalised in stone, given a star in the Deling City Walk of Fame shortly after her death, and then forgotten by all but those who truly loved her and those who fed off of tragedy. Once in a while, there would be an article in the iDaily Dregs/i about Julia Caraway's long-lost child or the fact that she was secretly an alien from the moon.
Caraway had memorised every single article title so that he might one day tell her about them, and hear her laugh once more.
Hardly behaviour of the typical scheming villain. Still, the world had seen fit to cast him in that role - the world including his own flesh and blood - and he did little to refute it. Seeing Julia's face with but a few marked differents (rounder cheekbones, eyes a bit further apart, nose more snubbed) dismissing him, mouth twisted with hatred, was his worst fear realised.
When Rinoa left, Caraway had let her go. Too proud to ask her to stay, too weak to tell her that he loved her. He knew how the story went - the girl always left. Sometimes she'd be split in two, shards of metal and bloodstains on the car seat. Sometimes she'd outgrow the house she grew up in, and go out searching for her place in the world.
Julia had been too vast to keep to himself - she burned like the brightest star, and he singed just to touch her. Caraway may be a lot of things, but stupid was never one of them. The world had laid itself at her feet; glittering lights and singles that skyrocketed to number one, fruitbaskets sent from recording companies. She could have anything she wanted and he feared what she wanted most was the lost soldier, the man who went off and never came back. When Caraway had gotten her pregnant, the glow of stardom was replaced with the glow of impending motherhood -- and later, the glow of a new life in her arms -- and she'd been a little easier to hold onto. The star had dimmed into something real, something tangible, and while another man might have been disenchanted, Caraway something new to love in her every week.
He had wanted to hold on to her forever. Just like a weak man.