AN: HELLO! So, guys, here's another fic. Yeah, yeah I know. But this baby needed to get out of my head. I actually have been sick for the past two days, and i wok up early in the morning, and thought up this puppy. Actually... I thought up a part later int he story, but I like this beginning. Sorry it's short. Because I'm inspired on this baby, The next chapter of BtTSoMS might not be up for another week or two, ok? ): But I hope all of you like this one!

The Betrayers

Prolouge

There was a simple and complicated sort of life in this world. There was the life where one went through their daily routine, trying nothing whatsoever to change that routine, never questioning. They would go to school, go to jobs, whether they liked it or not, looking upon others with bleak eyes, wondering, maybe, if one day their lives may change, but resting no hope on these possibilities, resigning themselves to live an empty life. If they were lucky, they would find another like them to get married, have kids, and eventually die next to. These people did not accept the different, were unrelenting, and dead. Dead to the world. Brain's shut out the interesting, the happiness, and the hope that one would feel every once in a while without even wanting to.

This was simple. The simple life everyone strove for. The simple life everyone was forced into, whether they liked it or not. On the other hand, there was the complicated life. People who wanted to be free of the sham that was this government, these restraints that have held everyone back for centuries. Shunned, exiled, these people were dead in the government's eyes. Worse than any other person in the world. Betrayers.

Vexen was normal. Resigned to his boring life of office work, eyes a dead, dull green to the outside. He had whirling thoughts in his brain, which he refused to accept as his own. They were thoughts of another projected into his brain, buzzing like flies. Like bees, stinging for attention. The man would just wince, and smack them down, killing them, once again silencing the creativity that leaked from his core.

He had been raised in a harsh world, parents ingraining these restrictions into the soft tissue of his brain since he was born. There was to be no inspiration. No art, no science, no useless thoughts filling his head, trying to dull out his purpose in life. That was to live. To live, and nothing else. He was to grow up, get good grades in school, get a girlfriend, get a job with good pay, marry his girlfriend, have kids, and die. He would ingrain the same morals and ideals into his children's brains, forever scaring them and conforming them to this society that he lived in. That he was condemned to live in.

There was a sense of surreal calm settling over his country. His large country of ideas that no other country accepted. There was no other life to follow, other than the one he was living, right now. But as if it could be called living.

He had been forced from the youngest age possible to sit still, and practice, actually practice to not think. There would be no stray ideas threading into his subconscious in the future. He was taught to obey a strict set of rules, which were still set in his internal filing cabinet, filed away neatly, ready to be at a moment's notice pulled out and examined.

There was to be no disobeying the law. The government's word was life. There was no other race more superior to their own, no other country that could defeat them. There was no acceptance of anyone of skin ten shades darker than milky white. No acceptance of homosexuals, transexuals, metrosexuals, anyone other than heterosexuals. There was no pre-marital sex. Nothing other than monogamy when married.

There was no imagination allowed. People were not supposed to think anything of the sort. There was no artwork, except of the great leader. There was no reading of texts other than carefully scanned "books of study", as they had been titled. All books that so much as hinted at thoughts unlike the countries own were destroyed by burning at a great bonfire every year in the center of the capital.

There was no music except for few classical works allowed to the public. Even these were played rarely over the one radio station, government controlled. The people of the country tuned into these special broadcasts whenever they were played, although most were not very interested in them whatsoever, having had it taught to them that music was useless, good for nothing other than distraction.

They were watched twenty-four seven. Every minute of every hour in the day, ever hour of the week, every week in the month, and every month in the year. There were cameras everywhere. The darkest alleyways and the brightest shopping malls were full of those little black cameras, beady eyes of the government watching over every single move every person made. There was no such thing as privacy any more.

Nothing was safe.

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Even since Vexen was little, he had heard tales of 'The Betrayers'. They were a group of men and women who had found the conforming nature of the society too much to bear, and had gone against the government. They had been overpowered however, when they had planned an attack upon the leader, and all had been exiled. They had been placed in a tall building at the border of the country, black with age, windowless except for the top floor. They were not allowed to leave the country, as they would have spread word of the corrupt government. They were kept in this tower to stay contained.

They were viewed as diseased. They were diseased in the eyes of the government.

Vexen was told these stories to be taught to fear these 'Betrayers'. They were ruthless, killing anyone to reach their goal of overthrowing the government. They also watched everyone, searching for those who seemed unfit for the government lifestyle, and scooped them up, bringing them back to that tall black tower to live their lives with those demons.

The government had tagged the first of the Betrayers, tattooing them with the ancient language, the ancient character for 'Fate'. They all had the same tattoo, on the neck, below the ear, scaring them, exiling them for good. Because of this, there were no turtlenecks allowed. They were never sold, never bought, never imported, never produced in the country. There were no neck scarves, no wide necklaces, nothing that could possibly block the dreaded tattoo, allowing for the Betrayers to sneak back into society.

Vexen used to have nightmares about being stolen in the night from his bed, away from his parents, taken to that looming black tower on the horizon that was always there, always looming. He had seen pictures of the tattoo the group had been branded with, and it loomed in his mind. He had told his parents of this, and they had looked at him blankly.

"You wouldn't be having nightmares if you cleared your mind every night, like you have been taught to."

Vexen never dreamed again. But, in his core, he still harbored that fear that he would one day be abducted, never to see his family again. And he never realized that this fear could become reality.

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AN: R&R, tell me what you think, please!