Disclaimer: Don't own anything, if I had Dustfinger tied up in my closet, I would be obsessing over him, not sitting around writing angsty Basta drabbles.
A/N: Well, it's been a while since I've written anything for Inkheart; I haven't uploaded any angst since last year! Even so, I hope some of you still remember me from "Credit for Capricorn", "Half Light" and the angsty Dustfinger One-shots... R&R, may be the darkest thing I've ever written...
Inspirations:
"I should have perished by his hand,
It was his right.
It was my right to die as well,
Instead I live… but live in hell!"
-Javert, "Javert's Suicide", Les Misérables
"Is he from heaven or from hell?
And does he know
That granting me my life today,
This man has killed me, even so!"
-Also from "Javert's Suicide"
HATRED
It was a word he needed no help to read, a word he knew by instinct, emblazoned into the very fabric of his being, a word that drove him, sustained him. It was a word written in blood, seared into every memory, burned into the backs of his eyelids when he closed them.
Here he was… locked alone in a darkened cell, forgotten by the only person he had ever trusted… and still he blamed the other man. A slightly younger man… a man who could have killed him, but chose, albeit unwittingly, to leave him to a crueler fate. Basta chose not to ponder this, but to lose himself in his own loathing.
It had always been simpler just to hate Dustfinger, simpler than to ask himself the seemingly uncomplicated question of why? Perhaps he envied him his freedom, his cleverness… the list could be extended innumerably.
Perhaps, perhaps…
Perhaps loathing was the only thing tangible enough to hold on to. Perhaps he envied the other man his ability to grasp other things… things Basta had feared incessantly.
Yes, he had always feared fire… perhaps because he needed it. Perhaps because he feared that without his perpetual, gnawing bitterness there would be nothing left. A shell, perhaps, a specter drifting lost and without purpose. Perhaps because he feared those other emotions, the tortured ghosts that whispered in the night, haunting him, there eyes accusing, thirsting for blood… for revenge.
Yes, it was far easier simply to hate, to let the fog envelop him like a drug, to sink inside and to warm his hands at the fire that bit more often than it comforted… to remember the past… and in remembering…
To forget.