I don't own Sky High. Pity.
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." -Friedrich Nietzsche
To him, love was foolish. It was silly and useless. A fleeting feeling of fondness bred out of familiarity that he's not at all entirely sure he's ever felt, let alone understood. Love, well, he's not sure he knew anything about that. No, love wasn't his specialty.
He was more into the business of fire and flame and ash and destruction.
Until he met her and she set a fire in his heart, a longing so desperate that it physically hurt, derived from her batting eyelashes and coy smiles. It wasn't love, no. Just insatiable lust and the need for her to be his and no one else's -an obsession.
That's when the madness started, something that he's all too familiar with now.
It snuck into his head and whispered things in his ear about blood and power and praise and passion and possession and control. It tainted his mind and fuelled his obsession until all he ever thought about was her. The curve of her neck and the shape of her cheek. He spent hours imagining what she would look like in his arms, eyes worshiping him like she was the only thing in the world that kept her alive.
He wanted that. Yes, he wanted that. And Barron Battle would do anything to get what he wanted.
It didn't take long to woo her, the good little innocent girl with her too long eyelashes and her skin that neither dark nor light, her dark brooding eyes and dark chocolate curls. A few smiles was all it took to have her blushing and a few words was all it took to have her adoring him. A bit of deceit goes a long way. It didn't take long to change her into something not so innocent -a girl who would break any rule for him. Battle began to loose interest, until he saw Steve Stronghold flirting with her in the hallway one day and nearly melted the lockers in his absolute blinding rage.
She was his. And that's how he decided it would stay. He might not want her as much as he had, but he would be damned if he would let anyone else have her. And that's how it stayed.
He married her out of high school, more to claim her as his own that to declare feelings for her that he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling.
Things only became problematic when she became pregnant while he was secretly plotting the destruction of the world.
The madness whispered things to him of killing her and running, escaping the confines the child would put on him and starting the plan now, not later. It whispered about abandoning her and the unborn child. It told him that nothing good could come of this.
It was the only time he never listened to it and he still can't remember for the life of him why. He doesn't regret not listening to the whispers. Battle just wants to know why.
She gave birth to a boy, a boy that looked more like him than her.
He suggests the name Warren -because he's always like puzzles and she adores it. Of course she does, she adores him. And he won't let that change.
He grows fond of the child, of Warren. He likes to think that he sees a bit of himself inside the young boy, that one day he'll grow up to be just like him.
Battle keeps pushing his plans back farther and farther as his son grows. The madness stops whispering so often.
Eventually though, he can't put it off any longer and things come to pass that he couldn't have predicted. He winds up getting defeated, by Steve Stronghold, no less. The irony is tangible, even now when his soul has holes and the circuits are crossed in his mind.
He comes to wonder, when years have past and he's lying on a cot in a prison cell, when, or where perhaps, he went wrong. He wonders when the madness stopped seeming like reason, and the longing and the fondness turned into something much more substantial.
Whatever this substantial feeling is, Battle could not tell you. For, he knows nothing of love.