Verdant Twilight
By Magikoopa981
Chapter One: A Long Way To Fall
BREAKING NEWS: Mushroom Kingdom and Koopa Kingdom declare end to war! Bowser Koopa and Peach Toadstool sign peace treaty! Fifteen-year hostilities finally ended!
The newspaper, blown about the lonely wind, is already over a year old. With how the time was flying it seemed like only yesterday to King Bowser Koopa that he had come to Peach's Castle finally ready to bridge the old gap between the Koopa Kingdom and Mushroom Kingdom. Mario and Luigi had been there, ready to attack Bowser and defend the Princess, and they had remained on careful guard for the next hour as Bowser signed the treaty and participated in a lengthy ceremony. Bowser didn't blame them in the slightest. He couldn't lie to himself and say that he hadn't been tempted to suddenly seize the princess during the visit. He had come to the Mushroom Kingdom that day with relatively honest intentions, but the gnawing of regret and fear of the changing situation had urged him to violently end the proceedings by grabbing Princess Peach and running.
He had managed to resist, however. Fast-forward a year into the future, and Bowser found himself sitting on the top balcony of Koopa Castle, looking down upon the empty fields that spiraled out from the castle grounds. Behind him the empty halls of his former glory echoed with the sounds of rats scurrying, and memories of a vibrant, if perpetually scared community of servants ready to obey his every command. Now there was nothing.
Again the thought occurs: it wouldn't take too much. If he could just stop thinking for a single moment and banish that fear inside of him, he could leap from the high balcony and let the earth below take him. It would all be over in a single, wonderful instant. It would be so wonderful to not have to sit here and suffer silently anymore. It would be so nice to be dead, immersed in oblivion.
It would all be wonderfully nice— if leaping could kill him. But he was too powerful, his body too strong for his own good. The last two leaps from the balcony had achieved nothing besides torturous pain.
"My liege?" The sound of billowing cloaks scuffled behind Bowser. It seemed that the echoes emanating from the depths of the castle were not merely memories.
Kammy, wearing her old magikoopa's cloak, walked up alongside Bowser. She looked worried.
Well, he did know about Bowser's recent string of suicide attempts.
"My King? What are you doing up here? You're...you're not thinking of leaping, are you?"
"No." Bowser sighed, looking down upon the ground hundreds of feet below. "There's no use. It'd do no good."
"That's right it'd do no good!" Kammy sniffled. "You could get terribly hurt your majesty!"
"No, it'd do no good because it wouldn't kill me." Bowser growled. "And I'm not your majesty anymore. I'm nothing. I have no subjects and no kingdom any longer. Ever since that peace treaty with the Mushroom Kingdom, everyone left. Now all I have is this empty castle!"
Bowser scowled, feeling the old urge to cry welling up inside of him. He sniffed it away and looked disapprovingly at Kammy. "What are you wearing that old thing for?"
"What? My, er, cloak?" Kammy looked down at the dark-blue fabric. "I found it hanging up in my closet here! I thought I'd take a bit of a vacation and see the old castle and how funny I just happened to find this…"
She realized what she had said and stopped speaking. She looked up from the cloak and up to Bowser who was still staring wistfully, if rather palely at the ground far below. "King Bowser, sir… is this where you've been the last few months? We were all dreadfully worried…"
"No one was worried." Bowser ground out. "Who? Who was worried? Besides you?"
"Well, um," Kammy paused, searching. "The queen really is concerned about you… She has quite honestly felt rather bad about how down in the dumps you've been…"
Bowser choked. "The queen?"
"Oh…" Kammy turned pale, realizing that he had made yet another mistake.
"So they've married. They finally did it." Bowser's eyes grew distant, and now it seemed he was staring down through the very earth itself. "Peach and Mario… they're really together now."
"W...we wanted to invite you, sir." Kammy stammered, "But no one knew where you'd gone…"
"It should have stayed that way." Bowser said quietly. "I should have been able to do it by now."
"Do what, my liege?" Kammy asked nervously.
"I should have been able to kill myself."
