A Thirteen Year Hole

by athyb

you know alyss's thirteen year hole. this is dodge's side. dodge pov. fifteen-shot! woohoo! going big!

A THIRTEEN YEAR HOLE

PROLOGUE: BEFORE HELL

I still remember those days when Alyss and I used to play all those games...fighting, training, fighting, laughing. Because our games were so fun, I used to look forward to it. The real fighting. I thought it would be just like our games. I was naïve.

I still remember how she used to throw jollyjellies down at the guards. She always complained how I was too serious, wanting better respect for them—but in truth I thought it was just as fun as she did.

I still remember how we would hide away in her room, away from stupid Jack of Diamonds. I remember how we would talk and laugh. I remember how she would imagine things. It sometimes got her—us—into trouble. Back then this "trouble" terrified me. Now, I wish that it could still be my biggest problem.

I would hang my head as my father scolded me, bleakly repeat "Yes, father," over and over again, and then he would just look at me for a while. He would give me a hug and say, "I'm sorry, Dodge. But stay here tomorrow...last we need to do is get the princess in trouble again, right? Do not play with her again. She is pretty, I know, like so many of the things we can't have."

He would smile with no mirth and then leave me to my own thoughts.

But somehow Alyss would find me the next day. She would order me to play with her again. And, as you know, you can't deny the orders of a princess...!

So I got scolded again and again and again. I never bothered to tell my father that she ordered me to go play with her; it would be too much like saying that my not following his wishes was all her fault, and I had wanted so much to be the strict, rule-following rerun of my father.

And of course I still remember the day when that life, that life that could have been mine forever, or at least until the time I died, was broken. Shattered. Crashed. Cracked. Smashed to pieces. Shut into a trunk where it withered and died. From the broken shell of Old Dodge emerged New Dodge.

And for thirteen years, New Dodge refused to back down inside that broken shell.