At first, he didn't understand. He opened his eyes unto darkness, hearing the birds singing outside and the quiet him of a computer, tapping away beside him. There should have been light, somewhere in this dark room. He should have been able to see something.
There were hopes. There are always hopes. The blanket was pulled over his head, the curtains were drawn, the screen turned off. And then when he realized they weren't, that was temporary. That it would fade away, and the light would return to him.
It hasn't.
He's been in this darkness seven years, alone and afraid in a sea of emptiness. He's begun to get used to it, of course. He's learned Braille and had most of his library translated or replaced. He's learned to hear his way through a room, the tap, tap, tap of his cane just enough to get him by. He's learned to fold his bills by denomination and attached labels to all his clothes. He's almost self-sufficient. They say he could go back to court, if he wants.
He remembers Godot, slipping up on crucial evidence because he couldn't see a single color. What kind of mistakes would he make when he can't see any?
And so he stays locked up in his familiar house, where he knows how many steps it takes to get from room to room, where he doesn't even need his cane to show the way, where the darkness has some vague hint of shape to it, and is alone.
They tell him it's important to bring people into his life. They tell him it's important to have friends. None of them can truly explain why. They give him dozens of half-cocked reasons, mostly to do with making up for his new impairment. They don't know him. He's never needed friends before, and he does not need them now, despite his missing vision. There has only ever been one person he wanted to see, and they're long gone now.
Franziska used to visit, occasionally. She brought him law books, all in Braille, of course, and the occasional box of tea. He asked her to stop coming. It was too awkward, having her hovering over him, unsure of what to do. She was torn between feeling sorry for him and being disgusted by the sudden weakness, the imperfection that had come upon him out of the blue. She didn't say it aloud, but he knew she thought his blindness was the work of God, punishment for his obvious sins.
Perhaps it was.
He had lost more than his vision. He had lost his entire life. It had all been snatched away from him in one terrible instant. His career, his family, his pet (How could a blind man care for a dog like Pess? He wasn't a service dog.). The man he loved. Who was to say this wasn't an act of God?
He didn't blame Phoenix for leaving. He had enough problems as it was, what with the disbarment and the adopting that girl. He didn't have room in his life to take care of a full grown man. He had always felt that, once he was no longer a burden, Nick would come back to him. He would meet Trucy for the first time, help him raise her, find the secret behind his disbarment. They would be a happy family, blind or not. After all, they were supposed to be in love, and Phoenix always told him that that kind of love was unconditional.
But seven years inched by, and he remained alone. One by one, the faces he knew disappeared and new ones took their place. Gumshoe retired from the force, and they became close, for a time. But he made the other man uncomfortable. He wasn't the strong, confident prosecutor who had once lead Gumshoe and the other detectives in the pursuit of justice. He was sure of nothing now, and it showed in everything he did. Eventually, even Gumshoe drifted away.
He no longer played chess.
He no longer listened to the television.
He no longer bothered with frills and finery.
There was no-one to see it.
When he found out that he had been replaced at Phoenix's side by a brown-haired bug of a boy, he finally made his decision. There simply wasn't a point to any of it anymore. He was doing nothing but running down the von Karma fortune and using up oxygen. He took no enjoyment from life, and gave none in return. All he ever did was cause misery.
He might have jokingly said that he had become his father, but at least Manfred had had a successful career, right up into old age. And besides, he no longer joked, not even in sarcasm.
It was sometime in the fall. He'd long since lost track of the month, or even the year. It was getting colder every day, and sometimes he heard the crunch of leaves outside his window and the flutter of birds heading south. The world around him was slowly dying. It was almost poetic, really.
He had his will updated and his insurance modified to include suicide. He never had to leave the safety of his home. The internet was a glorious thing. Everything went to Phoenix and his daughter, of course. From what little he heard, they could use the help. He left a few tokens to Gumshoe, a modest sum to Franny. She didn't need it, but he felt he should leave her something. He had already made certain the nice young woman who had adopted Pess would be taken care of, but he gave her a little something anyways. His collection of Steel Samurai merchandise would go to Maya, of course. He didn't know anyone else who would want the stuff.