As best as it could be measured it had started about two years ago. For the umpteenth time Bowser had kidnapped Princess Peach, taken her back to Koopa Castle, barricaded himself in, had been attacked by Mario, had the princess stolen back from him, and had been resoundly beaten until he had been knocked unconscious. He had woken up once again without his love, feeling like a failure in every aspect of the term. Those kind of feelings had been present at previous failures but they had just now grown to a tremendous clamoring, a tearing at his soul that made him want to rip his own head off to find relief. It was not just a natural depression that had captured him but now an outright existential despair as Bowser looked out over the years past and saw that nothing had changed. Worse yet, in a way that was harder to describe, the future appeared bleaker and more uncertain than ever before.
It was the first time Bowser had ever contemplated suicide. It wasn't too serious at first… just a small whim, a sudden small teasing that asked the simple question of: Why do people do it? Why do people kill themselves? Is this kind of pain I'm feeling the kind they felt? When is it worth it to kill yourself?
Bowser had brought it up with Kamek back then, back when the magikoopa was still his chief advisor. He had been simply shocked. "King Bowser, what are you asking?! Suicide is never an answer!"
"Kamek, don't you think there's a point where someone's suffering is so great that there is simply no reason to live on anymore? That has to be measurable, don't you think?"
"I must disagree, sire." Kamek shook his head. "There is always a reason to keep living!"
Bowser didn't say anymore— he could tell the conversation would go nowhere. Instead he continued to turn the thought over in his mind as he walked from place to place, or as he stayed cooped up in his room. Wherever he was, it seemed like he was endlessly daydreaming about suicide. It still wasn't necessarily an answer to him, merely a question.
Would suicide be right for me? He wondered. No one liked him, beside Kamek. Even the person he loved hated him. He seemed to fail at everything he attempted to accomplish.
And now, as his thoughts continued to spiral outward and outward, a new fear started to approach him. Ahead, in the not too distant distance, a vast void was yawning, a great black abyss of the future. Uncertainty was suddenly tearing at Bowser's heart, and where once the world had seemed like a place with certain answers and methods, now became a slippery hell, where every failure in the past seemed to guarantee further failure in the future.
But it still wasn't really that bad yet. It's not like he walked around, desiring to be dead at every waking moment. He found himself sleeping more, not wanting to think for long periods of time, but he wasn't tortured yet. He could live like this, still— miserable, but contemplative. Still mildly curious, still feeling like he had some reason to live.
The futility of capturing the princess seemed to have settled onto him now, however. In his free time he found himself moping around his castle, spending time in the castle library like he never had before. He actually started to read, and began to wonder how he could ever have ordered all of the strange, wonderful texts to be burned. He then found himself infinitely grateful to the old librarian, now dead, who had pleaded with him to spare the library his fiery wrath. Now the place was like a gift to him.
Some days he wandered outside for walks, and one time happened to stumble upon the royal family's ancient boneyard in the deep woods behind the castle. A nostalgic, comfortably gloomy feeling began to settle in on him, and for a flash moment he felt appreciative of the depression he was feeling, for stirring up these new feelings and contemplations on him. At a turn he found his parents grave, and he fell to his knees and cried. He then remembered them and actually cared for the first time about them, beyond his little nursery where he had been spoiled to oblivion. They had fallen ill when he was young, and he could hardly remember what they looked like, but their love radiated through the years and touched him deep inside. The cold feeling he would never see them again, and never be able to appreciate them while they were here, was like a stab to the heart.
He had no one to love, and no one loved him. There were the koopalings, but the idea that they were his real children was propaganda, a cheap lie. In truth they were orphans, raised to be captains and killers by military men, and despite their deceitful surface behavior were unfeeling stones on the inside. If anything they scared Bowser, and he found himself forced to act demanding and rough to them if only to reassure himself that he was the one in the position of power.
Time passed, and Kamek, sensing a change, came up to Bowser when he was out in the woods feeding birds one evening.
"Maybe it's time." Kamek suggested vaguely.
"For a peace treaty?" Bowser finished, before clamping his mouth shut. He realized sourly that he had just fallen into a trap.
"If you wish, my lord." Kamek bowed.
Bowser clenched his teeth and walked away without saying anything. He felt manipulated. Not by Kamek, but by himself, by his subconscious, which had given up the life goal Bowser had decided on so long ago. A peace treaty meant that Bowser would no longer be able to try to capture Peach. It meant the end of this life.
But progress had to be better than this stifling stagnation, didn't it? Things could only get better from here, they had to. Bowser couldn't imagine feeling worse than he did.
Three days later he came to Kamek and agreed: it was time for peace.