A/N: Hey...I'm back! My muses have been comatose as of late and inspiration has been horrendously difficult. Ah, well I hope this makes up for it at least a bit.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Puppet King. If I did, I'd have given him a cooler costume.
The Puppet King
A broken marionette sits on the shelf limply, painted eyes staring vacantly.
A blanket of dust covers his royal robes not that one would notice in the darkness.
No strings mar the forlorn figure as he waits in the suffocating gloom.
The once-rich wooden limbs had lost their sheen to the grime, but he didn't care.
Now was not the time for such concerns; there would be more time at a later date.
Here was time to dwell on the past, of failures and triumphs, of glory and loss.
A time to reflect on his once brilliant plan to entrap those blasted Teen Titans once and for all.
It had been perfect before everything went awry.
Not all of his targets had been hit and took on the form of his downfall.
The might Puppet King had been dethroned quite suddenly and cruelly.
And now, now he was here in the murky darkness, on a shelf in a closet of all places.
His prison was a closet! Oh, the indignity of it all!
A soft creak fills the air as he shakes his head gently to rid himself of those thoughts.
It was bad enough he was here, bad enough not to make himself feel worse.
The grime-encrusted King forces his thoughts away, trying to free himself from a fraction of his suffering.
Such attempts were futile and he knew it.
What, the question was, previous misery would be revisited next?
His unblinking, empty eyes can almost see her face in the gloom.
Oh, so she was intruding on his thoughts again. She always came back again, and again.
Her name wasn't important. In fact, he was proud he'd forgotten it, if only the rest of her would disappear from his mind, too.
She smiled back at him with perfect pink lips set in a pleasant pout.
Her button nose was perfectly chiseled from the purest of ivories like all of her skin.
Wide, innocent caramel eyes framed by a dark fan of lashes completed her face; all framed by ringlets of syrupy golden hair.
From the moment he had set eyes on her, part of his mind had vanished.
He knew that no matter how hard he tried or how much he wanted to; she was never going to be banished from his thoughts.
Did he really want to, though? Forget about his first and only love?
All those lazy days sitting together, his wooden digits interlaced with her porcelain ones.
Why would he want to forget the way her rich hair gently bounced around her shoulders and framed her golden crown?
True, she didn't say much, then again neither did he.
Talking wasn't important though. They had something deeper than words.
At least, that's what he had originally thought.
That was before he saw those honey-gold eyes turn away from him again and again.
His Queen, the light of his life and joy in his heart ceased to look at him.
He spent long, lonely days all alone while his love smiled for another puppet.
Even after all this time the Puppet King could still see her angelic face with flawless features.
After all this time he still hated that he still loved her.
The hallucination of the marionette fades from his view as his troubled mind gives him a much-needed reprieve.
He really needed to stop thinking, thinking was too painful.
Marionettes weren't supposed to think. What had he done to deserve this sick fate?
The King counts himself lucky that he doesn't know, for that would undoubtedly bring another train of depressing memories.
What could he think about that wasn't soul-wrenchingly depressing?
Well, he supposed, if he had a soul they might be as such.
He may have sentience, but that didn't mean he had or wanted a soul.
Focus, you need to focus, he reminds himself, steering away from a philosophical headache.
What could one think about in a dark, suffocating closet?
A dark suffocating closet that his enemies had locked him in—suddenly he had an idea.
The idea was a rather simple one, with a single word to name it.
It was the one thing that would free him from a slow descent into a deeper madness.
One pretty little word that had but seven letters.
Revenge.