Violent beginnings often had violent ends.
Hair and eyes and soul as black as the man who had beaten the hate into him,
shown him the meaning of pain, of betrayal;
The man who should have taught his only son what it meant to love.
His life, at its very best, was misery in those first years.
His young mind thoroughly tainted, resigned, a stoic calm that would, from that moment on, forever hide the man he could have been.
It was too late to change, too lost in the darkness of the life he had been dragged into due to the weakness of others.
His shameful father,
his broken mother;
both unable, unfit to guide.
He was falling rapidly, spiralling, plunging to the bottom of the deepest dark; until her light tore through the suffocation.
Red and green, blazing fire and gentle healing.
She never knew. She never would.
Those words had brought him back from the edge, the first taste of kindness he'd ever received. Love.
He would not forget. Never.
Through torment and hurt, at the hands of those boys that never knew what they were saying, that never guessed how their spiteful tongues burned like acid; finally touching his heart.
She had stayed, she had fought, but it was too much.
Too much.
The darkness had won; her light was gone, out of his reach, into the path of the enemy that rejoiced in his downfall.
Curses, betrayals, alliances, guilt; too late. He was too late.
He was part of the darkness, and she was beyond his reach. Beyond them all.
The earth spun still, time crept on, but she did not; his fault.
His. All of it.
His life was planned out, woven into the fabric of this tragic play.
He was the knight, she was the queen, her legacy the king that he must defend.
It was done. The only way he knew how.
In spite. In hate. Jostled between two sides that fought to kill him first.
No one knew his reason. No one knew she guided him still.
Then came the boy, and her eyes were furious!
Coward.
The word scorched him, the lie, those eyes, the green that met the black and it was her. She knew. She saw. Coward.
No.
It was almost over now.
The pain, the waiting, the fighting, the aching.
There was one thing left to do.
The boy would see, he would hear, he would know why those eyes had tortured him for seven years. Why he still clung to that light she'd shown him when all about him was black.
Why he had been worthy of her smile, had he not made that one mistake.
Why, when his life bled out onto the cold hard stone, he had loved her alone his entire life.
He had. He would.
Always...