He put a great deal of thought into method. Pills were too uncertain; he might take the wrong kind, or not enough, and he had no desire to wake up in a hospital. Intravenous drugs were too difficult to obtain in his condition, as were guns. He could find nowhere to hang himself, and having a bath with a toaster oven seemed crass, somehow. Vulgar.
He would go the old-fashioned way, the way beloved of romantics and fools the world over. Even he could find a razor blade, after all.
He filled the bath with water so hot it burned, keeping the drain open just enough for the water to drain and the status equilibrium to be maintained. It would not overflow and cause a mess, and by the time anyone found him, it was quite likely that everything but the bone would be rotted and washed away. He didn't get many visitors.
Part of him found the idea almost… appealing. A skeleton lying peacefully in a bathtub full of crystal clear water, perfect and unmarred by rotting flesh and bubbling gasses. Of all the methods of dying, it seemed by far the most appropriate.
He did not leave a note. No-one would wonder why he had done such a thing. Most likely, no-one would care.
The first cut stings. The second cut stings worse. By the third, his arm has started to go numb and he can no longer differentiate between the blood and the water. His blindness is probably a Godsend at this point. The thought of looking past layers of skin and muscle to the veins and tendons beneath repulses him.
He doesn't bother with the second arm. He can't hold the blade anyways, and he's certain he's opened enough major blood vessels to bleed to death eventually. He's in no hurry. He has all the time in the world.
The world begins to fade into boundless heat and shadow, an empty, warm darkness that is somehow familiar and extraordinarily appealing. It's almost like slipping into sleep, really. He can't even feel the wounds on his arm.
Somewhere in the house, he hears a door open and a long-forgotten voice calling out to him. He briefly wonders why Wright is here before the darkness takes him completely and he finally finds peace.
For the second time in his life, he awakes to an unexpected darkness. This one beeps and hums, and echoes with far-off screams. It smells of vomit and blood and disinfectant. At first he thinks it's Hell, and then he notices the bandages tied to tightly around his arms and he knows it's not.
Someone holds his hand. The contact is shocking, warm and pulsing and real, and he had no idea how much he missed this. How much he missed lacing his fingers with someone else's, thumb tracing over the rough, dry skin of knuckle and back, familiar and yet strange all at the same time. It's like coming home, only Home is not a place. It's a person.
And then he hears that person ask him why he would try to kill himself, why now, when everything's said and done and they can finally, finally be together without the shadow of a man with the devil in his hand looming over them, and he finds that he no longer has an answer.
He never understood. All these years, he never understood. His blindness had nothing to do with being unable to see. Everything his eyes had forgotten, his heart should have been able to fill in. He had a feeling that things would have ended up this way, even if his sight had remained intact.
He had never been alone.
The scars faded, but the ridges remained. There were times over the years when he touched them, pushing fingers past frills and sleeve to run along hard, slightly too warm flesh. They reminded him of what he had done, and what it would have meant. They reminded him of the angels looking over him, even when they seemed to have gone. In a very real way, they helped him get through the rest of his life; Becoming a godfather to Gumshoe's first child, giving Franziska away to Ms. Andrews at their first wedding, and again at their second, helping Apollo and Klavier adopt, fighting Maya's cancer and helping Pearl and Phoenix mourn when they lost. Trucy's marriage, pregnancy, and miscarriage. He brought her through that, more even than her 'Daddy'. After all, he knew what it was like to lose a part of yourself.
Years went by. He started playing chess again, amusing the various children in his life with his encyclopaedic knowledge of old television shows even as he let them win. He even went back to court occasionally, only on those rare occasions when Phoenix found himself unable or unwilling. The two of them helped the jurist system spread across the country and happily sat back to watch justice be done by younger, more enthusiastic souls.
One morning, he woke up to a soft, golden light flittering down through the curtains of their bedroom. Birds twittered and chirped outside, and Phoenix sat beside him, typing away on his laptop. He didn't understand, at first. It should have been dark, empty, cold. This light shouldn't be.
And then he saw the bare, scarless tract of his arm and understood. The man sitting beside him wasn't Phoenix; not his Phoenix, at any rate, not yet. He would come eventually, when it was his time. Before that, though… He was going to be given seven years of his life back.
Sometimes, acts of God can be good.