When you're all but gone, it lingers there; just out of reach. When the madness ebbs and fades for a moment. . .
You hear snatches of melodies from the past; distant laughter.
Frustration and rage cannot dissipate it. Vengeance only increases it tenfold. It can't be bought, sold, ordered, created out of need, or used for personal gain. Memory is a wound, raw and bleeding or like a looking glass, reflecting the past back to you one image at a time.
Nothing destroys it. Time increases it, insanity distorts it, injury jars it, and age fades it. But it is never stolen away or left unused. Everyone, from the greatest villain to the smallest hero, has memories.
Those simple things are guilt and anger and fear and betrayal; tears and laughter and silence and noise; music and light and shadow and night.
But memories are not made by the rememberer alone. They are made by others surrounding him. They are given as gifts or as wounds, incurring wrath or eliciting mirth with a single action. They are tragic things, memories, for they cannot be unlived or unlearned. They are held forever, deep in some part of the mind; lost for a moment in murky darkness or bathed for an eternity in clear light.
Which is why one must be careful with what memories they bestow upon others, and not only themselves.
A single action, and you are distorted for all time; you have darkened or brightened your image in someone else's eyes.
The villain is evil, the hero is righteous. Or so we have been told forever and an age.
But the villain was just as capable of becoming the hero as the hero was of becoming the villain. It is memory what molds and fashions the path of both. So choose with care what is given to hold forever in the storehouses of the mind, for it cannot be taken back, and good character once lost, no matter what one may say, is lost forever. The road to redeeming oneself is long, wearying, and trying. Few who go down it reach the end triumphant.
What a cruel yet gentle thing, Memory is. She is the reason for so many dark actions or noble intentions.
The tumbler of kingdoms and kindness, and also the edifier of regimes and hate. What a two-faced creature.